Archaeological Investigations in Southwestern Iran

Professor Dan Potts is co-directing this project along with members of the Iranian Center of Archaeological Research, a unit within the Iranian Cultural Heritage & Tourism Organization in Tehran, Iran. He is a specialist in the archaeology of Iran with over 30 years of experience researching the Bronze Age and later periods on the Iranian Plateau. He is the author of The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and transformation of an ancient Iranian state (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999); Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975: The third millennium (Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, 2001), and numerous articles on Iranian archaeology and history, many of which have been written for the authoritative Encyclopaedia Iranica.

Bernadette McCall, is a PhD student, who is analysing data from the settlement pattern survey in two adjacent valleys north of Nurabad-e Mamasani, where the expedition is based, in western Fars.

Dr Lloyd Weeks is lecturer in the Deptartment of Archaeology, University of Nottingham

Dr Cameron Petrie is a junior research fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, are also involved in the project, undertaking excavations at Tol-e Nurabad and Tol-e Spid in collaboration with Iranian colleagues.

This is an ARC-funded research project (2002-2006), currently in its fourth year, which focuses on the rise of civilisation in Fars province, southwestern Iran. Long known as a major area of Elamite occupation during the 3rd-1st millennia B.C., Fars was also home to the later empires of the Achaemenids and Sasanians.

The area west of Shiraz, in the fertile inter-montane valleys around Nurabad-e Mamasani, has been the subject of little research since it was first recognised in the 1920’s as an area of inherent potential by the great Iranologist Ernst Herzfeld. New excavations by the joint University of Sydney - Iranian Cultural Heritage & Tourism Organization team at Tol-e Nurabad and Tol-e Spid have established a sequence of cultural development beginning around 6000 BC and extending into the first centuries AD.

For the first time, a comprehensive chronology with numerous radiocarbon dates, coupled with an excellent ceramic, stratigraphic and architectural sequence allow us to chart the development of civilisation in this fertile and well-watered corner of Iran.

Following an initial survey of the area between Tal-e Malyan and Susa in 2002, excavations were begun in 2003 at the sites of Tol-e Nurabad and Tol-e Spid, two multi-period sites located approximately 12 kms. apart in western Fars province.

The sites were chosen because of their location in a fertile, inter-montane valley with major monuments (Kurangun, Elamite rock relief; Sarab-e Bahram, Sasanian rock relief; Dum-e Mil, Sasanian stone tower) which was on the direct route between the major highland capitals of Anshan (Tal-e Malyan) and Persepolis, in the east, and Susa and the principal cites of Elam in the western part of Khuzestan.

Joint teams from the Iranian Cultural Heritage & Tourism Organization and the University of Sydney lived together in a rented house in Nurabad-e Mamasani, a town of about 40,000 inhabitants c. 3 hours drive west of Shiraz, for two six week seasons.

In that time, stratigraphic excavations revealed sequences at both sites extending from c. 6000 BC to the early Sasanian period (c. 3rd/4th cent. AD). This is the first intensive fieldwork conducted in Fars province on the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age of the region since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and it has already provided a wealth of new insights into the archaeology of the region.

Iranian Cultural Heritage & Tourism Organization

• ‘Neo-Elamite problems’, Iranica Antiqua 40: 165-177. Potts, D.T. 2005.
• The Mamasani Project Vol. 1 2004: A report on two seasons of excavation by the ICAR – University of Sydney Joint Archaeological Expedition at Tol-e Nurabad and on two seasons of survey in the Rustam 1 and 2 plains (Fars) in 2003. Tehran: Iranian Center of Archaeological Research.
• The Mamasani Project Vol. 2 2004: A report on two seasons of excavation by the ICAR – University of Sydney Joint Archaeological Expedition at Tol-e Spid in 2003. Tehran: Iranian Center of Archaeological Research.
• The numinous and the immanent: Some thoughts on Kurangun and the Rudkhaneh-e Fahliyan, in K. von Folsach, H. Thrane and I. Thuesen, eds.
• From handaxe to Khanessays presented to Peder Mortensen on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 143-156.
• Cyrus the Great and the Kingdom of Anshan,’ in Curtis, V., ed. The idea of Iran: From Eurasian steppe to Persian Empire, London: I.B. Tauris.
• The Elamites,’ in T. Daryaee and A. Marashi, eds. From Antiquity to the Present: A history of Iranian Civilization. London: I.B. Tauris.

• Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney