ANCIENT IRAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS

Local de VeloPMents and long-range interactions in the Fourth MillenniuM BC

ANCIENT IRAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS

Local de VeloPMents and long-range interactions in the Fourth MillenniuM BC
Edited by Cameron A. Petrie
With contributions by John R. Alden, Hajar Askari, Hossein Azizi Kharanaghi, Rachel Ballantyne, Gian Luca Bonora, Jacob Dahl, Morteza Djamali, Hassan Fazeli, Barbara Helwing, Vanessa M. A. Heyvaert, Kristen Hopper, Matthew Jones, Carla Lancelotti, Marjan Mashkour, Roger Matthews, Bernadette McCall, Benjamin Mutin, Dariosh Norolahie, Cameron A. Petrie, Holly Pittman, Susan Pollock, Daniel T. Potts, Mitchell Rothman, Alireza Sardari, Lora Stevens, Christopher P. Thornton, Hamid Reza Valipour, Massimo Vidale, Lloyd Weeks, Tony J. Wilkinson and Henry T. Wright

The British Institute of Persian Studies BRITISH INSTITUTE OF PERSIAN STUDIES

ARCHaEOLOGICaL MONOGRaPHS SERIES III

O XBOW BOOKS
Oxford and Oakville

Published by Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK Oxbow Books and the individual authors, 2013 ISBN 978-1-78297-227-3 This book is available direct from: Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK (Phone: 01865-241249; Fax: 01865-794449) and The David Brown Book Company PO Box 511, Oakville, CT 06779, USA (Phone: 860-945-9329; Fax: 860-945-9468) or from our website www.oxbowbooks.com

Cover images: Front: image of the southern part of the Iranian Plateau and its neighbouring regions in winter. Back: image of the northern part of the Iranian Plateau and its neighbouring regions in winter. Both images were generated using NASA Blue Marble: Next Generation satellite imagery, originally produced Reto Stckli and obtained from NASA's Earth Observatory (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) See: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/ Images prepared by C. A. Petrie

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by ***

CONTENTS

Contributors. ................................................................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................................... ix

Introduction
1. Ancient Iran and Its Neighbours: the state of play............................................................................................ 1 Cameron A. Petrie

Environment, ecology, landscape, and subsistence

2. Mid-Holocene environmental and climatic change in Iran............................................................................ 25 Matthew Jones, Morteza Djamali, Lora Stevens, Vanessa Heyvaert, Hajar Askari, Dariosh Norolahie and Lloyd Weeks 3. Population and settlement trends in south-west Iran and neighbouring areas.......................................... 35 Kristen Hopper and Tony J. Wilkinson

Sites and regions

4. A bridge between worlds: south-western Iran during the fourth millennium BC..................................... 51 Henry T. Wright 5. Interpreting the role of Godin Tepe in the Uruk expansion....................................................................... 75 Mitchell Rothman 6. Some thoughts on the mode of culture change in the fourth-millennium BC Iranian highlands............ 93 Barbara Helwing 7. The Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Qazvin and Tehran Plains: a chronological perspective................................................................................................................................ 107 Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Hamid Reza Valipour and Mohammed Hossein Azizi Kharanaghi 8. Tepe Hissar and the fourth millennium of north-eastern Iran..................................................................... 131 Christopher, P. Thornton, A. Grsan-Salzmann and R. H. Dyson Jr. 9. The Middle Chalcolithic in southern Turkmenistan and the archaeological record of Ilgynly-Depe........................................................................................................................................ 145 Gian Luca Bonora & Massimo Vidale 10. Mamasani in the fourth millennium BC.......................................................................................................... 171 Cameron A. Petrie, Alireza Sardari, Rachel Ballantyne, Manuel Berberian, Carla Lancelotti, Marjan Mashkour, Bernadette McCall, Daniel T. Potts and Lloyd Weeks 11. Northern Fars in the fourth millennium BC: cultural developments during the Lapui phase. .............. 195 Alireza Sardari 12. The Kur River Basin in the Proto-Elamite era surface survey, settlement patterns, and the appearance of full-time transhumant pastoral nomadism............................................................. 207 John R. Alden

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Contents

13. Mahtoutabad I (Konar Sandal South, Jiroft): preliminary evidence of occupation of a Halil Rud site in the early fourth millennium BC.................................................................................. 233 Massimo Vidale and Francois Desset 14. Ceramic traditions and interactions on the south-eastern Iranian Plateau during the fourth millennium BC.................................................................................................................................. 253 Benjamin Mutin

Technologies of craft and administration

15. Iranian metallurgy of the fourth millennium BC in its wider technological and cultural contexts........................................................................................................................................... 277 Lloyd Weeks 16. Imagery in administrative context: Susiana and the west in the fourth millennium BC......................... 293 Holly Pittman 17. The power of writing: administrative activity at Godin Tepe, central Zagros, in the later fourth millennium BC.................................................................................................................... 337 Roger Matthews 18. Chronological parameters of the earliest writing system in Iran................................................................ 353 Jacob Dahl, Cameron A. Petrie and D. T. Potts

Synthesis and discussion

19. Scales, difference, and mobility......................................................................................................................... 379 Susan Pollock 20. Ancient Iran and its neighbours: emerging paradigms and future directions.......................................... 385 Cameron A. Petrie

Appendices
Appendix A: Transcript of conference paper question sessions......................................................................... 413 Appendix B: Transcript of conference discussion sessions.................................................................................. 435 Comments and discussion led by Guillermo Algaze........................................................................................ 435 Comments and discussion led by Susan Pollock............................................................................................... 439 Summation and discussion led by Cameron Petrie........................................................................................... 449

Abbreviations
AJA AMI AMIT BaM Bib Or ANES CDAFI CHIr Eir EW IA ICHTO JAOS JCS JFA JNES JRAS RA American Journal of Archaeology Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan Baghdader Mitteilungen Bibliotheca Orientalis Ancient Near Eastern Studies Cahiers de la Dlgation Archologique Franaise en Iran Cambridge History of Iran Encyclopaedia Iranica East and West, New Series Iranica Antiqua Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of Field Archaeology Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Revue dAssyriologie

CONTributors

John Alden Museum of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA jralden@umich.edu Hajar Askari Sasanian Research Foundation of Fars Shiraz, Iran Mohammad Hossein Azizi Kharanaghi University of Tehran Tehran, Iran Rachel Ballantyne McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK rmb51@cam.ac.uk Manuel Berberian Ocean County College Toms River, NJ, USA manuel.berberian@gmail.com Gian-Luca Bonora L.N. Gumilev Eurasian National Univeristy ul. Munaytpasova 5, 010000, Astana, Kazakhstan gianluca.bonora6@unibo.it Jacob L. Dahl Faculty of Oriental Studies University of Oxford Oxford, UK jacob.dahl@orinst.ox.ac.uk Franois Desset Archologies et Sciences de lAntiquit (UMR7041) Maison Archologie & Ethnologie Paris, France francois.desset@wanadoo.fr Morteza Djamali Institut Mditerranen dEcologie et de Palocologie UMR CNRS Aix-en Provence, France

Hassan Fazeli Nashli University of Tehran Tehran, Iran hfazelin@ut.ac.ir Barbara Helwing German Archaeological Institute Eurasia Department Berlin, Germany Barbara.Helwing@dainst.de Vanessa M. A. Heyvaert Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences OD Earth and History of Life Geological Survey of Belgium Brussels, Belgium vanessa.heyvaert@naturalsciences.be Kristin Hopper Department of Archaeology Durham University Durham, UK k.a.hopper@durham.ac.uk Matthew Jones School of Geography University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK matthew.jones@nottingham.ac.uk Carla Lancelotti IMF-CSIC c/Egipciaques, 15 08001 Barcelona carla.lancelotti@imf.csic.es Marjan Mashkour CNRS / MNHN UMR 7209, Archozoologie, Archobotanique Dept EGB- Case postale 56 55 rue Buffon 75005 Paris, France janmash2000@yahoo.com

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Roger Matthews Department of Archaeology University of Reading Reading, UK r.j.matthews@reading.ac.uk Bernadette McCall Department of Archaeology University of Sydney Sydney, Australia Bernadette.McCall@sydney.edu.au Benjamin Mutin Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 USA benmutin@gmail.com Dariush Noorollahi School of Geography Islamic Azad University of Khorramabad, Iran Cameron Petrie Department of Archaeology and Anthropology University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK cap59@cam.ac.uk Holly Pittman History of Art University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA hpittman@sas.upenn.edu Susan Pollock Institut fr Vorderasiatische Archologie Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany spollock@zedat.fu-berlin.de Daniel T. Potts Institute for the Study of the Ancient World New York University New York City, NY, USA daniel.potts@nyu.edu Mitchell S. Rothman Department of Anthropology Widener University Chester, PA, USA msrothman@widener.edu

Contributors
Alireza Sardari Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR) National museum, Imam Khomeini street Tehran sardary@yahoo.com Lora Stevens Department of Geological Sciences California State University Long Beach, CA, USA Christopher P. Thornton Asian Section University of Pennsylvania Museum 3260 South St Philadelphia, PA 19104 cpt2@sas.upenn.edu Hamid Reza Valipour Department of Archaeology Faculty of letters and Humanities Shahid Beheshti University Massimo Vidale Department of Cultural Heritage University of Padua Padova, Italy massimo.vidale@unipd.it Lloyd Weeks Department of Archaeology University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK Lloyd.Weeks@nottingham.ac.uk Tony Wilkinson Department of Archaeology Durham University Durham, UK t.j.wilkinson@durham.ac.uk Henry, T. Wright Department of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA hwright@umich.edu

A cknowledge Ments

This volume is the product of a group effort by a collection of committed colleagues, and the helpful assistance of some key allies and critical friends. As is discussed in more detail in the introduction, this volume developed out of the papers given at a workshop on Iran in the fourth millennium BC that was held in Cambridge in June 2009. The workshop was made possible by grants kindly provided by the British Institute of Persian Studies, the Ancient India and Iran Trust, and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. The production of this volume has been supported financially by the British Institute of Persian Studies, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, and Trinity College Cambridge. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who have contributed to this volume. Without exception they met the deadlines that were imposed, and tolerated the often excessive levels of comments that came back to them from the editor. From my perspective as editor, they made the

process of putting together the volume as pleasant as is reasonably possible. I would also like to thank those authors who reviewed the initial drafts of the papers presented here. Most read one of the other papers in the volume and several read more than one. In addition, I would like to thank Dan Potts, Christopher Thornton, Augusta McMahon and especially Lloyd Weeks, whose support has made this volume possible. I would especially like to thank Helen Knox for her diligent and precise copyediting, which has resulted in a much cleaner series of documents than would have been possible if it had only been left up to the authors and editor. I would also like to thank Clare Litt, Val Lamb, Sam McLeod and all those at Oxbow who have helped produce such a handsome volume in double-quick time. Lastly, I would like to thank my family, Sophie, Cleo and Stella, for putting up with me while producing this book. I would like to dedicate it to the present and future archaeologists of Iran. Cameron A. Petrie, Cambridge, January 2013