Journal of Archaeological Studies

Abstract Botkhaneh Cave located at 21 km southwest of Kuhdasht, is one of the archaeological sites which has probably been occupied by mobile pastoralists which through the time the cave was deeply looted. During a rescue archaeological operation the material culture was collected by the last author and his team. The results of the pottery analysis and the occupation pattern in the adjacent sites represent the continuity of a temporary occupation in the cave. In this paper, we assess the characteristics of this site through an archaeozoological study of the animal remains. The faunal assemblage of this site is composed of domestic and wild. Caprines (sheep and goat) followed by bovines and equids are the most represented taxa while a considerable amount of donkey remains could be identified. We also developed analysis for the kill-off patterns for Caprines and some other taphonomic variations. These observations help to better understand the faunal accumulation in the Botkhaneh Cave in relation to the other archaeological materials.

Abstract Chipped stones, like many other archaeological artifacts, change in their original context. One of the most important changes is breakage. Although it is clear that chipped stones which are gathered by archaeologists might have been broken, there have been few discussions made on the estimating the original number of chipped stones before breaking. In this article we have introduced different methods of counting broken fragments of chipped stones when refitting is impossible. Seven different assemblages of chipped stones have been experimentally broken and their fragments have been counted by using different methods in order to find the competible methods to count fragments of chipped stones in an archaeological assemblages.