Reassessing Initial Village Period Settlements in the Upper Khuzestan Plain

Archaeological surveys have a long history, nearly seventy years, in the Upper Khuzestan plain. Despite the abundance of prehistoric sites, the number of identified Initial Village period settlements is very limited yet. Looking at the encountering history of Initial Village period settlements shows almost all of them were discovered accidentally. Besides the problem of alluvial accumulation, which is a considerable factor, there are several other reasons that affect the visibility of low and early settlements. First of all, villages in this period were obviously small and structures were built mainly using pisé and mud bricks; so buildings were less durable compared to later periods (Early, Middle, and Late Susiana). Secondly, later occupations almost covered up the whole area of early settlements. Hundreds of later sites established in the places that was favorable for earlier settlements. Consequently, at least two main reasons we infer affecting early sites in the Upper Khuzestan Plain not to be found easily are: little attention to the dynamic character of natural alluviation and deposition in the landscape of the region and incompetent field methods. These factors have prevented us to gain a full understanding of the quantity and quality of early settlements in this region. Here, by considering two factors of topography and older flood plains, an early assessment of the concentration of such early settlements in the area between the Shur and Ojirub Rivers is achieved. Boneh Rahimeh is a site that was previously merely recognized as a prehistoric site but not an Initial Village period settlement. In the present study the site is introduced as a potential pair for the Formative and Archaic Susiana site of Chogha Bonut. Keywords: Initial Village Period, Upper Khuzestan Plain, Dynamic natural landscape, Boneh Rahimeh.