The Central Alborz Region in the second millennium B.C.: An inter-regional study of archaeological p...

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" The Central Alborz Region in the second millennium B.C.: An inter-regional study of archaeological patterns and possible interpretations "
Seyed Ali Mousavi D. Stronach

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	53158
Doc. No	:	TL23112
Call number	:	‭3211456‬
Main Entry	:	Seyed Ali Mousavi
Title & Author	:	The Central Alborz Region in the second millennium B.C.: An inter-regional study of archaeological patterns and possible interpretations\ Seyed Ali Mousavi
College	:	University of California, Berkeley
Date	:	2005
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2005
Page No	:	176
Abstract	:	One of the most challenging problems in Iranian archaeology has for long been the unexplained shift in material culture in the mid-second millennium B.C. in northern Iran. It consists of pronounced transformations that affected the nature and distribution of ceramic forms, burial practices, and patterns of settlement. Such changes have generally been thought to be related to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans during the course of the second millennium B.C. Indeed, it has been suggested that a substantial hiatus of several centuries duration between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age in the northern half of the Plateau could have been connected with the coming of the Indo-Europeans. On the other hand it is now becoming clear that while the heaviest concentration of Bronze Age settlement would appear to have been in northeastern Iran, the densest occupation in the early Iron Age appears to have been located on the southern flank of the central Alborz, especially in the vicinity of Tehran. This circumstance indicates, in fact, that hitherto unconsidered factors may need to be taken into account. The region of the central Alborz Mountains reveals Cultural affinities both with the Late Bronze Age cultures of the northeast (including the Plain of Gorgan and the Turkoman Steppe) and those cultures which flourished almost simultaneously in the northern and northwestern parts of the Iranian Plateau. Contrary to what has been usually maintained, the break in the archaeological sequence in the latter part of the Bronze Age need not be taken to be the consequence of invasions or of massive migrations displacing the earlier pots and people. The present study attempts to explain that the cause of the observed transformations may have been the result of environmental and demographic factors caused by the exhaustion of economic resources in the northeastern regions of Iran as early as 2000 B.C. Accordingly, the spread of "grey ware cultures" over the greater part of the northern half of the Plateau towards the end of the second millennium B.C. is best seen as but one of many developments that took place in the early Iron Age period. It was, indeed, in this period that the grey wares of Iran begin to manifest new shapes and new forms of decoration. In this analysis such changes are tied to chronological evolutions that do not have to be correlated with the gradual infiltration of Indo-European populations.
Subject	:	Social sciences; Alborz Region; Archaeological; Iran; Iron Age; Second millennium BCE; Archaeology; 0324:Archaeology
Added Entry	:	D. Stronach
Added Entry	:	University of California, Berkeley