Survey of Excavations in Iran during 1965-66

New insights into the spatial organization, stratigraphy and human occupations of the Aceramic Neolithic at Ganj Dareh, Iran

“…Sketching out the stratigraphic context of the site was thus our first priority. Prior to our reanalysis of the primary excavation documentation, the only information on the characteristics distinguishing Ganj Dareh's five levels had been presented in several preliminary reports [25,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33]86] and in a detailed analysis of Layer D's architecture [26]. It is worth noting that these descriptions were fundamentally based on the kind of architecture contained in each level, rather than on the specific geoarchaeological and/or sedimentary characteristics of each stratigraphic horizon, which complicated the understanding of site formation processes at Ganj Dareh.…”

“…We were able to reconstruct Ganj Dareh's overall stratigraphic sequence by digitizing the master list of excavation units from Smith's 1967Smith's -1974 excavations and imported the resulting data into a GIS. This allowed three things.…”

“…The site was discovered and first tested in 1965 by Prof. Philip E.L. Smith [ 7 ] who would subsequently excavate about 20% of it over the course four field seasons in 1967, 1969, 1971 and 1974 [ 27 – 32 ]. This work revealed the presence of five distinct levels that were labeled A to E, from top to bottom, with the top of the mound having been heavily affected by erosion [ 25 , 33 ].…”

“…The site’s other artifact assemblages are also very rich. They comprise abundant chipped stone tools ranging from rough flakes and debris to fine blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores; some of the blades also bear the edge sheen characteristic of lithics used as sickle components or to harvest plants [ 64 – 68 ], although these data are based on studies comprised of very small samples of lithics (1640 to 3179 pieces, out of many tens if not hundreds of thousands) and on preliminary observations published as part of field reports (e.g., [ 7 , 25 , 27 , 30 , 31 , 33 ]). Ground stone tools such as mortars, querns and pestles are also present [ 64 ], as are bone tools of various sorts, including notched goat scapulae, awls, smoothers ( lissoirs ), flensers, ginners and rods [ 69 , 70 ].…”