Contribution to the Understanding of the Iron Age III of Fars based on theAbsolute Datings from Tappeh Qasrdasht

Research on the chronology of Fars began with Louis Vanden Berghe’s work in the early 1950s. As archaeological work progressed, several gaps appeared in the cultural development of this region. One of the gaps in the chronology is the transition between the Taimurān A phase and the Achaemenid period, spanning approximately 300 years from 900 to 600 BCE. Any effort to document this chronological gap is important because it coincides with the arrival of early Persian communities in Fars. It has been hypothesised that these early Persian communities were nomads and thus finding their settlements is not an easy task. However, recent excavations at the archaeological site of Qasrdasht, near Pasargadae in Kamin Plain, recovered six meters of archaeological deposits in two excavated areas, including a large corpus of pottery and well-defined architecture. This is a clear evidence for a settled community predating the emergence of the Achaemenid dynasty in Fars. In this paper, we present twenty-three absolute dates, including five radiocarbon dates obtained from animal bone and charcoal samples and sixteen thermoluminescence dates obtained from diagnostic pottery sherds. The results are then critically discussed. The radiocarbon dates from bone and charcoal show discrepancies with the expected cultural period as a result of contamination of the earliest material in the excavated area. On the other hand, absolute dates obtained through thermoluminescence from some of the pottery sherds, with diagnostic typological criteria, contribute to filling the archaeological gap between the Taimurān A phase and the Achaemenid period.