vahid askarpour

This article describes and analyzes the archaeological findings at the Abpa site, situated in the Farashband plains, approximately 172 kilometers west of Shiraz. Notably, the site yielded 120 fragmented equine figurines. A distinct feature of these artifacts is the breakages and cracks concentrated in the head and external organs, which seem intentional. Upon careful analysis of the gathered evidence, a discernible behavioral pattern emerges. This pattern implies a structured ritual or ceremony characterized by the intentional breaking and subsequent burial of clay figurines. Considering the proximity of the site to the town of Farashband, located on a major transportation route connecting Firuzabad and Bushehr port, and the historical attribution of the town's construction to Bahram V, the Sassanid king, this article delves into the archaeological evidence. The interpretation of this evidence extends to the birth and dissemination of the Sassanid ideology and its pertinent discourse, drawing upon the Avesta to indicate possible theological dimensions of the putative rituals related to Abpa archeological deposit.

This paper explores man-environment relationships during the prehistoric periods. It calculates the main factors affecting the establishment of prehistoric settlements in Sarfiroozabad rural district, south of Kermanshah County, which is south-eastern extension of Mahidasht. The research has been done on the basis of Environmental archaeology according to archaeological surface surveying data. The Principal Component Analysis method has been used to investigate the measure of natural and cultural factors involve in the prehistoric settlement patterns of the region. Applying binary indicator variables, both natural and cultural, the paper has been based on the standardized PCA analysis, with Eigen values > 1 kept, followed by some sort of rotation to better distribute variance, to examine principal factors involved in the distribution of human settlements pattern and it’s reshaping through the time. It found that some parts of the region with present day settlements and population density are those of better populated in prehistoric times. The general patterns of settlement distribution of the studied region are mainly unchanged through the long-term processes of man-environment relationship. The results also show that the impacting factors on settlement distribution patterns were different in every prehistoric period. The results could be used to reconstruction of man-environment interactions of the region to apply it in contemporary environmental management of it. One of the advantages of the project was its purposefulness which led to recognition of more than 300 archaeological sites over that small area. An important achievement of the project was discovering very earlier occupational evidences than what which was revealed from Mahidasht; resulting to a reconsideration of the origins of Neolithic settlements of the region such as Tepe Sarab. A post surveying analytical study planned to gain a deeper insight about the characteristics of prehistoric settlement distribution over Sarfirouzabad. Two methods of GIS-based analyses and PCA statistical evaluations helped us to extract the main factors affecting prehistoric site distribution on the valley. The results show a decisive influential role of environment combined with its different subsistence potentialities played in the prehistoric site distribution patterns. There is also a considerable distinction between isolated and clustered settlements in their distributions over the valley through prehistoric times. Nevertheless, a more comprehensive understanding of prehistoric settlement conditions would be achieved just through archaeological excavating of key sites of the valley. The study aims to investigate and detect distribution patterns of prehistoric sites on the basis of their spatial relations. Applying Principal Component Analysis method, prehistoric sites of the valley evaluated according to three kinds of spatial relations among them including relation between contemporaneous settlements; relation between settlements and their adjacent sites of past period; and relation between prehistoric settlements and modern ones. In such a way, it could be possible to take into account attributes other than natural ones and consider potential cultural factors affecting settlement locating during prehistoric times. It is not to overleap the natural and environmental factors, but to examine site distributions according to their relations as well; as if each of them is a node on the complicated network of occupying the valley through different periods. it should probably be impossible to get a comprehensive understanding of prehistoric settlement conditions of the region unless the excavations carried out to establish secure chronology. The current results are mainly based on relative chronology of surface sherds compared to the same material recovered accurately in temporal order from the stratigraphic deposits of Mahidasht. However there is necessity to have absolute datings of prehistoric evidences of the valley. Careful surveying and identifying ancient settlements of the valley made it possible to take into account analytical studies of locating, distributing, relocating and evolution of prehistoric settlements during various periods, but a need to widespread investigations supported by archaeological excavations still remained to have a comprehensive understanding about mechanisms engaged in the formation and evolution of settlements through the time.

Located 60 kilometers to the south of Qazvin, Teppe Zaghe is a low area of 15-hectre breadth which has been explored during14 archeological seasons. This article is allocated to a significant set of finds on the site: anthropomorphic boot figurines. The reason for conducting this study was to test an atomistic, meticulous and objective study of a type of anthropomorphic figurines in Teppe Zagheh in relation to archeological intra-site contexts, so we can reveal the ontological meaning of the presence of boot figurines from within the contextualist study. This research merely focuses on statuettes known as boot figurines, describing them in a classified manner according to variables of size, exhibition of organs, the context of the find, sex organs, adornments, fractures and special features. The three main contexts on the site in relation to the figurines are: the totality of the location of Teppe Zagheh, the engraved monument, and the archeological guess k. To explore the meaning of the figurines within an archeological framework they were placed in the contexts of “the animist world”, “life cycle”, and “ecological relations”. The result of the research is that the anthropomorphic boot figurines in the context of the location of Teppe Zagheh in the fifth/sixth millennium BCE provided room for thinking the unthinkable.

The study concerned with “the archaeology of dwelling” as a new theoretical approach with its own problematics and thematics. Dwelling perspective in archaeology is the product of some epistemological lack in the discipline; the lack of research in those kinds of phenomena which could be marked truly as cultural/cognitive; Phenomena unexplainable in ecological, environmental, geographical and anthropological terms. This weakness comes from such a consideration in conventional view of archaeology as a discipline unable to investigate past meanings through material remains. The concept of Dwelling used in the study derives from a philosophical conception of the term according to which, being in the world of human beings is profoundly different from other creatures in that, it dwells within its linguistic, imaginary realities through which a world could be produced for settling and livelihood. In other word, the human being is settled in its world primarily by means of cognitive/cultural meanings which are attached cognitive/ culturally to the surrounded environment. The problematics of the study was to recover a kind of credit for archaeology in that, it can approach factors beyond ecological, geographical or anthropological, without losing its archaeological accurateness; factors such as cognitive, metaphysical, semiotic, and conceptual. The study defined dwelling philosophically, anthropologically and archaeologically to build up three levels of archaeological facts, each of them with its own problematics and thematics. A Cognitive Niche Construction approach has been used in the study to justify the results. Niche construction means that every organism has a behavioral/ ecological inheritance which could be considered as an active part of adaptation with a particular environment, supplementary to passive inheritance derived from natural selection. A case of Sarfiroozabad used as an explanation of practical applicability of the new level of archaeological research, which could be called the poetic. The case study showed that, by applying proper means of analysis, the poetic qualities of past peoples are detectable archaeologically, even in archaeological surface surveying projects.

This study is an attempt to investigate the death landscape of the Iron Age in the Central Qaradagh Region of Eastern Azerbaijan. The mountainous zone of the Central Qaradagh has a semi-arid climate. It has been one of the main access passages of Eastern Urmia Lake to the Southern Caucasus in the prehistoric era. According to the evidence obtained from archaeological investigations, during the Iron Age, in this area, we are mostly faced with living systems that are not dependent on stable settlements. There are rarely much evidences left except graves and some evidence of temporary residence. The ecological features and the lack of soils suitable for agriculture have prevented the formation and development of settlements systems in this area. Based on the clay fragments and graves shape, the collection of the archaeological evidence obtained from this area is included under the Iron Age. The death landscape deals with the relation between the funerary evidence and the geographical landscape deals with the social and ideological aspects. What is the most important in the relation between the ancient graves and the environment is the non-arbitrariness of their location. In this regard, through the use of the GIS, the logic of the graves distribution can be clarified and they can be sociologically and ideologically interpreted. In order to do so, the environmental and cultural information of the graves and the areas enclosed in this region must be investigated and analyzed. The most important criterion for graves distribution in the death landscape of this region is the different types of these graves that can be marked in different ethno-sociological groups.

The paper concerns with definition, review of origins and evolution of subject matters as well as theoretical frameworks in cognitive archaeology. Basic literature of cognitive archaeology reviewed within the principal epistemological movements in archaeology dialectically to be classified according to their special mindsets. Theoretical frameworks underlying different subject matters in cognitive archaeology explained within two categories of mentalist and materialist views of culture and main constructive elements of current theory of cognitive archaeology and material engagement theory, were set apart and discussed through a case study of material culture of ancient Neo-Assyrian civilization. An investigation of Assyrian clay cones through material engagement theory showed that a considerable part of status and character of the Assyrian king within the cosmology of that ancient civilization could not be reduced to concepts and pure mental codes, but was formed, strengthened and reproduced actively through, with and on the basis of material conditions; so that clay cones should be called as materiality of Assyrian kingdom mentality. Cognitive archaeology on the basis of its primary and perpetual obsession with materiality could admirably possess a central stand in cognitive sciences, revealing materialized aspects of human cognition and materiality of the mind.

The research is dedicated to recognize most effective attributes and main factors in locating and distribution of Islamic settlements of Bostan Abad plain, East Azerbaijan. The data under study is composed of 226 sites containing archaeological remains of Islamic period, resulted from three seasons of archaeological surveys covering 279km2 of the plain. The Geomatics is a culculatory, analytic approach for making predictive geographical models about the interaction of archaeological sites with their surrounding environment, aimed at explaining characteristic environmental factors and attributes contributing in decision making of settlement location and distribution along a geographical zone. As every geographic region is made of different ecological zones, it has been possible for human beings to make different transactions with each of them and in doing so, constructing a distinct settlemental, subsistence system, culturally adapted to affectively cope with the limitations and potentialities of every different ecological zone. A geographic information investigation of archaeological sites distributions in a given region by means of some analytic tools such as site buffering with different environmental attributes, site catchment analysis and so on could help in building some precise practical models by using of which it would be possible to to decide more accurately the kind of every archaeological settlement remains in terms of its potentiality of supporting which kind of subsistence system. The analysis of settlement correlations with the surrounding environment has done on the basis of attributes including permanent streams, height above the sea, precipitation, climate, vegetation, slope, the area of sites, and their buffering related to today settlements, using GIS and SPSS-related methods of analysis. The results show existence of a kind of settlement patterning of distribution, according to which it is possible to categorize settlements in three separate clusters. On the one cluster, settlements located in plains as well as lowlands in vicinity of permanent streams had heighest area among the whole settlements, suitable for village living and agriculture; on another cluster, settlements located in the marginal zones of the plain with much lesser in area and vicinity to pasturelands might be evidence of a kind of village-based pastoralism. Yet, the third kind of cluster is containing settlements located in higher latitude with much more in area in comparison with the second cluste, suitable for fully nomadic pasturalist’s settling during summers. The study showed that the investigated region can offer different subsistence possibility to build up along with the effort dedicated by communities settled it during different times of Islamic period. It is interesting while somehow predictable that there is and according to GIS-based models resulted from the study that the region has been very poor in providing an appropriate ground necessary for human cummunities to develop higher forms of settlemental, organizational and cultural developments, even during later parts of Islamic period. Accordingly the results also indicated that at least this part of northwestern Iran has not had any internal capacity necessary for higher levels of social as well as settlemental hierarchies to be formed organically, making every kind of higher than village life styles of the region a product of external, governmental developmental effords of recent years.

The paper concerns with an investigation of beginnings and evolution of female figures on the cylinder seals of ancient Susiana plain during the middle of 4th millennium up to the end of 2nd millennium B.C. The female figures on the cylinder seals considered according to archaeological contexts and situations as independent variable according to which the visual qualities of them has been tested. Assuming an existential co-relation between archaeological situations and the modes of female figures, it is suggested that by transforming the first, the latter would be transformed actively as well. For discovering the meanings entangled with female figures on ancient Susiana cylinder seals, the enactive semiotics is applied. Accordingly, female figures on the cylinder seals and sealings are classified and described in terms of their spatiotemporal contexts. The major groups are female-related a, female-related b, crafting scenes, collective scenes and ritual scenes. The paper based on descriptive-analytical classification of data according to iconographic attributes, based on a theoretic examination of related archaeological evidence. The results show that womanity on-the cylinder seals have always been a dynamic phenomenon, depending on its historical and archaeological status.

The paper concerns with an assessment and review of a book by Hessari titled "The formation and development of proto-writing in Iran (from pre-writing to Proto-Elamite)". The book is dedicated to an interesting and one of the fundamental breakthroughs of human cultures and humanity at all, namely how of wrting systems formation, as well as its archaeological origins. More importantly, the main concern of the book is to examine and taking a deep look at that periods of very beginings of early writing systems through an attempt to discuss pre-writing stages which have had an immediate effect on earliest forms of ancient writing. The paper regards to highlight weaknesses as well as strengths of the book by emphasizing the significance of a deeper penetrating on the issues related to why and how of the rise of early writing. It will be suggested that the author, despite of his relative surveillance on the main sources of information, both archaeological and theoretical, about the begining and evolution of early writing, has failed in treating and explaining archaeological, epistemological and ontological foundations of the topic comprehensively, from the pre-writing levels up to earliest forms of writing in proto-historic Iran, reducing such a substantial subject which could create a basis for bringing up some of the most significant archaeological and epistemological problematics on the consequences of writing genesis and evolution just to three relatively non-uniform chapters. The paper shows conclusively the fundamental importance of the evolution of earliest writing systems in Iran, not only on the basis of its economic, social consequences, but also according to its overall influences on transforming the concept of being-human and its relation to the world.

Jami’ mosque of Kashan is one of the oldest recorded sites of Islamic era. This mosque has three stucco Mihrabs; one in the dome and two in the north Shabistan of the mosque. In order to determine the date of the main Mihrab, samples of the bricks were taken for Thermoluminescence (TL) dating. In addition, sampling was accomplished for identification of the pigment and stucco used in the Mihrab. Polarized light microscope (PLM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used for identification of pigments and the mortar and plaster components, and a scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX) for elemental analysis of the samples. The result of Thermoluminescence (TL) dating of brick sample of the upper Mihrab addressed 550±20 years ago as construction date of the Mihrab. Results also revealed that in the decorations, lapis lazuli and red lead had been used for creating blue and red colors.

Institutionalized or social reality is one of the concepts in contemporary philosophy which discusses the different ways of the formation of realities that only exist when a group of people believe in them and pay attention to them. However, such realities are rooted in non-institutionalized realities which are still real in the absenceof any human representation; nevertheless, they are different in that the former is only meaningful within human representational systems. One of the features of institutionalized realities is that they are based on a conceptual triangle the three sides of which are comprised of human, act/event, and the created or matter. Therefore, artifacts play a natural and constructive role in the realization of an institutionalized reality. Such realities are always created in contexts which are not representational themselves. In this paper, the writers demonstrate that cylinder seals, as one of the most important commercial tools of the Bronze Age in West Asia and ancient Iran, were one of the most significant products of institutionalized realities which depended on commerce and could not be realized without the establishment of commercial-economic structures of early urbanism. Rather, after becoming actualized, they turned into a material device used for expanding the regional and trans-regional economic system.
The images on cylinder seals, on the other hand, hold a noteworthy place in creating and delivering certain types of institutionalized or representational realities. They can create, transfer, and reproduce some beliefs among the members of their society which are deemed necessary in the formation of its structure. This paper discusses the images and representations of women’s bodies on cylinder seals and their rolein the creation of the institutionalized realities which pertain to women and womenhood. The main elements in relation to womenhood which have been identified in this study include women’s A forms, crafted forms, collective and dramatic-ritualized forms, and women’s B forms with an emphasis on gendered body. The findings also demonstrate that such images were presented and transformed in conformity with various social contexts and backgroundsin three cultural-social periods or trends in ancient Susiana (3500-1000 BC) in the southwest of Iran.

The paper is concerning preliminary survey of Qaradaq region of Eastern Azerbaijan in view of ecological, archaeological and ethnographic perspectives. The region under study is poor in fertile soil, underpopulated settlements and nomadic Ubas being its dominant landscape. Indeed, archaeological investigations show the lack of considerable archaeological records up to the Iron age. The main subject matter of the paper is to investigate primary reasons behind permanence of nomadic subsistence in the region up to now as well as its historical and ecological continuation. It has been shown that there is a permanence of cultural traditions for more than three thousand years on the basis of environmental and ecological factors along with the dominance of vertical pastoralism. The main hypothesis was that the endurance in ecological and environmental conditions as well as its particular limitations is the reason behind the permanence of long-term cultural traditions. Ethno-archaeology has been chosen to undertake such a research. archaeological and ethnographical investigations of Qaradaq has been shown once more the principal role of ecosystem in permanence or impermanence of different modes of human life and subsistence. It is clear that ecosystems such as Central Qaradaq in no way allow the formation of settlement systems and moving toward social and cultural complications to occur.

The aim of current study is to investigate customs, traditions and beliefs related to evil eye according to anthropology of religion and beliefs. Some differences have been always distinguished between religious rites and magical rites in anthropology of religion. In this study, we first present determined definitions of religion and witchery from anthropological perspective and then based on presented definitions, a set of beliefs, traditions and customs of evil eye are studied in Pirbala village located at East Azerbaijan. It also tries to analyze integration of magical and religious elements in such rites and beliefs. Pirbala village has been located in 18 kilometers of Southwest of Marand town (East Azerbaijan). The research data collected by field observations and interviewing the village residents and analyzed in above mentioned research framework. According to findings of current study, distinctions between religious and magical elements were not much identified and highlighted in practice and daily life and results of present study indicated considerable integration among them. The origin of believing in evil eye is now a religious nature for Pirbala villagers, originating exactly from religious discourse governing Shiite culture. That is, while ethnographic evidences reveal that behind such religious belief and at a lower level, some behaviors, rites and instruments appear to repel evil eye which oversteps religious rites, requiring humanistic and experimental confrontation with evil forces.

This paper aims to consider an artifact known as the “Ring of Power” found of a late Elamite tomb of Arjān, Behbāhān, to follow the evolutionary process of its motif of “Winged Lion” on the contexts of pre-Islamic sought western Iran to the end of Achaemenid Empire. The motif is viewed as an index of ancestral political authority of Drius the Great in the region. The theoretical framework of the paper is based on the Piercean philosophical semiotics as a proper foundation for the study of indexical dimensions of materials relating to the creating as well as transferring human social identities. It is a contextual study of the semiotic fields of the motif under consideration. As the results show, there would be some straightforward relations between the Daris the Great’s political claims and appearing of the motif into the power-related contexts of Achaemenid Empire.