ANALYSIS OF THE CONDITION OF THE SHAHR-DRAZ SITE IN THE DAMAN RIVER BASIN BASED ON POTTERY FINDINGS FROM SURFACE SURVEY AND SOUNDING TO DETERMINE THE CORE ZONE

The Shahr-Draz site is located in Southeast Iran in the Daman River basin in the center of the Shahr-Draz village of Iranshahr County in the center of Sistan and Baluchistan Province. The Bampur River basin is one of the important ancient areas in the Baluchistan region. Bampur River is formed by the joining of small rivers such as Karvandar and Daman and many other small branches and flows in the east-west direction. Daman and Bampur Rivers were the center of the formation of significant sites in the Bronze Age, which played an essential role in the formation of human communities. The Daman River basin has been a communication corridor between the north, center, and south of Baluchistan. To protect the Shahr-Draz site, the first author was commissioned by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of Sistan and Baluchistan Province to conduct a field survey and sounding to determine the core zone and propose the buffer zone for this site in the summer and fall of 2020, which lasted 45 days. During this period, the site was carefully surveyed step-by-step, and 14 trenches with 1 × 1 m dimensions were dug in different directions. During the project, 112 potsherds were identified, registered, and studied. The present research aims to study the found pottery from this site and compare it with other simultaneous sites in neighboring areas. This work has been done with the purpose of a comprehensive understanding of the condition of this site and the extent of its cultural interactions to realize the cultural dynamics of the region. In this research, two methods of documentary and field research have been used. The results show that the Shahr-Draz site with an area of about 35 hectares in the Daman River basin had cultural continuity during the Bronze Age and the pottery of this site has the most similarities with the pottery of the ancient sites of Bampur and the Pakistan region. In addition, based on the typology of pottery, it seems that in the Bronze Age, the Daman River basin had not only extensive regional and extra-regional relations, but was also one of the important communication routes and the connecting point between the sites of Central Baluchistan and the sites of Soghan Valley, Makran, Sistan, and Baluchistan of Pakistan.