Narrative Actions of Power Consolidation in the Jiroft Conical Vase

Mesbah, گیتا

doi:10.22034/hgj.2025.546769.1048

Narrative Actions of Power Consolidation in the Jiroft Conical Vase

Document Type : Original Article

Author

گیتا Mesbah

Assistant Professor, Department of Painting, Shiraz University of Art, Shiraz, Iran

10.22034/hgj.2025.546769.1048

Abstract

Greater Khorasan, also called the "Cultural Road" or the "Chlorite Road" in the third millennium BC, was not only the way for the passage of lapis lazuli, turquoise, and chlorite between Jiroft, Central Asia, and Mesopotamia, but was also considered a factor in the transmission of style, artistic content, and common symbolic concepts between these civilizations. The representation of the human as an active agent—engaged in struggle or portrayed as a hero—has long been observed across cultures worldwide as a means of expressing structures of power. The consolidation of human power aligns with primordial archetypes of humanity. In the discovered artifacts of the Jiroft civilization, dominant motifs frequently depict humans engaged in combat. The central issue of this study is to analyze the structure of power as represented in a selected Jiroft artifact, aiming to demonstrate how power is attained and consolidated by the human figure through visual composition. This research, through the purposeful selection of a conical vase from Jiroft, employs a documentary approach and content analysis method, utilizing Greimas’s semiotic square as an analytical tool. It examines the complex structure of the artwork by identifying surface-level binaries (top/bottom) and deep-level binaries (power/weakness), extracting the narrative actions embedded in the composition, and subsequently analyzing the temporal relationships within the narrative. It is understood that the artist, fully aware of the visual characteristics and compositional structure, has successfully aligned abstract concepts related to power with the visual framework of the composition. Both the surface structure and deep structure of the artwork have been employed to articulate the dynamics of power. The consolidation of power is synchronized with the narrative actions of the artwork and is achieved through its visual structure (composition) and formal design. The semantic square model reveals that the consolidation of power in the human figure occurs through a process involving the overcoming of weakness and the transition through the intermediate position of non-weakness. The images possess a narrative structure in which the sequence of events, narrative time, and visual representation are aligned to express the theme of human power. The artist, guided by the form and compositional structure, has designated a beginning and an end point for the narrative. This narrative framework reflects both a time preceding the depicted moment and the internal progression of the story itself.

Keywords

Jiroft

Conical vase

Semio-semantics

Greimas

Semiotic square

Subjects

Theoretical studies of art

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