Absolute (14C AMS) and Relative Chronologies of Barveh Tepe in the Upper Lesser Zab Basin and a Study of Painted Bronze Age Ceramics(Based on the Second Season Excavation)Season Excavation)

Excavations in Tepe Barveh were conducted with the aim to shed further light on the period of painted Bronze Age wares and to refine the existing chronology for the Lesser Zab Basin in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Thanks to its location in the upper valley of the Lesser Zab, the Barveh region served as a natural pathway for interaction between the Zagros foothills zones with the Rania and Peshdar Plain in Sulaimaniyah province in Iraqi Kurdistan, and the southern basin of Lake Urmia. By its overlapping Bronze Age sequence, the site offers a strong potential to fill the existing gap of information for the Early Bronze Age occupation in northwestern Iran. A foremost purpose of this paper is to situate Barveh within northwestern Iran, and to explore intra- and inter-regional interactions. The stratified occurrence of Painted Orange Ware (POW) is helpful to establish a sequence for the region and to fill the existing lacuna. EBA sites in northwestern Iran beyond the Kura Araxes zone remain understudied, and few sites offer deposits of considerable depth. The Early Bronze Age is generally associated with the burnished black pottery, while the orange pottery, a coeval and equally important cultural hallmark, has attracted less attention and remains a little known tradition. Hence, in light of the material culture excavated at Barveh, this paper seeks to gain an insight into the ways in which Tepe Barveh interacted with other regions dominated by the orange pottery culture. The ca. 8-meter deep EBA deposit at Barveh built up over c. 300 years and represents this period of POW in an uninterrupted sequence, attesting to cultural continuity over an extended period of time. The culture shows parallels with EBA sites in the southern Urmia Lake Basin and in the Rania and Peshdar plains in Iraqi Kurdistan