doi: 10.2143/ANES.51.0.3038718 ANES 51 (2014) 167-211 The Khersan 3 Archaeological Survey: New Insights into Settlement Patterns in the Zagros Folding Zone from Hydro-Dam Project Archaeology Parsa GHASEMI and Greg WATSON Abstract In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Iran witnessed a steady increase in the number of profes- sional archaeological surveys undertaken. A high number of these were triggered by the need for salvage investigations of regions identified as suitable for hydroelectric dam reservoirs. The most significant example of this hydropower-driven rescue archaeology is the unprecedented international effort, since 2004, that has gone into the Bolaghi Gorge, Fars Province, slated to be the reservoir of the Sivand Dam. However, numerous other hydropower projects continue to be developed across Iran, and for each of them there is a statutory requirement that an archaeological survey be conducted before the project is commis- sioned. These hydro-dam surveys are beginning to constitute a significant body of data on the record of the human presence in upland and marginal areas across Iran, although many of them remain unpublished. These areas have not previously received much attention from professional archaeologists. Cross-analysis of the data in future may yield interesting new insights into Iran’s record of human settlement. This paper makes a start by presenting data acquired in the course of a professional rescue investigation of one of these reservoir sites: the proposed Khersan 3 Dam in the highlands of Chaharmahal-o Bakhtiyari and Kohgiluye-o Buyer-Ahmad, southwestern Iran. The authors also suggest one way in which the archaeo- logical record in the Southern Zagros folding zone might be interpreted.* Introduction This paper presents the results of the Khersan 3 Salvage Archaeological Survey of an area of the Southern Zagros Mountains folding zone in southwestern Iran. It describes the region and the most significant sites and surface finds. The authors also suggest ways in which this data will assist future scholarship to gain better insights into as yet poorly understood human settlement patterns in the highland Southern Zagros Mountains folding zone. * The authors would like to mention a number of people who assisted in the compilation and completion of this report. They are Dr Mohammad Mortazai, the former director of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR); Dr Abbas Alizadeh for dating the prehistoric pottery; the engineers of the Khersan 3 Hydro-electricity Project, Messrs Jafari Zadeh, Karimi, Salimi-Niya, Mir Eghbali for their sincere cooperation; good friends Mr Kourosh Roustai, Ahmad Azadi, Alireza Khosrozadeh and Feridoun Biglari, Ebrahim Ghezelbash, and Javad Jafari who generously read the text of the paper and made helpful suggestions, and lastly, the honourable members of the committee who encouraged the completion of this survey. Our sincere thanks. 97075.indb 167 10/09/14 09:49 168 P. GHASEMI – G. WATSON By nature, surveys can be unsatisfactory, in that the data collected may be fragmentary, impres- sionistic and occasionally tantalising. They should seldom be the basis for making strong claims to having significantly advanced archaeological understanding of a site or region. Surveys create an agenda for further work, little more, and the ambitions of this report are commensurably modest. We employ Abbas Alizadeh’s theory of “enclosing vertical mobile pastoralism” as a framework to draw meaning from some of the survey’s tentative findings.1 Alizadeh’s ground- breaking work has begun to provide Iranian archaeologists with significant insights into dynamics which may help explain settlement patterns found in the archaeological record, not to mention the evolution of early states in southwestern Iran. Broadly, the Southern Zagros folding zone’s socio-economic context was until recently one of tribal “dimorphic” societies, characterised by seasonal nomadic, or “mobile pastoralist”, migrations existing in a fully integrated symbiosis with some settled arable agricultural elements. The nomads here have traditionally been politically dominant, a pattern of relations termed “enclosing,” in contrast with a number of other systems elsewhere, in which the settlements were dominant – a pattern termed “enclosed”.2 Alizadeh argues that this system, once developed by the end of the fifth millennium BCE, proved remarkably resilient, albeit with cycles of sedentarisation followed by periods of relative “deset- tlement” and reversion to a more mobile pastoralist way of life.3 The archaeological record of these hypothesised iterative sedentarisation-desettlement oscillations and their possible causes has not yet been documented in the Southern Zagros folding zone, but it may provide at least one aspect of a research agenda for future excavations guided by the results of this and other recent hydro-dam surveys. The archaeological survey of the Khersan 3 Dam reservoir area was conducted under the supervi- sion of Parsa Ghasemi (first author of this paper) for the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR) between October and December 2008. Among the main aims of this survey were to identify archaeological sites within the area of the proposed reservoir of the dam, to draw up archaeological maps of the area, and to record precise data from the sites to facilitate future research that may include test trenches, soundings and possibly more comprehensive excavations.4 Overview The Khersan 3 Dam will be built in an exceptionally mountainous area, in the shadow of the western face of Mount Dena, the fourth highest peak in Iran. The rugged region marks the boundary between Chaharmahal-o Bakhtiyari and Kohgiluye-o Buyer-Ahmad provinces. It is 1 See Alizadeh 1387/2008a; 2010. 2 Alizadeh 2010, p. 354. Abdi (2003, p. 395) describes pastoralism in the Central Zagros as “an adaptive strategy to a highland environment with limited and dispersed resources in order to supplement a primarily agricultural village-based economy. With expansion of the agricultural regime, the distance to be traveled to pastures by herders became greater, and as a consequence, the organization of labor involved in herding had to be modified to meet the more complex task of moving sizable herds over larger areas.” 3 Alizadeh 1387/2008a, p. 371. 4 Although an archaeological survey before a dam is filled is a legal obligation, and these surveys are designed to identify significant sites that should be excavated, reasonable seasons of follow-up excavations are occasionally a luxury not afforded to Iranian archaeologists after the initial intensive survey. Fortunately, Ghasemi was able to return to the area in Spring 2013 with funding and a team to excavate the Shush village site, which appears to have relatively deep archaeological deposits. Four other teams are currently excavating other sites identified by the survey within the Khersan 3 reservoir area. 97075.indb 168 10/09/14 09:49 THE KHERSAN 3 ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY 169 the catchment for important rivers, among them the Karun, Zayandeh Rud and the Khersan. Its relatively high annual rainfall sustains these permanent rivers, not to mention numerous springs, quite dense oak-dominated woodland and productive upland pastures and meadows. The reservoir area can be roughly divided into two portions: southeast and northwest. The eastern upstream half is close to Mount Dena and possesses more open valleys with earth hills than the downstream western half of the reservoir. It also has a relatively cooler climate. The western half has a greater number of springs, thicker woodland cover and narrower, steep “V”-shaped valleys, with less level ground along the river banks. The feature that makes it one of the more geomor- phologically unusual and distinctive regions of the Zagros Mountain Ranges is the complete absence of even small alluvial plains. The extent of the area surveyed in October to December 2008 by Ghasemi’s team was about 80 km2, in a strip roughly 40km long by 2 km wide. The outcome was the identification and study of 29 archaeological sites. A season of excavations followed in spring 2013 and identified one fur- ther significant site. The most ancient site identified was dated to the Middle and Late Susiana periods (late sixth millennia BCE), and the most recent was dated to the later Islamic centuries (officially ending in 1924). The Current State of our Knowledge The region is located between two important long-standing cultural zones — lowland Khuzestan and highland Fars. This makes it important for archaeology, especially the archaeology of nomad- ism, or more accurately, “mobile pastoralism”.5 Despite this, and the fact that the “lowlands of south-western Iran are [archaeologically] the best studied region of Iran,”6 these highland areas have remained quite neglected by archaeologists until the last decade. These valleys were the cradle, and perhaps redoubt, of the culture out of which emerged the long-lasting and powerful Elamite state.7 From the decade of the 1340s/1960s up to the present, a limited amount of research has been undertaken in Chaharmahal-o Bakhtiyari and Kohgiluye-o Buyer-Ahmad. The most important projects were the survey and excavations conducted by Zagarell and Nissen,8 the surveys of Whitcomb,9 and in recent years, the still largely unpublished and yet to be translated surveys and excavations conducted under the auspices of ICAR by Iranian scholars. This research has given us a relative degree of understanding of prehistoric and historic cultural developments and patterns in the historically more densely settled parts of the Zagros region. The remoter parts of the region have remained largely archaeologically unknown. The only study that had previously been done in the area of the planned Khersan 3 Hydroelectric Dam reservoir was the rescue excavation of the cemetery at Lama, for which there is a revised date, based on a single successful sigma 2 bone fragment dating, of 1625–1492 BC.10 The excavation also 5 Alizadeh 2010, p. 353. 6 Moghaddam 2012, p.