Eastward expansion of the Neolithic from the Zagros: Obsidian provenience from Sang-e Chakhmaq, a late 8th-early 7th millennia BCE Neolithic site in northeast Iran

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 29 (2020) 101969

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Eastward expansion of the Neolithic from the Zagros: Obsidian provenience from Sang-e Chakhmaq, a late 8th-early 7th millennia BCE Neolithic site in northeast Iran

T

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Kourosh Roustaeia, , Bernard Gratuzeb a b

Iranian Center for Archaeological Research, Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Siy-e Tir St., Tehran 1136917111, Iran Institut de Recherche sur les ArchéoMATériaux, Centre Ernest-Babelon, UMR 5060 CNRS/Université d'Orléans, France

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Sang-e Chakhmaq Obsidian Iranian Plateau Neolithic Expansion

The West Mound of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq, dated to c. 7100/7000 to 6700/6600 BCE, in the northeast region of Iranian Plateau, is one of the earliest known Neolithic villages east of Zagros Mountain that provides evidence of round-year occupation with mud brick architecture. Provenience studies have been conducted on seven pieces of obsidian artefacts, recovered from the 2009 sounding of the site. The analyses of the obsidian artifacts were done by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). The results show that all samples were extracted from Bingöl B and Bingöl A outcrops in west of the Lake Van, eastern Anatolia. The West Mound samples have important implication for the spread of the Neolithic from Zagros eastwards during the 8th millennium BCE or earlier.

1. Introduction Systematic research on the Neolithic of Iran was initiated in the late 1950s by R. Braidwood’s excavations at the sites of Asiab and Sarab, in the Central Zagros of western Iran (Braidwood, 1961). During the 1960s and 1970s, several expeditions inspired by the Braidwood’s works, launched goal-oriented excavations at early Neolithic sites of the Central Zagros, such as Guran (e.g. Meldgaard et al., 1963) and Ganj Darreh (e.g. Smith, 1976), as well as at other sites further south, such as Ali Kosh (Hole et al., 1969) and Chogha Sefid (Hole, 1977) in the Deh Luran plain. During the next two decades, the number of archaeological projects in the Zagros decreased substantially. This hiatus coincided with increasing intensity of fieldwork in other parts of the Fertile Crescent, especially the Levant and southeast Anatolia, which produced a wealth of new information about the beginning of the Neolithic, and as such about early domestication and settled life (e.g. Bar-Yosef and Meadow, 1995). Since resurgence of archaeological fieldwork in Iran during the 1990s, the number of the identified Neolithic sites has increased substantially. In this development, the Central Zagros, thanks to its potential for pursuing the early stages of domestication and the Neolithic way of life, regained its position as a main arena of Neolithic investigations. Recent excavations at some early Neolithic sites in the Zagros region, such as Sheikhi Abad (Matthews et al., 2013a), Chogha

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Golan (Zeidi et al., 2012) and East Chia Sabz (Darabi et al., 2011), indicates that the Neolithic societies of the region were involved to some extent in manipulating wild species, such as barley and goat, during the 9th-8th millennium BCE (Riehl et al., 2011, 2015). Furthermore, re-excavation at the early Neolithic sites of Ganj Darreh and Asiab in the Central Zagros (Bangsgaard et al., 2019; Darabi et al., 2018), by a joint Iranian-Danish team, might further elucidate to some extent the early husbandry of animals and cultivation of plant species along the eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent. These developments seem to put more weight on the hypothesis that posits multiple origins for domestication within the Fertile Crescent (cf. Fuller et al., 2012; Zeder, 2011). This is important, as the prevailing view of the Neolithic transition in southwest Asia suggests that early domestication began in the Fertile Crescent and dispersed from there through other parts of south-west Asia and Europe (e.g., Zeder, 2008, 2011). If this view is correct, it implies that the Neolithic way of life was introduced into peripheral areas, such as eastern Iran, from a ‘core area’ situated elsewhere. 2. The Neolithic period, east of the Zagros While the Zagros, as the eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent with favorable ecological niches to accommodate and encourage early settled life, has fascinated most Neolithic researchers to pursue the early

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Roustaei), [email protected] (B. Gratuze).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.101969 Received 4 March 2019; Received in revised form 30 June 2019; Accepted 30 July 2019 2352-409X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 29 (2020) 101969

K. Roustaei and B. Gratuze

archaeological surveys and limited excavations on the Shahroud plain during the 1990s by H. Rezvani (1999), which outlined the potential importance of the Neolithic of the area. Since 2004 one of the authors (K.R.) launched a long-term fieldwork in the Shahroud-Damghan Basin, starting with the archaeological landscape survey of the area (Roustaei, 2012) followed by small-scaled excavations at Neolithic sites of Kalateh Khan (Roustaei, 2016b), Ghaf Khaneh (Roustaei 2018), Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq (Roustaei, 2014; Roustaei et al., 2015), and Rouyan (excavated in 2018, unpublished) which span a time range from the late 8th to late 6th millennium BCE. Excavation at the 6th millennium BCE site of Deh Kheir, in the same area, by H. Rezvani in 2005/2006, provided important evidence of close similarities, especially in terms of architecture, between the Neolithic of the northeast Iran and that of the "Jeitun Culture" known best from southern Turkmenistan (Rezvani and Roustaei, 2016). A recent re-appraisal of old data and material, complemented by field survey in the Gorgan Plain (Roustaei and Nokandeh, 2017), is provided an emerging picture of the Neolithic of Northeast region (Roustaei, 2016a) that enhanced significantly our perceptions about the Neolithic societies of the region and shed some light on the dispersion of Neolithic way of life from Zagros eastwards (Roustaei, 2014). Thanks to above-mentioned fieldwork, the number of identified Neolithic sites in the northeast region has increased to a total of 68, clustering mainly in two areas, in the Gorgan plain and the Shahroud area. The former is an alluvial, fertile plain located southeast of the Caspian Sea, and the latter is a semi-arid foothill landscape immediately to the south of the Alborz Mountains. While the Gorgan Plain hosted the majority of Neolithic sites of the region (57), it is the Shahroud area sites (9) that have provided the most essential and detailed information on the nature and characteristics of the Neolithic period of the region. This information has been obtained from excavations at four sites: Sang-e Chakhmaq West Mound and East Mound (Roustaei et al., 2015), Deh Kheir (Rezvani and Roustaei, 2016) and Kalateh Khan (Roustaei, 2016b) between 2005 and 2009. Of these, the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq is the earliest known occupation among the Neolithic sites of the region. Excavations of the site have demonstrated that the site was established in the late 8th-early 7th millennium BCE as probably a round-year village with rectangular, tri-partite mud brick buildings (Masuda, et al. 2013; Roustaei et al., 2015). Preliminary bioarchaeological studies on the materials recovered from the West Mound show that the main plant and animal species, i.e. barley, wheat, goat and probably sheep, already appeared in domesticated form from the lowest levels of occupation (Roustaei et al., 2015).

stages of the Neolithic way of life, the eastern parts of Iran remained almost unexplored until two decades ago. The heterogeneous nature of the landscape east of the Zagros, dominated by vast areas of desert and arid terrain, both discouraged researchers from conducting fieldwork in this vast region and meant that what sporadic archaeological research did occur was confined to the most ecologically suitable areas. In fact, until the 1979, and still to a large part, our information about the Neolithic of the inner parts of the Iranian Plateau comes from only two zones, the southeast and the northeast of the plateau. 2.1. Southeast region Until a decade ago, the only information about the Neolithic of the southeastern reaches of the Iranian Plateau came from the excavations and archaeological surveys conducted by Harvard University in Kerman Province during the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Lamberg-Karlovsky, 1970). The earliest known Neolithic deposits from the region were revealed at the site of Gaz Tavileh (Prickett, 1986). The excavations at the site exposed a series of domestic, mud-brick architectures, dating to the sixth millennium BCE (Marshall, 2012: 289). The subsistence of the inhabitants of the site relied upon sheep-, goat-, and, to a lesser extent, cattle-herding and mixed cereal (wheat, barley and millet) cultivation (Prickett, 1986). In the past decade, an increasing number of Neolithic sites have been discovered in the Bam area, some 200 km to the northeast of Gaz Tavileh in Kerman Province. Archaeological surveys of the area around Bam have identified more than 80 Neolithic sites, including 35 aceramic sites (Mutin and Garazhian, 2018). Of these, only Tal-e Atashi, a c. 3.6 ha mounded site, has been excavated. Two seasons of excavation at the site, in 2008 and 2017, revealed a succession of mud-brick architecture with lithic assemblages and some small objects but no ceramics (Mutin and Garazhian, 2018). Five radiocarbon dates of the uppermost level of the site from the 2008 season, suggest an occupation between c. 5300-4500 BCE (Garazhian and Rahmati, 2012), which, compared to the absolute dates for aceramic Neolithic sites of the Zagros region (essentially pre-7000 BCE), appear to be too young. Obviously, at this stage of investigation, it is difficult to pose any plausible explanation for the persistence of an aceramic Neolithic at such a late stage in the southeast region. One of the main queries about the Neolithic of the region which should be addressed by future work is the nature of its relationship to the much earlier sites of the Zagros. 2.2. Northeast region

3. The origin of the Neolithic in northeast Iran and the Kopet Dagh

The only information about the Neolithic of northeastern Iran until 1979 came from three sites: the multi-period sites of Yarim Tappeh and Turang Tappeh in the Gorgan plain, southeast of the Caspian Sea, and Sang-e Chakhmaq on southern foothill of the Alborz Mountain. Excavations at Yarim Tappeh and Turang Tappeh produced just a small collection of Neolithic materials. While in the former, the Neolithic ceramics were reported in the lowermost levels of a stratigraphic trench (Crawford, 1963), the few Neolithic ceramics from the latter were observed only from mud bricks of the later periods (Deshayes, 1967; Dyson, 1991). Contrary to the limited evidence from these two sites, the excavation at Sang-e Chakhmaq, by a Japanese team in the 1970s, was extensive, with a horizontal exposure of ca. 1800 m2, possibly the largest at a Neolithic site in Iran at the time. Except for some preliminary reports (e.g. Masuda, 1976; Masuda et al., 2013), the results of these excavations have unfortunately remained to a large extent unpublished. It took until almost two decades after the 1979 Iranian Revolution to witness a resurgence of Neolithic research in the northeast region. Since the late 1990s, several archaeological projects have been conducted in North Khorasan Province (e.g. Garazhian et al., 2014; Vahdati, 2015), on the Gorgan Plain (e.g. Abbasi, 2011) and in the Shahroud-Damghan Basin (e.g. Rezvani and Roustaei, 2016; Roustaei, 2012, 2016a). Systematic work on the Neolithic of the latter began with

Perhaps, the most intriguing issue about the Neolithic of northeastern Iran is its origin. Until now, not a single Neolithic site predating 7000 BCE is known in the region. Although a number of Epipaleolithic caves and open-air sites have been identified in the region, their temporal distance from the West Mound (more than four millennia; see Vahdatinasab et al., 2011) and the obvious difference between their lithic assemblages and those of the West Mound (e.g. Vahdatinasab and Jayez, 2016), make it unlikely that there is any continuity between them. Studies of the animal and plant remains recovered from excavation at some of these sites, such as Komishan cave, have demonstrated that the subsistence of their inhabitants relied solely on wild species (Mashkour et al., 2010). In fact, there is, so far, no conclusive evidence in the northeast region of a possible precursor of the Neolithic represented at the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq. Instead, there are items in the material culture assemblage of the West Mound, such as clay figurines and gypsum-plastered floors, which indicate to some extent some connection with the west, i.e. the Zagros region (Roustaei, 2014). The relationship between the Neolithic of the northeast Iranian Plateau and the so-called “Jeitun Culture” of southern Turkmenistan 2

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has long been addressed by researchers (e.g. Kohl, 1984; Harris, 2010). Although those scholars lacked the data and information which is now available to us (e.g. Garazhian et al., 2014; Roustaei et al., 2015; Rezvani and Roustaei, 2016; Roustaei, 2016a), almost all suggested or agreed that the roots of the Jeitun Culture should be sought in the northeastern parts of the Iranian Plateau and perhaps even further west (e.g. Kohl, 1984), a notion that is strongly strengthened by recent finds from northeastern Iran (Roustaei, 2014). According with the work of earlier Soviet and Russian archaeologists, excavations at rock-shelters in the Bolshoi Balkhan Massif of western Turkmenistan by Harris and colleagues failed to recover any indication of a possible link between the earlier “Mesolithic” and the Neolithic culture of Jeitun (Charles, 2010; Harris, 2010: 228). Harris’ (2010: 236) detailed contribution to the origin of agriculture in Western Central Asia, exemplified by the Jeitun Culture, reached the conclusion that: “…the establishment of agriculture in southern Turkmenistan from c. 6100 cal. BCE onward was part of a wider process by which agro-pastoral settlement spread into western Central Asia across northern Iran, during the preceding millennium, from the eastern arc of the Fertile Crescent, where cereal cultivation and caprine herding was being practiced prior to c. 7000 cal. BCE as such sites as Ganj Darreh, Ali Kosh, and Jarmo.” In summary, the available bioarchaeological data does not support an indigenous emergence of the domestication of animal or plant species and the overall Neolithic way of life in northeast Iran and Kopet Dagh. It should be noted, however, that it is perhaps too premature to claim that a full-fledged Neolithic way of life penetrated into the lands east of the Zagros fully-formed; the actual scenario of the Neolithisation of the northeastern Iranian Plateau must be much more complicated than the one which draws upon presently available information in print. Previously underused archaeological evidence may, however, provide insights into the Neolithisation of the northeast region. A good indicator for inferring some sort of contact between inhabitants of different regions is exotic material. Concerning the early Neolithic of the Near East, obsidian has often played a crucial role in archaeological studies as an indicator of contacts between far-flung regions and cultures. One of the first systematic attempts to apply this approach in the Near Eastern archaeology was the contribution of Renfrew and his colleagues (1966). As they emphasized (1966: 54), the routes through which exotic items passed on can be maintained as a medium for the flow and interchange of ideas. Consequently, this notion can be operationalized to test hypotheses on the beginning of the Neolithic in regions far from the main loci of early domestication such as the Zagros. To explore one aspect of the appearance of the Neolithic in northeastern Iran at the transition between the 8th and 7th millennia BCE, this paper presents the results of a laboratory sourcing analysis on a small collection of obsidian chipped stone from the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq and discusses the implications of these results for a broader understanding the process of Neolithisation.

Fig. 1. Map showing the northern part of the Iranian Plateau and the eastern Anatolia and location of the sites mentioned in the text. Red circles represent sites predating c. 7000 BCE and green circles represent sites postdating c. 6000 BCE. Abbreviation for the sites: A: Asiab, AB: Abdulhossein, AK: Ali Kosh, AR: Arisman, CH: Cheshmeh Ali, E.Ch.S: East Chia Sabz, G: Guran, J: Jani, KAM: Kelek Asad Morad, QA: Qaleh Askar, S: Sarab, SK: Sialk, TSC: Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq, Z: Zagheh. (Image source: Blue Marble; modified by M. Zeidi, 2019).

one of the authors (K.R.) conducted a stratigraphic excavation at both mounds (Roustaei 2014; Roustaei et al., 2015). Based on the gained information, the West Mound represents a partially aceramic Neolithic settlement with rectangular, mud-brick architecture and elaborate limeplastered floors, spanning from c. 7100/7000 to 6700/6600 BCE (Nakamura, 2014; Roustaei et al., 2015). The archaeological sequence of the East Mound, some 6 m in height, represents a Ceramic Neolithic occupation beginning from c. 6200 and lasted around 5300 BCE. Therefore, there is a clear gap of a few hundred years between the West Mound and the East Mound. Stratigraphic sounding at a newly found site in autumn 2018, Rouyan, about 13 km south of Sang-e Chakhmaq, appears to have provided strong evidence which would fill this gap (Roustaei, unpublished data). The large exposures of the Japanese excavations witness the wealth of recovered materials and information which remained essentially unpublished (but see, Masuda, 1976, 1984; Masuda et al., 2013). As far as the chipped stone assemblage is concerned, the only information released points to the presence of obsidian from the West Mound sequence and its rarity in the East Mound (Masuda et al., 2013: 220). There is no mention of the frequency of obsidian from different levels of the West Mound; therefore, it is not known whether its presence was homogenous throughout the sequence. Apparently, the obsidian from the West Mound comprises 6–7 percent of the whole assemblage of the chipped stone recovered. On the other hand, there has been rare occurrence of obsidian from the East Mound, apparently restricted to the earliest level (Level 6) with frequency of less than 1 percent (Masuda et al., 2013: 220). In the 2009 stratigraphic sounding at the West Mound, we opened a 1x2 m trench on the highest surviving point of the mound and excavated it to the virgin soil, which was attained at 2.43 m below the mound’s surface (Fig. 2). The excavated sequence, comprising 48 loci, was divided into four occupational phases top to bottom. The upper two phases (1 and 2; loci 100–128) were essentially the remains of collapsed architectures, while the lower two phases (3 and 4; loci 129–148; Fig. 2) were a succession of, mainly, ash-rich deposits and living floors which provided a large corpus of clay and stone artifacts. In total, 937 chipped stone artefacts of various raw materials, but mainly of flint, chert and silicified limestone, were recovered from the sequence, of which 26 were made of obsidian, i.e. about 2.8 percent of the whole assemblage (Table 1; Figure 3). Two obsidian artifacts, a small bladelet and a flake, were also found from the surface of the site. The lithic

4. The West Mound of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq The twin mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq is located on the foothill plain of Bastam, about 400 km east of Tehran (Fig. 1). The site comprises two adjacent mounds, the West Mound and the East Mound, ca. 0.4 and 1.9 ha respectively. In the 1970s a Japanese team excavated both mound extensively, ca. 500 m2 in the West Mound and ca. 1300 m2 in the East Mound. Based on architectural remains, the sequence of the West Mound was divided into five levels and that of the East Mound was divided into six levels, both top to bottom. Unfortunately, the published information from these excavations remained the least (e.g. Masuda, 1976, 1984; Masuda et al., 2013; for a critical assessment of these excavations see Roustaei 2009). Since the twin mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq is the only known Neolithic site in the northeast region that has both aceramic and ceramic Neolithic components, its re-excavation could provide crucial data on the beginning of the Neolithic way of life in the region. In 2009 3

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Fig. 2. The north profile of the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq (the 2009 sounding).

signal in count/second is measured in low resolution mode for 38 different isotopes). The diameter of the ablation crater is 100 µm, and its depth is around 250 µm. External calibration was performed using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) glass Standard Reference Materials 610, along with Corning reference glasses B and D. 29 Si was used as an internal standard. Concentrations were calculated according to the protocol detailed in Gratuze 1999 and Chataigner and Gratuze, 2014, which allows detection limits to range from 0.01% to 0.1% for major elements, and from 20 to 500 ppb for minor and trace elements.

assemblage of the West Mound is dominated by retouched bladelets and retouched or used blades. There are a few backed bladelets, drills, endscrapers and notches as well. The predominant manufacturing technique is pressure-flaking. The small obsidian collection from the excavation consists mainly of bladelets and flakes. No obsidian core was found. It is noteworthy that all obsidian artifacts were recovered from the two lower phases of 3 and 4, i.e. from the layer above the virgin soil (L. 148) up to a large pit (L. 129) (Fig. 2). Seven pieces of obsidian were analyzed, six from the stratified excavated deposits and one which had been found at the surface of the site. In the next stage of our research on the Neolithisation of the northeast region we intend to analyze the rest of the obsidian samples from the site, as well as an assemblage recovered from the 2018 sounding at the site of Rouyan, which is partially contemporaneous with Sang-e Chakhmaq (Roustaei, unpublished data).

6. Results Seven obsidian flakes from Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq were studied (Table 2). Six of them are translucent to greyish, while the last one is slightly greenish (WM 0487). The results demonstrate that the seven samples divide into two different chemical composition groups (Table 3, Figs. 4 and 5). The first group, making up the six translucent to greyish samples, correspond to the composition of the calcalkaline obsidian from Alatepe area’s outcrops (formerly referred to as Bingöl B group, Chataigner, 1998; Chataigner et al., 1998). The last sample, the greenish one, which forms the second group, has a peralkaline composition. In the Near-East, peralkaline obsidian originates from the outcrops of two main volcanoes: Solhan (formerly referred to as Bingöl A) and Nemrut Dağ. Although the chemical compositions of these two peralkaline obsidian are fairly similar it is possible to distinguish them by their iron, titanium and manganese contents (Figure 4) as well as by their rubidium to cesium and yttrium to niobium ratios (Figure 5; Khalidi et al., 2016; Frahm, 2012). According to these criteria it is possible to ascertain that the peralkaline obsidian artefact recovered at Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq West Mound (WM 0487) originate

5. Analytical method The analyses of the seven obsidian artifacts from the West Mound of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq discussed here were conducted at the Center Ernest-Babelon of the IRAMAT (UMR 5060 CNRS/Univ. Orléans) by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) using the analytical protocol developed for obsidian analysis (Gratuze, 1999; Chataigner and Gratuze, 2014). The instrumentation consists of an Element XR (Thermofisher Instrument) associated with an Nd YAG pulsed laser ablation device (VG elemental UV microprobe). The frequency of the Nd YAG laser is quadrupled, allowing it to operate in the ultraviolet region at 266 nm. It was operated at an energy of 2 mJ and at a pulse frequency of 6 Hz. A pre-ablation time of 20 s was set in order to eliminate the transient part of the signal which is then acquired for 40 s corresponding to 20 mass scans from lithium to uranium (the 4

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Table 1 The recovered lithics, including obsidian artefacts, from different loci of the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq. The AMS 14C dating was carried out at the 14CHRONO Centre, Queen’s University, Belfast (Roustaei et al., 2015). Phase

Locus

Total chipped stone

Obsidian artefacts

Cal. 2σ age range (BCE)

Phase 1

100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

3 1 – – – – 3 – – – – 1 71

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

7046–6777

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

– 11 – 7 – 2 – – – – – 1 1 – – 4

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

237 – 2 1 1 15 4 14 3 5

5 – – – – 3 – – – –

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148

57 75 134 27 126 22 87 8 – 14

3 4 1 2 2 1 2 2 – 1

937

26

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

Total

7052–6825

Fig. 3. The obsidian assemblage of the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq (the 2009 sounding).

5th millennium “Culture III” level at Anau South in northern piedmont of the Kopet Dagh range in southern Turkmenistan (Pumpelly, 1908: 167, 181). The source of the Anau sample is not known, whether it originates from the known sources of eastern Anatolia or Caucasia, or from the obsidian outcrops of Dasht-e Nawur west of Ghazni in centraleast Afghanistan (Davis and Dupree, 1977). Recent analyses of archival specimens of obsidian from Dasht-e Nawur, however, have suggested that obsidian from this source has had a restricted distribution in Afghanistan (Boulanger et al. 2012). In any case, based on the current information, given the total lack of obsidian in Khorasan and on the Gorgan plain, we might consider the Shahroud plain as the easternmost boundary of eastern Anatolian obsidian exchange networks. Regarding the geography of the Iranian Plateau, the most likely region through which obsidian from the Anatolian sources could reach to the Sang-e Chakhmaq West Mound is the Central Plateau of Iran, a rather triangular region in north central part of Iran encompassing roughly the Qazvin Plain to the west, the Semnan Plain to the east, and the Natanz Plain to the south (Fig. 1). The main east-west communication route since, at least, historical time onward passes through foothill plains just south of the Alborz range. Until now, there are few sites in the Central Plateau which yielded obsidian artifacts. These are Zagheh (late 6th and 5th mill. BCE) in the Qazvin plain (Malek Shahmirzadi, 1977; Abdi 2004), Cheshmeh Ali (the 6th and 5th mill. BCE) in the Tehran plain (Glascock and Chaychi Amirkhiz 2017; Renfrew et al., 1966: 37), Sialk (the 6th and 5th mill. BCE) and Arisman (the 4th mill. BCE) in the Kashan plain (Ghirshmann, 1938: 22, Pl. LV7; Helwing and Thomalsky, 2011: 330), and Qaleh Askar (late 8th-early 7th mill. BCE) in the foothill valleys of the eastern Tehran plain (Amirloo, 1990). Of these, only Qaleh Askar is important for our discussion here. Qaleh Askar is a shallow, lithic scatter site sitting at c. 1500 m asl in a narrow valley overlooking southern foothills of the Alborz Mountain, some 50 km east of Tehran (Fig. 1). Test sounding at the site in a 5x5 m trench by Amirloo in 1990 revealed a lithic assemblage recovered from a c. 40 cm thick archaeological deposit, also included remains of a possible hearth and some animal bones (Amirloo, 1990). Initial examination of the lithic assemblage, along with the thin archaeological deposit of the site, suggested that Qaleh Askar was a seasonal camp-site occupied during the Epi-Palaeolithic (Amirloo, 1990), but later reappraisal of the lithic assemblage indicated a Neolithic date for the occupation at Qaleh Askar (Biglari 2012); recent absolute dating has confirmed the latter interpretation and provided a time range between 7200 and 6900 BCE for the site (Barge et al., 2018: 307), i.e. roughly contemporaneous with or slightly earlier than the earliest level of Sange Chakhmaq West Mound. Among the lithic assemblage of Qaleh Askar there were few pieces of obsidian. The analyses of provenance on five

7057–6825

7058–6827

7063–6827

7140–6831

7066–6827

unambiguously from the Solhan's outcrops.

7. Discussion Based on these results, the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq is the easternmost site in northern part of the Iranian Plateau that exhibits obsidian demonstrably obtained from Anatolian sources. No obsidian has been reported from the region east of Shahroud plain to the IranAfghanistan border, i.e. along the southern foothills plains of Alborz and Khorasan ranges. The same situation is observed in the Gorgan plain to the north of the Alborz range, where none of the 57 identified Neolithic sites (Roustaei and Nokandeh, 2017) and hundreds of later period sites provided even a single piece of obsidian (Abbasi, 2011). Nevertheless, a single piece of obsidian has been reported from the post5

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Table 2 Obsidian artefacts analysed corpus from the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq. Reference n°

Sample’s picture

Provenance

WM-Surface 1

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

WM 1262 (Locus 146)

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

WM 1167 (Locus 145)

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

WM 0710 (Locus 140)

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

WM 0709 (Locus 140)

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

WM 0641 (Locus 139)

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

WM 0487 (Locus 129)

Solhan (Bingöl A)

the northern or southern shores of the Urmia Lake and Lake Van (cf. Barge et al., 2018, Fig. 6) or through the valleys of the Central Zagros. The former route, though possibly shorter and more easily passable, yielded so far no site contemporary or earlier than the West Mound and Qaleh Askar (Maziar and Glascock, 2017). The Central Zagros, however, demonstrates several pre-7000 BCE sites with the same source of obsidian as the West Mound and Qaleh Askar (Figure 1; Barge et al., 2018; Darabi and Glascock, 2013). This makes the region as a probable medium of transferring obsidian from the eastern Anatolia to the

samples showed the Bingöl B as the only source (Barge et al., 2018, Table 5). The distance between the West Mound and the source of its obsidian in the eastern Anatolia is more than 1300 km directly. This distance increases to 1500 km if one follows the natural communication routes. The location of Qaleh Askar, between the source area of obsidian in the eastern Anatolia and Sang-e Chakhmaq, implies the possible routes through which obsidian reached the West Mound. These routes could either passed through natural corridors of the northwest region along 6

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Table 3 Chemical compositions measured for the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq's obsidian artefacts. Contents are expressed in weight % for the main oxides and in parts per million for trace elements (1 ppm = 0.0001%). Oxide %

Alatepe (Bingöl B)

Solhan (Bingöl A)

WM-Surface 1

WM 1262

WM 1167

WM 0710

WM 0709

WM 0641

WM 0487

Na2O Al2O3 SiO2 K2O CaO Fe2O3

4.42 15.3 72.4 4.63 0.74 1.95

3.72 14.6 72.6 5.79 0.74 1.99

4.45 15.1 72.5 4.75 0.73 1.95

4.53 14.7 72.7 4.66 0.78 2.04

4.41 15.2 72.5 4.70 0.73 1.98

4.48 14.8 72.6 4.76 0.74 2.00

5.22 11.4 74.0 4.08 0.31 4.39

Element ppm Li B Mg Sc Ti Mn Zn Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Cs Ba La Ce Pr Nd Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho Er Tm Yb Lu Hf Ta Th U

74 58 912 14.5 1247 273 43 180 32 25 290 17 8.9 312 35 63 6.4 21 4.2 0.48 4.6 0.69 4.3 0.93 2.7 0.44 3.2 0.51 8.1 1.6 30 9.7

43 61 951 14 1251 275 45 185 32 23 271 16 9 304 34 64 6.1 21 3.8 0.39 4.3 0.69 4.1 0.84 2.6 0.4 3 0.48 7.7 1.5 29 10

74 58 914 15.1 1227 268 42 182 32 23 281 16 8.9 305 34 60 6.1 21 4 0.45 4.7 0.71 4 0.93 2.7 0.44 3.1 0.5 7.9 1.6 29 9.5

72 58 1062 14.5 1420 297 45 180 38 24 304 17 8.8 319 36 65 6.5 22 4 0.49 4.5 0.75 4.2 0.88 2.9 0.45 3.3 0.52 8.5 1.6 30 9.5

76 58 903 14.4 1259 275 40 181 33 24 288 17 9 314 35 63 6.4 22 4.1 0.43 4.8 0.73 4.4 0.94 2.9 0.45 3.1 0.51 8.2 1.6 30 9.7

71 60 963 14.3 1231 281 44 182 31 23 277 17 9.2 302 34 62 6.1 21 4 0.46 4.6 0.71 4.1 0.88 2.7 0.42 3.2 0.5 7.6 1.5 29 10

105 143 17 17.2 1446 562 170 192 0.1 108 1039 51 11 1.1 81 165 19 79 18 0.45 19 3.4 21 4.4 13 1.9 13 2 27 3.8 31 12

Anatolian sources is attested at the site of Kelek Asad Morad, in the south-central Zagros region, dated to the mid-9th millennium BCE (Moradi et al., 2016). During the 8th millennium BCE obsidian was found at increasing number of sites in the Central Zagros and further south in the lowlands of Khuzestan (Alizadeh, 2003) and in the Deh Luran plain (Renfrew, 1969). During the first half of the 7th millennium BCE, obsidian appeared for the first time in archaeological contexts in the southern Zagros in Fars (Barge et al., 2018). From the second half of the 7th millennium, the frequency of obsidian started to decrease on the sites of the Iranian Plateau, except in the northwestern Zagros, with rare occurrences at 6th millennium BCE sites. This temporal and spatial appearance and diffusion of obsidian indicates the existence of a Neolithic interaction network operating already from the mid-9th millennium BCE in the Central Zagros, expanding over time to influence regions to the east and south as well. The appearance of obsidian outside the Central Zagros, at the sites of Rahmat Abad and Qasr-e Ahmad in the southern Zagros (Barge et al., 2018), at Qaleh Askar in the Central Plateau and at the Sang-e Chakhmaq West Mound in the northeast region, all dated to c. 7200–6500 BCE, conforms with the notion that a “major shift in the intensity and scope of networks of Neolithic interaction from 7500 BCE onwards” (Matthews et al., 2013b: 233) occurred. So far, the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq is the only known Aceramic Neolithic mounded site in the Northeast region of Iranian Plateau with several phases of mud-brick architecture. More than thirty

northeast Iran through the Central Plateau. This interregional contact, as represented by occurrence of the eastern Anatolian obsidian in the Northeast region of Iran, has significant implications for the possible spread of the Neolithic way of life from Zagros eastward. 8. Conclusions The obsidian from the two chemical groups identified at Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq West Mound correspond to the compositions of the calcalkaline and peralkaline obsidian originating from the Bingöl region: Alatepe's and Solhan's outcrops (previously referred respectively as Bingöl B and A groups, Chataigner, 1998; Chataigner et al., 1998). This well conforms to the pattern observed in the occurrence of obsidian in the archaeological context of the Iranian Plateau, i.e. “From the Epipalaeolithic to the Pottery Neolithic, specifically up to the end of the 7th millennium, all the obsidian found on the sites in Iran and in the NW Zagros was obtained from Nemrut Dag or the region of Bingöl” (Barge et al., 2018: 317). The temporal and spatial pattern of obsidian appearance at the Neolithic sites of the western Iran points to a network of contact through which materials and ideas could be circulated. The earliest Neolithic sites of the Iranian Zagros, such as Sheikhi Abad (Matthews et al., 2013a) and earlier parts of the Chogha Golan (Riehl et al., 2013) and Chia Sabz sequences (Darabi and Glascock, 2013), all dated to the 10th-9th millennia BCE, lack obsidian. The earliest obsidian from the 7

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Fig. 4. Rare earth element and extended trace normalized plots for the artefacts recovered at Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq and geological samples originating from Alatepe, Solhan and Nemrut-Sıcaksu (Geobs ANR research program corpus). Earth crust normalization from Wedepohl (1995).

elucidate further the status of the site in the greater sphere of the Neolithization east of the Zagros. Given the apparent lack of bioarchaeological evidence in the northeast Iran and further north, in the Kopet Dagh, of indigenous domestication of plants and animals, the occurrence of the Anatolian obsidian at the West Mound can be considered as a significant piece of evidence for some degree of cultural contact established between the Neolithic societies of the northeastern plateau and the earlier, more well-established Neolithic settlements of the Zagros Mountain to the west. Since the Neolithic way of life is well attested in the Zagros at several sites dated to the 10th millennium BCE onwards (e.g. Matthews et al., 2013a), it appears likely that this subsistence economy was introduced into the northeast region of Iran

AMS dates suggest that the settlement of the West Mound started around 7100/7000 BCE and ended at 6700/6600 BCE (Nakamura, 2014; Roustaei et al., 2015). Bioarchaeological studies on the West Mound materials (Roustaei et al., 2015) has shown that barley, wheat and goat were already domesticated; the status of sheep and cattle remained undetermined because of lack of enough and appropriate samples. Similar works on the Jeitun sites of southern Turkmenistan have suggested similar conclusions (Harris, 2010). Briefly, there is, so far, no certain evidence of indigenous domestication east of the Zagros Mountain, as the eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent (Roustaei, 2014). However, it should be mentioned that ongoing in-depth studies on the plant and animal remains of the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq may

Fig. 5. Binary diagram of Y/Nb vs. Rb/Cs ratios for the artefacts recovered at Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq and for geological samples originating from Alatepe, Solhan and Nemrut-Sıcaksu (Geobs ANR research program corpus). 8

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during, if not earlier than, the late 8th millennium BCE. This picture accords with the general consensus on the multifocal emergence of domestication in the Fertile Crescent and the subsequent spread of the Neolithic way of life into other regions from there (e.g. Fuller et al., 2012; Zeder, 2011).

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Acknowledgements The sounding at the Sang-e Chakhmaq West Mound was funded by Iranian Centre for Archaeological Research. The first author would like to thank Marjan Mashkour, from CNRS, for covering the costs of 14C dating. In the framework of the Geobs project directed by Damase Mouralis (http://geobs.univ-rouen.fr) a comprehensive study is carried out on obsidian sourcing in Eastern Anatolia. Information and results dealing with locations and compositions of obsidian sources (Alatepe, Solhan and Nemrut-Sıcaksu) presented in this article include a part of the project work. We thank two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their informative and useful comments. The authors would like also to thank Hamed Vahdatinasab and Kyle Olson for their help in editing the English of the article. References Abbasi, G., 2011. The Final Report of Excavations at Narges Tappeh, Gorgan Plain. Ganjineh Naghsh-e Jahan, Tehran. (In Persian). Abdi, K., 2004. Obsidian in Iran from the Epipaleolithic period to the Bronze age. In: Stöllner, T., Slotta, R., Vatandost, A.R. (Eds.), Persiens Antike Pracht. Katalog der Ausstellung des Deutscher Bergbau-Museum Bochum in Verbindung mit der Iranischen Kulturerbe Organisation(ICHO). vom 28.11.2004 bis 28.05.2005. Bochum, pp. 148–153. Alizadeh, A., 2003. Excavations at prehistoric mound of Chogha Bonut, Khuzestan, Iran. Seasons 1976/77, 1977/78, and 1996. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago. Amirloo, E., 1990. Excavation in Damavand. Bastanshenasi va Tarikh (Archaeology and History) 8-9, 10. Bangsgaard, P., Yeomans, L., Darabi, H., Gregersen, K.M., Olsen, J., Richter, T., Mortensen, P., 2019. Feasting on wild boar in the Early Neolithic. Evidence from an 11,400-year-old placed deposit at Tappeh Asiab, Central Zagros. Cambridge Archaeol. J. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431900009X. Barge, O., Azizi Kharanaghi, H., Biglari, F., Moradi, M., Mashkour, M., Tengberg, M., Chataigner, C., 2018. Diffusion of Anatolian and Caucasian obsidian in the Zagros Mountains and the highlands of Iran: Elements of explanation in 'least cost path' models. Quat. Int. 467, 297–322. Bar-Yosef, O., Meadow, R.H., 1995. The origins of agriculture in the Near East. In: Price, T.D., Gebauer, A.B. (Eds.), Last Hunters, First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, pp. 39–94. Biglari, F., 2012. A reconsideration of the purported epipaleolithic assemblage of Qaleh Askar, Alborz Mountains. Iran. Archaeol. 3, 46. Boulanger, M.T., Davis, R.S., Glascock, M.D., 2012. Preliminary characterization and regional comparison of the Dasht-i-Nawur obsidian source near Ghazni, Afghanistan. J. Archaeol. Sci. 39, 2320–2328. Braidwood, R.J., 1961. The Iranian Prehistoric Project, 1959–1960. Iranica Antiqua 1, 3–7. Charles, M., 2010. The Bolshoi Balkhan sites: Analysis of excavated materials. In: Harris, D.R. (Ed.), Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia: An EnvironmentalArchaeological Study. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, pp. 197–198. Chataigner, C., 1998. Sources des artefacts du Proche-Orient d'après leur caractérisation géochimique. In: Cauvin, M.-C., Gourgaud, A., Gratuze, B., Poupeau, G., Poidevin, J.L., Chataigner, C. (Eds.), L'obsidienne au Proche et Moyen-Orient: Du Volcan à l'Outil. BAR International Series, pp. 273-324. Chataigner, C., Gratuze, B., 2014. New data on the exploitation of obsidian in the Southern Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia) and Eastern Turkey, Part 1: source characterization. Archaeometry 56 (1), 25–47. Chataigner, C., Poidevin, J.L., Arnaud, N.O., 1998. Turkish occurrences of obsidian and use by prehistoric peoples in the Near East from 14,000 to 6000 BP. J. Volcanol. Geoth. Res. 85, 517–537. Crawford, V.E., 1963. Beside the Kara-Su. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 22, 263–273. Darabi, H., Glascock, M.D., 2013. The source of obsidian artefacts found at East Chia

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