نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسنده
استاد گروه باستان شناسی، دانشگاه تهران
چکیده
The Mesolithic period and its transition to the Neolithic period in Western Asia is one of the most important stages of human cultural evolution during which. humans gradually changed their way of life and cultural behavior. After millennia of living as mobile hunter-gatherers, these changes in human lifestyle were so significant that some scientists consider them to have triggered the Anthropocene (Smith and Zeder, 2013). Therefore, the study of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer way of life and its transformation into a Neolithic society is crucial for investigating the first steps and possible triggers of this fundamental change. A proper handful but important archaeological sites in the southeastern edge of the Caspian Sea coast provided rich sequences of hunter-gatherers dating from about 15,000 to 10,000 years ago with abundant cultural materials. One of those, Hotu Cave located nearby the modern Iranian city Behshahr, was firstly described by the American geologist Carlton Coon in 1949 and then excavated by him in 1951. Due to various reasons, a proper report on this cave was never presented. Our new activities at the site after 70 years aim to establish a secure chronology from the Mesolithic to the Parthian period and to link obvious gaps in the cave sequence to climatic and environmental changes during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The new excavation at Hotu Cave is not only useful to contextualise the data from the Coon excavations, but has also helped us to generate additional data to propose a regional chronology from the Mesolithic onwards.
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله [English]
-Revisiting the Archaeological Stratigraphy of Hotu Cave, Iran: Preliminary Report of the 2021 Excavation-
نویسنده [English]
- Hassan Fazeli nashli
Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Tehran
چکیده [English]
The Mesolithic period and its transition to the Neolithic period in Western Asia is one of the most important stages of human cultural evolution during which. humans gradually changed their way of life and cultural behavior. After millennia of living as mobile hunter-gatherers, these changes in human lifestyle were so significant that some scientists consider them to have triggered the Anthropocene (Smith and Zeder, 2013). Therefore, the study of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer way of life and its transformation into a Neolithic society is crucial for investigating the first steps and possible triggers of this fundamental change. A proper handful but important archaeological sites in the southeastern edge of the Caspian Sea coast provided rich sequences of hunter-gatherers dating from about 15,000 to 10,000 years ago with abundant cultural materials. One of those, Hotu Cave located nearby the modern Iranian city Behshahr, was firstly described by the American geologist Carlton Coon in 1949 and then excavated by him in 1951. Due to various reasons, a proper report on this cave was never presented. Our new activities at the site after 70 years aim to establish a secure chronology from the Mesolithic to the Parthian period and to link obvious gaps in the cave sequence to climatic and environmental changes during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The new excavation at Hotu Cave is not only useful to contextualise the data from the Coon excavations, but has also helped us to generate additional data to propose a regional chronology from the Mesolithic onwards.
کلیدواژهها [English]
- Southeast Caspian Sea
- Hotu Cave
- Mesolithic
- Neolithic
- Caspian Sea Mesolithic
- Caspian Sea Neolithic
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