københavns universitet centre for the study of early agricultural societies
UPPER SEIMARREH
The region around Kermanshah is the best-studied prehistoric landscape of the Central Zagros, having been revisited by multi- ple teams since Braidwood's initial surveys in the 1960s – most recently the TCEC project.
HULEILAN Apart from the Central Zagros, a reasonable number of sites VALLEY are known from Iraqi Kurdistan, at the northern extreme of the range. The Southern Zagros are particularly poorly documented. Surveyed by Mortensen Overall, the very patchy distribution of sites visible on this map in 1973 and 1983. reflects the fact that much of the region remains unknown. Un- derreporting of sites in the literature is also a frequent problem. 1:45000 >1000 m shading 1:45000, >1500 m shading
KHORRAMABAD VALLEY
Surveyed by Hole and Flannery in 1961.
1:45000 >1500 m shading
THE ZAGROS IN PREHISTORY: GEOGRAPHY, CHRONOLOGY, DEMOGRAPHY The eastern arm of Braidwood’s “hilly our knowledge of the region lags signifi- of chronology, landscape archaeology flanks” and home to the world’s first ag- cantly behind regions such as the Levant or and palaeoecology that is lacking for the ricultural societies, the Zagros Mountains Anatolia. Zagros in comparison to other parts of are of critical importance to the early pre- Southwest Asia. To that end, this poster history of Eurasia. After this long hiatus, active field re- presents a preliminary review of known search into the prehistory of the Zagros prehistoric sites and published radiocarbon LEGEND Pioneering field research by figures has resumed in the last two decades, with dates from the Zagros. Statistical analy- Excavated sites Other sites such as Flannery, Hole, and Mortensen, new projects initiated by Iranian and Iraqi sis is used to explore the chronology, site Cave/shelter Cave/shelter confirmed that the region has a rich archaeologists as well as renewed inter- distributions and palaeodemography of Flat open air Flat open air Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic archaeo- national collaborations. These include the region according to currently available Tell Tell Other/unknown Other/unknown logical record. Significant results from the the Tracking Cultural and Environmental data. LP Lower Palaeolithic N Neolithic Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic Change (TCEC) project, a collaboration MP Middle Palaeolithic CH Chalcolithic and Chalcolithic have also been reported. between the University of Copenhagen and It is expected that the results will evolve UP Upper Palaeolithic
However, political instability in the region Razi University in Kermanshah, Iran. with the addition of new data produced by 0 50 100 150 200 km in the 1970s–1990s shifted the attention of TCEC’s programme of radiocarbon dating FD58 / Lambert Conformal Conic, Iraq zone (EPSG:3200) 1:2,000,000 researchers from the Zagros to more acces- One of the aims of the TCEC project is to and field survey. Topography: NASA JPL / SRTM GDEM v3, 3 arc-second, void filled Water bodies: NaturalEarthData & OpenStreetMap sible arts of Southwest Asia. As a result, gather “baseline” data on basic issues Zagros region: USGS / World Geologic Provinces v2
CHRONOLOGY (a)
Our radiocarbon database currently con- cant degree of overlap, seemingly indicat- tains 409 dates, compiled from existing ing that the conventional typologies offer databases (CONTEXT, PPND, and Roberts et poor chronological control. However, this al. 2017), as well as a literature review, and may be improved by re-examining the unpublished dates from the sites excavated available data on site phasing and using it by the TCEC project and our collaborators. to construct Bayesian models, and assess- ing the "chronological hygiene" of indi- Figure a (top right), shows the summed ra- vidual dates (the analyses presented here EPIPALAEOLITHIC (N=14) diocarbon probability distribution of sites included all available dates regardless of grouped according to their conventional age or quality). ACERAMIC NEOLITHIC (N=230) chronotypological designation. A binning algorithm (Roberts et al. 2017) is used to We also plan to produce new dates from CERAMIC NEOLITHIC (N=144) compensate sites with a disproportionately our own and other sites in the region. large number of dates. Targeting Epipalaeolithic sites is a prior- CHALCOLITHIC (N=60) ity, as there are currently very few that are 20000 19000 18000 17000 16000 15000 14000 13000 12000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 BP These preliminary results show a signifi- radiocarbon dated.
DEMOGRAPHY (b)
Summed radiocarbon probability distribu- lar to those seen in other regions using this tions (SPDs) are increasingly also used as method. To formally assess the statistical a proxy for demographic trends (Shennan significance of these trends, we need to et al. 2013). Figure b shows the SPD for the develop a null model of expected variation Zagros region, with higher values theoreti- due to random chance and the effects of cally being proportional to higher popula- the calibration curve. More dates, Bayesian tions. calibration, and better chronological hy- giene should also clarify this picture. As above, dates from the same site that were close in absolute age were merged, Figure c presents an aoristic analysis, to compensate for sites with a dispropor- similar to the above but incorporating con- 20000 19000 18000 17000 16000 15000 14000 13000 12000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 BP tionate number of sites. Although again ventionally dated sites. The result appears no quality control has been applied to this to be significantly affected by differential analysis, the results do appear to suggest a sampling, reinforcing the need for tighter number of "boom" and "bust" events, simi- chronotypological control. (c)
REFERENCES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS REPRODUCIBLE RESEARCH Benz, M. Comments on radiocarbon dates of Epipalaeolithic and Early This research is part of the Tracking Cultural and The maps on this poster were produced using QGIS 3.0.1. The radiocar- Neolithic sites of the Near East.