In the past two decades, Iranian archaeologists have conducted numerous surveys and stratigraphic soundings throughout the Zagros region of western Iran. Their published work is gradually filling in the major geographical and chronological gaps in our knowledge of the Late Chalcolithic period. At the same time, new research on this period in the Zagros Piedmont of Iraqi Kurdistan is rapidly producing large amounts of data. Unfortunately, scholarship between the two regions is divided by a national border and a linguistic barrier in publications, which still obstructs necessary communication. This article summarises the current state of knowledge on the Late Chalcolithic in the northern and central Zagros Mountains in order to bridge this artificial divide. Based on the results of Iranian archaeological projects, we propose an updated chronological framework for the Zagros that is in line with recent Mesopotamian and central Iranian models. Résumé. Ces deux dernières décennies, les archéologues iraniens ont mené de nombreuses prospections et sondages stratigraphiques

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Despite the potential importance of southern Iran, and the Persian Gulf area in particular, for discussions on the dispersal of early hominins from Africa into Eurasia during the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene (Bar-Yosef & Belfer-Cohen 2001; Rose 2010), this area has remained almost unexplored until recently. Historically, Palaeolithic survey and excavations in Iran have mainly concentrated in western regions, especially the Zagros Mountains. As a result of recent studies, however, evidence for Palaeolithic sites in the southern regions of Iran, from Fars province to Qeshm Island, has greatly increased (Dashtizade 2009, 2010). Even with this improvement, no sites of Lower Palaeolithic date have yet been reported from the southern coastal areas on one of the proposed early hominin routes into Eurasia. As a result, it has been suggested that the few Lower Palaeolithic sites reported from other parts of Iran, especially in the west (e.g. Biglari & Shidrang 2006), were not populated from the south.

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