High Risk Exploratory Research: Archaeological investigations on the Mehran plain, southwest Iran

1978年的革命和随后的伊拉克八年战争导致外国考古学家停止了在伊朗的系统田野调查。在伊朗文化遗产组织的支持下，Abbas Alizadeh和Nicholas Kouchoukos共同领导的一个国际小组将在该国干旱的西南地区开始一项新的实地研究计划。在这里，考古学家在20世纪60年代和70年代初制作了丰富的物质记录，记录了人类社会经济和政治组织的根本变革，包括定居农业、游牧牧业、城市、国家和帝国的出现。为了实现这一目标，他们开发了一种强大的考古学方法和人类学理论的综合，将近东史前史从东方古物学转移到有影响力的新考古学的前沿。因此，在近25年之后，重新开始在伊朗西南部的工作，意味着重新开始一系列长期存在的研究问题，以及考古学与社会理论之间的对话。有了这些目标，dr。Abbas Alizadeh， Nicholas Kouchoukos和他们的同事将于2001年秋季在Mehran平原进行为期六周的探索性调查和挖掘。他们的研究将涉及一系列相互关联的问题：1)人类与环境相互作用的历史，特别是绵羊和山羊的驯化、农业的采用和运河灌溉的发展；2)游牧民族与定居农民在该地区社会政治复杂性产生与发展中的互动关系；3)伊朗西南部新兴政体与邻近的美索不达米亚南部更早熟的城邦之间的关系。马赫兰平原靠近驯化谷物和骆驼的野生祖先的自然栖息地，在流动牧民的传统冬季放牧地内，沿着美索不达米亚和伊朗之间最重要的历史路线，是进行此类调查的理想地点。实地研究将集中于挖掘两个已知的遗址，这两个遗址共同提供了一个连续的、分层的人工制品、植物和动物组合序列，时间跨度为公元前9至4千年。实地调查和随后的分析将特别侧重于不断变化的植物和动物开发做法以及社会逻辑和相互交叉的机构形式，通过这些机构形式，农业和畜牧业生产得以稳定、加强和整合。最终，该项目将试图了解这些实践和结构在当地、区域和全球背景下的发展。

The Revolution of 1978 and the subsequent Eight Year War with Iraq resulted in the cessation of systematic fieldwork in Iran by foreign archaeologists. With the support of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, an international team co-directed by Abbas Alizadeh and Nicholas Kouchoukos will begin a new program of field research in the arid southwest region of the country. Here, archaeologists in the 1960s and early 1970s produced a rich material record of fundamental transformations in the economic and political organization of human societies, including the emergence of sedentary agriculture, nomadic pastoralism, cities, states and empires. To accomplish this, they developed a powerful synthesis of archaeological method and anthropological theory that moved Near Eastern prehistory from an orientalist antiquarianism to the forefront of the influential New Archaeology. To resume work in southwest Iran after nearly 25 years is therefore to take up again an enduring set of research problems and a lapsed conversation between archaeology and social theory. With these goals in mind, Drs. Abbas Alizadeh, Nicholas Kouchoukos and their colleagues will conduct six weeks of exploratory survey and excavation on the Mehran Plain in autumn 2001. Their research will address interrelated sets of questions concerning: 1) the history of human-environment interactions, specifically the domestication of sheep and goat, the adoption of agriculture, and the development of canal irrigation; 2) the interaction between pastoral nomads and settled farmers in the emergence and development of social and political complexity in the region; and 3) the relationship between emerging polities of southwest Iran and the neighboring, more precocious city-states of southern Mesopotamia. Located near the natural habitat of the wild ancestors of domesticated cereals and caprines, within the traditional winter grazing lands of mobile pastoralists, and along the most important historic route between Mesopotamia and Iran, the Mehran Plain is ideally located for such investigations. Field research will focus on the excavation of two known sites which together provide a continuous, stratified sequence of artifact, floral, and faunal assemblages spanning the 9th through 4th millennia BC. Fieldwork and subsequent analysis will focus in particular on changing practices of plant and animal exploitation and the social logics and intersecting institutional forms through which agricultural and pastoral production were valorized, intensified and integrated. Ultimately, the project will attempt to understand the development of these practices and structures in their local, regional and global context.