In championing the work of local scholars, especially female, this volume begins to fill a politically imposed lacuna in the English language reporting of high quality research in one of the most formative regions for the development of human civilization.
This volume highlights the excellent, wide-ranging work of a diverse collection of Iranian archaeologists, the new voices in Iranian archaeology. Archaeology in Iran has developed in lockstep with the discipline of archaeology itself, in part due to the colonial endeavors that provided impetus for Europeans to travel to distant lands and extract antiquities and other commodities. But centuries before western archaeologists broke ground on excavations in the lands that would in 1935 be called Iran, a deep and meaningful engagement with and reverence for the past was a thread running through Iranian culture since antiquity. For millennia, the residents and rulers of ancient Iranian lands have admired, interacted with, inscribed, invented stories about, and imitated the visible, often ruined, monuments of their ancestors that dotted the landscape.
Following numerous interruptions in the twentieth century occasioned by revolution, war, and the geopolitical climate, Iranian archaeology has experienced a resurgence, and these papers offer case studies on the archaeological and scientific sophistication of the work currently being done in Iran by Iranian archaeologists. As a collection, these papers show the chronological and geographical breadth of archaeology in Iran, with papers analyzing the earliest evidence for human-object interaction in the Paleolithic era, the bustling medieval cities and their hinterlands, and many stages in between. The case studies deliberately highlight archaeological work across the entirety of the vast and varied geography of Iran, from the fertile plains of Fars in the southwest, to the rugged Zagros Mountains in the northwest, from the peaks of the Elburz Mountains south of the Caspian Sea, across the broad expanse of the Plateau, to the eastern regions bordering Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
This volume also features the work of many women in Iranian archaeology, a testament to the expansion and evolution of the field and its participants in Iran. In sum, these papers demonstrate the commitment of a new generation of Iranian archeologists to their land’s diverse and complex past.
First English publication of key recent archaeological research and excavations in Iran by, mainly female, Iranian scholars and their collaborators.
List of contributors
Introduction: The history of archaeology in Iran
Karim Alizadeh and Megan Cifarelli
Chapter 1 Prologue: The earliest hominins in Iran
1. The Southern Caspian Corridor: A hominin biogeographical expansion route
Elham Ghasidian, Hosein Ramzanpour, Ahmad Bavand Savadkouhi, Mehdi Abedini
Araghi, and Saman H. Guran
Chapter 2 Prologue: A history of excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta The Burnt
City, a UNESCO World Heritage site
2. Shahr-i Sokhta 2021: Excavation at Area XID
Seyyed Mansur Seyyed Sajjadi and Hossein Moradi
Chapter 3 Prologue: The history and prehistory of the Silk Road
3. IranChina joint archaeological excavations at Tepe Naderi, Shirvan,
Northern Khorasan: Preliminary report of the 2016 and 2018 seasons
Ali A. Vahdati, Liangren Zhang, Tao Shui, Binbin Liu, Xin Jia, Homa Fathi,
Margareta Tengberg, and Marjan Mashkour
Chapter 4 Prologue: The excavations of the ceremonial center of Persepolis
4. Identification of plant remains found at the underground channels of
Persepolis
Ahmad Ali Asadi, Zohreh Shirazi, and Sharareh Ghasemi
Chapter 5 Prologue: Imperial land management strategies in Iran
5. Dehqed: A lesser-known Sasanian center in the Borzjn Plain, Southern
Iran
Zohreh Zehbari, Nasrollah Ebrahimi, and Mehrdad Parsaei Borazjani
Chapter 6 Prologue: Filling in the gaps in Farsan County
6. Interregional developments in the Zyandeh-rd Lower Basin, based on the
archaeological survey and excavations in Farsan County, Chaharmahal va
Bakhtiyari, Iran
Alireza Khosrowzadeh and Hossein Habibi
Chapter 7 Prologue: Hydraulic management and human agency
7. Ifahn Hydraulic Heritage Project: The history of Zyandeh Rd river
water management and the resilience of Ifahn
Jaleh Kamalizad
Karim Alizadeh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. An anthropological archaeologist, he earned his PhD from Harvard University in 2015. His research focuses on the development of social complexity in late prehistoric Iran and the Caucasus, as well as the era from the Sasanian Empire to Medieval Islamic society.
Megan Cifarelli is an emeritus Professor of Art History at Manhattanville University in New York. Her research interests include the archaeology of dress, gender diversity in the past, and the art and archaeology of ancient Iran. Her most recent work focuses on the 1st millennium BCE site of Hasanlu, Iran.
