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在伊朗进行系统的实地考察。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·库舒科斯共同领导的国际小组将开始在该国干旱的西南地区进行实地研究的新计划。在这里，考古学家在20世纪60年代和70年代初对人类社会的经济和政治组织的根本性变革进行了丰富的材料记录，包括定居农业，游牧畜牧业，城市，国家和帝国的出现。为了实现这一目标，他们发展了一种强有力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主义推向了有影响力的新考古学的前沿。因此，在将近25年之后重新开始在伊朗西南部的工作，就是重新开始一系列持久的研究问题，以及考古学和社会理论之间已经过去的对话。考虑到这些目标，Abbas Alizadeh博士、Nicholas Kouchoukos博士及其同事将于2001年秋季在Mehanhua平原进行为期六周的探索性调查和挖掘。他们的研究将解决相互关联的问题：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;伊朗西南部新兴政治与邻近的、更早熟的美索不达米亚南部城邦之间的关系。位于驯化谷物和山羊的野生祖先的自然栖息地附近，在移动的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，Mekiran平原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一个连续的、分层的人工制品、植物和动物群的序列，时间跨度从公元前9世纪到公元前4世纪。实地工作和随后的分析将特别侧重于不断变化的动植物开发做法，以及农业和畜牧业生产得以稳定、强化和整合的社会逻辑和交叉机构形式。最后，该项目将试图了解这些做法和结构在地方、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.