Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• HASAN Fazeli Nashli ¹
• mojtaba safari ²
• hamed tahmasebi far ³
• judith Thomalsky ⁴

¹ Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar

³ PhD student in Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran

⁴ PhD in Archaeology, Director of the German Archaeological Center in Iran, Berlin

Abstract

The Shahneh Poshte Cemetery in Babol district with an area of 11 hectares is one of the richest Iron Age sites in Mazandaran and Iran that is located in foothills of the central Alborz Mountains and was excavated during two seasons in 2018 and 2019. The results of field activities are the identification of 39 studyable burials in addition to various burial objects including pottery, ornaments, decorative objects and weapons. The attempt has been made to explain the relative and absolute chronology by comparative studies of some objects as well as the absolute chronology obtained from human burials and charcoal samples and to answer questions about cultural interactions with intra-regional sites in Mazandaran and extra-regional sites in the Iranian Plateau. The burial objects of this site show that most of its burials and cultural materials are primarily comparable to the local styles of Mazandaran, and some are similar to the trans-regional formal styles common in areas like Gilan, Gorgan, central plateau, and northwestern Iran in late second and first millennia BC. Also, absolute carbon-14 dating of 5 human skeletons with dates from the late 2nd millennium to the second half of the 1st millennium BC confirms the relative chronology of the graves in this site. Accordingly, based on absolute and relative chronology studies on 39 burials, 29 burials can be placed in the Iron Age I to III and 10 other burials can be placed in the late Achaemenid-early Parthian (Iron IV). Like other significant Iron Age sites, in Shahneh Poshte cemetery we are also faced with a set of data and different types of pottery vessels which are the most important variable in determining the relative chronology and indicate strong stylistic and cultural connections with sites of the same horizon and time within the region in Mazandaran and Iran.

Keywords

• Shahneh Poshte Cemetery
• relative and absolute chronology
• Iron Age
• human burials
• funerary objects

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