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

1978年的革命和随后的八年伊拉克战争导致外国考古学家停止了在伊朗的系统田野工作。在伊朗文化遗产组织的支持下，一个由阿巴斯·阿里扎德和尼古拉斯·库库科斯共同领导的国际团队将在该国干旱的西南地区开始一项新的田野研究计划。在这里，考古学家在20世纪60年代和70年代初创造了丰富的材料记录，记录了人类社会经济和政治组织的根本性变化，包括定居农业、游牧民族、城市、国家和帝国的出现。为了实现这一点，他们开发了考古学方法和人类学理论的强大综合体，使近东史前从东方主义古物主义到有影响力的新考古学的前沿。因此，在伊朗西南部恢复工作，在近25年后，将再次开始一系列持久的研究问题，以及考古学和社会理论之间的一次失败的对话。考虑到这些目标，Abbas Alizadeh博士、Nicholas Kouchoukos博士和他们的同事将于2001年秋季对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)在该地区社会和政治复杂性的出现和发展中，游牧民族和定居农民之间的相互作用；3)伊朗西南部新兴政治与美索不达米亚南部邻近的、更早熟的城邦之间的关系。梅赫兰平原位于家养谷物和山羊野生祖先的自然栖息地附近，在流动牧民的传统冬季牧场内，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。实地研究将集中在两个已知遗址的挖掘上，这两个遗址共同提供了跨越公元前9千年到4000年的连续的、分层的人工制品、花卉和动物群组合序列。实地考察和随后的分析将特别侧重于改变动植物开发的做法以及农牧业生产被估价、强化和整合的社会逻辑和相互交错的体制形式。最终，该项目将试图了解这些做法和结构在当地、区域和全球范围内的发展情况。

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.