The Kangavar Survey — the Iron Age

Iranica Antiqua, vol. XXXVII, 2002 THE KANGAVAR SURVEY — THE IRON AGE BY T. Cuyler YOUNG, Jr. (Toronto) Introduction I have been trying, without success, for more years than either of us wants to count, to convince my good friend and colleague, Karl Lamberg- Karlovsky, that the Iron Age is an interesting period in the history of ancient Iran. So far I have failed. He is a stubborn fellow, but then so am I. Here is one more attempt on my part to lure him into agreeing that there are fun things to do with materials dating to the end of Iranian prehistory. Though I may fail again in this enjoyable struggle between us, at least, under the present circumstance, I assume he will have to read it! The data for this discussion The data for this discussion is summarized in Tables I to III and in their accompanying Numerical Analyses. All of these data were collected by a survey of the Kangavar Valley in central western Iran conducted by the Godin Project of the University of Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Archaeological Service of Iran in the autumn of 1974 (Young 1975). Comments on the recovery, nature and quality of the data base A. The survey The survey was conducted between September 12 and October 23, 1974. The staff consisted of the author (director), Claus Breede (surveyor and draftsman), Mr. M. Rahbar of the Archaeological Service of Iran, and two hired pickmen from the excavation staff of the Godin Project. Thanks to the outstanding generosity of Mr. Saif'ollah Kambaxsh-Fard we were provided accommodation and board at the excavation house of the Iranian expedition to the Anahita Temple in Kangavar. I must say that I have 420 T.C. YOUNG never lived in a more pleasant or better managed dig house than that of the Iranians at Kangavar. The survey was greatly facilitated by a complete set of air photographs of the area covered, provided by the Department of Geography of the University of Tehran. These invaluable documents were supplemented by a set of 1:250,000 U.S. Army maps of the valley which are my personal possession. Our procedure was to identify sites to be visited each day from the air photographs as best we could and to begin our work on the ground by visiting these locations. From those points we were able to identify on the ground sites which had not been visible on the air photographs. Further sites were found by seeking information from farmers who regularly ploughed nearby fields and who were aware of non-mounded sherd scatters. When a site was located, Young, Rahbar and the two pickmen would search for sherds, while Breede would measure and make a rough topo- graphic plan of the site. Photographs were taken when thought necessary, and a few sites deemed particularly important or which had a distinctive configuration were sherded systematically. No complete pick-up of sherds was made. No systematic transects were walked, and no efforts were made to sample the valley randomly. Only sites visible by one means or another, or discovered through enquiry, were visited. Sherds and other items recovered were either processed at the dig house the day they were found, or on the one day a week we did not go into the field. Period identifications were based on the excavated sequence from Godin Tepe as then understood and on materials recovered by the Iranians from the Anahita Temple excavations. No claim can be made that we located all of the ancient sites in the area surveyed. It is reasonable to assume, however, that we probably visited all of the mounded sites, and we certainly recovered a goodly number of non- mounded sites as well. The survey may reasonably be described as of medium intensity. In total we visited some 75 modern villages and mapped a total of 171 pre-modern and ancient sites. Seventy percent of the diagnostic sherds found were taken to Tehran. Roughly half of that collection is in the Muse Iran Bastan, and half is in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. THE KANGAVAR SURVEY – THE IRON AGE 421 B. The geography of the survey area The area surveyed (Fig. 1) is that part of the drainage basin of the Gamas Ab River which flows through the Kangavar Valley. The main branch of the river enters the Kangvar Valley from the Assadabad Valley to the northwest by cutting through a slight rise which separates the two valleys. It leaves the Kangavar Valley through a very narrow gorge cut through a relatively high ridge of hills which defines the boundary between the Kan- gavar and the Sahneh Valleys. Before the river enters this gorge it is joined by the branch which flows north out of the Nehavand Valley (the village at this point, the extreme southwestern limit of the survey, is, naturally, called Doab). The survey covered the more or less flat valley bot- tom and the narrow valleys carved by the small tributary streams that flow into the Gamas Ab from within the Kangavar drainage basin. All such streams were followed to the crest of the local water shed. The valley naturally divides into three separate geographic areas. The valley floor proper runs from approximately the Kangavar — Tueiserhkan road to the gorge through to the Sahneh Valley (just south of the Kangavar — Nehavand road). Godin Tepe sits at the east end of this area. Agricul- ture here is based almost exclusively on irrigation, originally using only water drawn from the Gamas Ab, but now much supplemented with well water raised to the surface by diesel pumps. A line of sites dating to Godin Period VI along the east side of the valley suggests that either the river ran here in the 4th millennium, or perhaps the first documented irrigation canal was dug in the valley along that line. Sites from the valley floor are labeled K. To the west and northwest of the modern road from Hamadan to Ker- manshah, on which the town of Kangavar is located, is an upland area which we labeled the Kangavar Hill Country. Sites here are designated KH. Three small streams flow down through this hilly and broken land- scape. Modern villages and ancient sites are located mainly along these streams. Today, as in the past, some of the agriculture of this area is based on irrigation, but a great deal of dry farming is, and was in the past, also practiced. The areas between the streams are used extensively for grazing. All of the modern villages and ancient sites are small compared with those on the valley floor. This is also true of the third main area of the drainage basin. In this area, Velishgird, villages and sites line up along the two streams that flow 422 T.C. YOUNG around either side of the mountain, Khangurmaz. Sites are labeled V. After these two streams join the main river slightly to the south of the site of Seh Gabi (Young and Levine 1974) the geographical distinction between the main valley floor (K) and Velishgird becomes rather indis- tinct. The southern and western boundary of Velishgird, therefore, is rather arbitrarily drawn. This area was most heavily occupied in the Parthian period: many of the small sites of that time represent single farm home- steads. Limited irrigation is practiced and most of the agriculture is dry farm. The hill slopes are again, as in the Kangavar Hill Country, used extensively for pasturage. C. Problems and suspected problems with the data discussed here 1. At the time the survey was completed Henrickson had not begun to work on his definitive study of the stratification, architectural and ceramic periodization of Period III at Godin (Henrickson 1984). From this important work we now know that the ceramics of the long-lived Period III (ca. 2600-16/1500 B.C.) can be divided typologically and stratigraphically into six major sub-periods or phases. The survey materials could at the time be identified only as Period III. It is now clear, however, (as suspected in 1974) that not all of the fifty-six sites so identified were occupied at the same time. Thus while the Period III occupation of the valley remains the largest of any period in terms of total hectares, occupation in Period III at any one time was certainly not as extensive as the total suggests. More important for our purposes here, we do not know exactly which sites of Period III were occupied at the time of the arrival of the Iron Age I/II culture. In this regard it would be splendid were someone able to visit the valley again and sort out the Period III sites according to their phases. 2. The Iron I/II Period is a large problem. These two cultures are, of course, distinct and well documented in both habitation sites and burials in northwestern Iran: e.g. Hasanlu (Dyson 1989). Along the face of the Elburz Mountains (Iron I and II), and in Luristan and Kurdistan (for certain, Iron I only) they are documented only in burials: e.g. Khorvin and Chandar (Vanden Berghe 1964) and Geytariyeh (Kambaxsh-Fard 1375) for the Elburz region; Giyan (Contenau and Ghirshman 1935) and Godin (Young 1969) for the central western Zagros. An examination of the exposed sections at Tepe Giyan demonstrates that there was clearly a settlement contemporary with at least some of the Iron I burials at that site, THE KANGAVAR SURVEY – THE IRON AGE 423 and there is an occupation site of Iron I and II near Khorvin (personal observations).

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