Cultural and economic transformations of the first half of the fifth millennium BC in the Qazvin Plain, based on the results of salvage excavations at Kholah Kouh of Takestan

The archaeological site of Kholah Kouh, due to its special location in urban districts of Takestan town, has been threatened by construction and developing activities. Some parts of the site completely destroyed by construction of mall, residential houses and mosque. Just 3.5 ha of site remained from 7 ha core zone. Takestan Municipality, in the framework of construction programs of 2010 decade, decided to transform this mound to a park and a car parking area. In this regard, Kholah Kouh Salvage Archaeological Project started subsequently in 2014 by various research and administrative goals. Main objectives of excavations were identifying cultural characteristics of occupational periods, protection of site destroying by continuity of archaeological activities, and investigating site’s feasibility to establish an archaeological site museum and tourism cultural landscape in the site. Evidence of a Transitional Chalcolithic / Early Plateau B village from the first half of the fifth millennium BC had been discovered during excavations in the lower accumulations of site. This step of village settlements had significance due to substantial transformations in culture and economy of habitants of Central Plateau of Iran. Hence, the new evidence from Kholah Kouh were evaluated for better understanding of how and scale of these transformations. This paper, at the first, has a glance to the results of excavations. Then, by using the cultural ecology approach, attempts to interpret the finds, emphasising relative and absolute chronology, cultural interactions, herding and agriculture. The results indicate that, Kholah Kouh has local and neighborhood regions traits. The pottery traditions show the cultural homogeneity in Central Plateau during Transitional Chalcolithic. Considerable developments are observable in agricultural activities based on irrigation and expand of exploitation of various products of sheep, goat and cattle during the period under discussion. The archaeobotanicl and paleontological researches indicate the domination of the dry climate in the mid fifth millennium BC which affected human habitats.