Reconstructing paleoenvironments of highland societies in Iran from sedimentary records of Holocene climate change and landscape evolution

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Climate change is a major factor of Holocene landscape evolution affecting the living conditions and land use of premodern societies in the drylands of Iran. The transition zone between the Central Zagros Mountains and the Interior Plateau is characterized by a pronounced climate gradient with mean annual precipitation ranging from c. 500 mm in the mountains to less than 100 mm in terminal depressions. Such semi-arid to arid transition zones may sensitively react on climate change and thus provide promising areas to detect past climate and environmental changes. Our previous investigations in the lower Zayandeh-Rud basin show that pronounced paleoenvironmental changes occurred during the Holocene. In addition, new evidence for human occupation in this desert fringe area is now available. From this, questions emerge on why people settled there and on how they had access to water and other resources. Our Iranian/German project and the SPP 2176 provide an excellent interdisciplinary framework for conducting collaborative research on such topics. We thus see a strong potential to continue and extent our work started during the first phase and elaborate regional analyses of men-environment interactions in the Iranian Highlands. In continuation of the first phase we will collect sediment cores of additional sediment traps (Damaneh Plain and Golpayegan Playa) and analyse these cores using a multi-proxy (granulometry, geochemistry, pollen) and geochronometric (radiocarbon, luminescence) approach. This will allow to detect indicators and deduce phases of climate and environmental change. Comparative investigations will be conducted in the study areas of two collaborating projects of the SPP2176. The magnitudes and timing of climate change deduced from the new and previous results can thus be discussed in different archaeological contexts. A new objective is to analyse environmental change in the Lower Zayandeh-Rud basin. For this purpose, we will investigate the formation and drying of former wetlands, possible shifts of Zayandeh-Rud course, the past activity of the dune field and possible water level changes of Gavkhuni lake. The data obtained will provide information about diachronic changes in the availability of resources (mainly water and vegetation) and about the formation processes of archaeological sites. Overall, the project will improve our understanding of Holocene climate and environmental change in the Iranian Highlands. The close collaboration with archaeologists will allow to draw a clear picture of man-environment interactions in Iranian drylands.