What felled the great Assyrian Empire?

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 14, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Climate Change, Earth Science, Iran, Iraq, Middle East

The Neo-Assyrian Empire, centered in northern Iraq and extending from Iran to Egypt -- the largest empire of its time -- collapsed after more than two centuries of dominance at the fall of its capital, Nineveh, in 612 B.C.E.

Deportees after the Assyrian siege of Lachish, Judea (701 B.C.E.). Detail from bas-relief removed from Sennacherib's 'Palace Without Rival,' Nineveh, Iraq, and now in The British Museum [Credit: The British Museum]

Despite a plethora of cuneiform textual documentation and archaeological excavations and field surveys, archaeologists and historians have been unable to explain the abruptness and finality of the historic empire's collapse.

Numerous theories about the collapse have been put forward since the city and its destruction levels were first excavated by archaeologists 180 years ago. But the mystery of how two small armies -- the Babylonians in the south and the Medes in the east -- were able to converge on Nineveh and completely destroy what was then the largest city in the world, without any reoccupation, has remained unsolved.

A team of researchers -- led by Ashish Sinha, California State University, Dominguez Hills, and using archival and archaeological data contributed by Harvey Weiss, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and environmental studies at Yale -- was able for the first time to determine the underlying cause for the collapse. By examining new precipitation records of the area, the team discovered an abrupt 60-year megadrought that so weakened the Assyrian state that Nineveh was overrun in three months and abandoned forever.

The layers of a stalagmite record the climate conditions of the time when they were created [Credit: Ashish Sinha]

Assyria was an agrarian society dependent on seasonal precipitation for cereal agriculture. To its south, the Babylonians relied on irrigation agriculture, so their resources, government, and society were not affected by the drought, explains Weiss.

The team analyzed stalagmites -- a type of speleothem that grows up from a cave floor and is formed by the deposit of minerals from water -- retrieved from Kuna Ba cave in northeast Iraq. The speleothems can provide a history of climate through the oxygen and uranium isotope ratios of infiltrating water that are preserved in its layers. Oxygen in rainwater comes in two main varieties: heavy and light. The ratio of heavy to light types of oxygen isotopes are extremely sensitive to variations in precipitation and temperature. Over time, uranium trapped in speleothems turns into thorium, allowing scientists to date the speleothem deposits.

Weiss and the research team synchronized these findings with archaeological and cuneiform records and were able to document the first paleoclimate data for the megadrought that affected the Assyrian heartland at the time of the empire's collapse, when its less drought-affected neighbors invaded. The team's research also revealed that this megadrought followed a high-rainfall period that facilitated the Assyrian empire's earlier growth and expansion.

"Now we have a historical and environmental dynamic between north and south and between rain-fed agriculture and irrigation-fed agriculture through which we can understand the historical process of how the Babylonians were able to defeat the Assyrians," said Weiss, adding that the total collapse of Assyria is still described by historians as the "mother of all catastrophes."

The Neo-Assyrian Empire rose during an unusual time of wet climate and collapsed soon after conditions swung to unusual dryness [Credit: Ashish Sinha]

Through the archaeology and history of the region, Weiss was able to piece together how the megadrought data were synchronous with Assyria's cessation of long-distance military campaigns and the construction of irrigation canals that were similar to its southern neighbors but restricted in their agricultural extent. Other texts noted that the Assyrians were worrying about their alliances with distant places, while also fearing internal intrigue, notes Weiss.

"This fits into a historical pattern that is not only structured through time and space, but a time and space that is filled with environmental change," says Weiss. "These societies experienced climatic changes that were of such magnitude they could not simply adapt to them," he adds.

With these new speleothem records, says Weiss, paleoclimatologists and archaeologists are now able to identify environmental changes in the global historical record that were unknown and inaccessible even 25 years ago. "History is no longer two-dimensional; the historical stage is now three-dimensional," said Weiss.

The research was published in Science Advances.

Source: Yale University [November 14, 2019]

Ancient 70-mile-long wall found in western Iran

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 06, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

Archaeologists have recently discovered the remains of a stone wall, which extends about 115 kilometres, in Sar Pol-e Zahab county, western Iran.

This satellite image was taken on July 31, 2019 by the WorldView-2 satellite. The red arrows show  a surviving section of the Gawri Wall [Credit: © 2019 Maxar Technologies]

“With an estimated volume of approximately one million cubic metres of stone, it would have required significant resources in terms of workforce, materials and time,” wrote Sajjad Alibeigi, an assistant professor of Iranian Archaeology at Razi University in Kermanshah, Iran, in an article published online in the journal Antiquity.

The structure runs north-south from the Bamu Mountains in the north to an area near Zhaw Marg village in the south, Alibeigi wrote.

The archaeologist suggests that wall was built sometime between the fourth century BC and sixth century CE based on potteries found along the barrier.

Parts of a newly-discovered stone wall, which is stretched about 115 kilometres, in Sar Pol-e Zahab county, western Iran [Credit: © 2019 Maxar Technologies]

“Remnants of structures, now destroyed, are visible in places along the wall. These may have been associated turrets or buildings,” Alibeigi cited, adding that the wall itself is made from “natural local materials, such as cobbles and boulders, with gypsum mortar surviving in places.”

Though the wall’s existence was unknown to archaeologists, those living near it have long known about the wall, calling it the “Gawri Wall,” Alibeigi wrote.

Archaeologists, however, are not certain who built the structure, and for what purpose. Because of the poor preservation of the barrier, the scientists aren’t even sure of its exact width and height. Their best estimates put it at 4 metres wide and about 3 metres high, he said.

Archaeologists have previously found similar structures in the north and northeastern parts of Iran which may have had a defensive purpose.

Source: Tehran Times [November 06, 2019]

Newly found rock-carving in western Iran may have link to Mithraism

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 31, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

A newly-discovered rock-carving in western Iran could have a link to Mithraism, a prehistorical religion inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian god Mithra.

The new rock carving on the eastern side of the Kermanshah Arch and upstream of the source of this historic site has been identified by archaeologists [Credit: IRNA]

Some Iranian archaeologists suggest that the carving was created by a follower of Mithraism as it depicts a simple portrayal of a human with his right hand raised and an object in his hand. But, experts say it needs much more study in order to date the petroglyph.

The petroglyph was found in western Kermanshah province on a mountainside near Taq-e Bostan, an archaeological complex, which consists of a series of properties from prehistoric to historical periods such as imposing Sassanid-era bas-reliefs, Morad-Hassel Tepe, an ancient village, a Parthian graveyard and a Sassanid hunting ground.

The recess where the stone carving is located [Credit: IRNA]

It was found upstream of a spring, inside a niche measuring about two meters by two meters, carved some 50 centimeters deep into the mountainside, archaeologist Keyvan Moumivand told IRNA on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a local tourism official has said that various archaeologists and teams of experts must conduct researches on the rock-carving in order to determine its origins and to make a definitive comment on it.

Stone stairs next to the newly discovered stone carving [Credit: IRNA]

Some experts say that existence of some Mithraism symbols in parts of the historical zone, including one nearby the bas-relief of Ardashir II, reinforces a possibility that the petroglyph being associated with Mithraism, IRNA reported.

Mithraism, was the worship of Mithra, an Iranian god of the sun, justice, contract, and war in pre-Zoroastrian Iran. Known as Mithras in the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, this deity, according to Britannica Encyclopedia, was honored as the patron of loyalty to the emperor. After the acceptance of Christianity by the emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, Mithraism rapidly declined.

View of the Kermanshah Arch [Credit: IRNA]

Taq-e Bostan is known for its bas-reliefs of Sasanid origin (3rd to 7th century CE). The carvings, some of the finest and best-preserved examples of Persian sculpture under the Sasanians, include representations of the investitures of Ardashir II (reigned 379–383 CE) and of Shapur III (383–388), the latter in a man-made cave carved in the form of an iwan (three-sided, barrel-vaulted hall, open at one end).

Source: Tehran Times [October 31, 2019]

Private property, not productivity, precipitated Neolithic agricultural revolution

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 11, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Society

Humankind first started farming in Mesopotamia about 11,500 years ago. Subsequently, the practices of cultivating crops and raising livestock emerged independently at perhaps a dozen other places around the world, in what archaeologists call the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. It's one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory - but a new paper in the Journal of Political Economy shows that most explanations for it don't agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.

Cave painting of cow & horses, Lascaux, France [Credit: Alamy]

With farming came a vast expansion of the realm over which private property governed access to valued goods, replacing the forager social norms around sharing food upon acquisition. A common explanation is that farming increased labor productivity, which then encouraged the adoption of private property by providing incentives for the long-term investments required in a farming economy.

"But it's not what the data are telling us", says Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, a co-author of the paper. "It is very unlikely that the number of calories acquired from a day's work at the advent of farming made it a better option than hunting and gathering and it could well have been quite a bit worse."

Prior studies, including those of human and animal bones, suggest that farming actually took an extreme nutritional toll on early adopters and their livestock. So why farm in the first place?

Some have suggested an inferior technology could have been imposed by political elites as a strategy for extracting taxes, tribute, or rents. But farming was independently adopted millennia before the emergence of governments or political elites capable of imposing a new way of life on heavily-armed foraging communities.

Bowles and co-author Jung-Kyoo Choi, an economist at Kyungpook National University in South Korea, use both evolutionary game theory and archaeological evidence to propose a new interpretation of the Neolithic. Based on their model, a system of mutually recognized private property rights was both a precondition for farming and also a means of limiting costly conflicts among members of a population.

While rare among foragers, private property did exist among a few groups of sedentary hunter-gatherers. Among them, farming could have benefited the first adopters because it would have been easier to establish the private possession of cultivated crops and domesticated animals than for the diffuse wild resources on which hunter-gatherers relied.

"It is a lot easier to define and defend property rights in a domesticated cow than in a wild kudu," says Choi. "Farming initially succeeded because it facilitated a broader application of private property rights, not because it lightened the toil of making a living."

Source: Santa Fe Institute [October 11, 2019]

Remains of large 13th century building found near Tehran

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 06, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

The excavation of Khatounlar hill in Mehrdasht Village of Malard County in Iran’s Alborz province has led to the discovery of precious remains of a large building from the Ilkhanid period.

Credit: IFP

Mohammad-Reza Nemati, head of the excavation team said the hill is about 4,400 square metres located in the centre of Mahdasht village in Malard, 60 kilometres southwest of Tehran.

Miras-e Arya quoted Nemati as saying that at the second excavation area, located at the highest point of the hill, the remains of a large building were found. “The entrance is from the west and is connected by a corridor and large and small rooms,” he added.

Credit: IFP

“The walls of these rooms are made of brick and have a crescent-shaped ceiling, the traces and remnants of which could be seen in some rooms,” he underlined.

Among the valuable artifacts, there is a large number of stamped ornamented caps, chess pieces, coins, Uyghur pottery and many pieces of earthenware, he pointed out.

Credit: IFP

This archaeologist said, after completing the excavation, the hill will be organised and the documentation of the findings and the initial protection of the artifacts would begin. Then, the discovered region will be roofed for further studies.

Nemati explained the excavation of Khatounlar hill was carried out with the permission of the Iranian Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT) and the mansion is registered as a National Heritage of Iran.

Source: Iran Front Page [October 06, 2019]

Achaemenid-era clay tablets returned to Iran after 84 years

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 01, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Heritage, Iran, Middle East, USA

A total of 1,783 Achaemenid-era clay tablets, which were on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since 1935, have been returned home.

Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

The fourth batch of the Achaemenid objects, composed of 1783 clay tablets, entered the country from the Oriental Institute after 84 years, CHTN reported.

They are part of thousands of clay tablets and related fragments, which were kept at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.

Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

The artifacts were recuperated with great deal of efforts made by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts and the presidential office for legal affairs, tourism minister Ali-Asghar Mounesan said.

The tablets were handed over to the National Museum of Iran, where they are supposed to be put on show as of tomorrow.

Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

“These treasured documents decipher an important segment of recorded history of Achaemenids during the reign of Darius I (Darius the Great who reigned from 522 to 486 BC),” said Jebrael Nokandeh, director of the National Museum of Iran.

Last December, Mounesan announced that over 11,000 flawless [Achaemenid-era] clay tablets and a large number of fragments of their kind will be back home.

Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

“Of the cited number, 1784 clay tablets have been endorsed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in order to be shipped to Iran, in the first stage… and they are currently being packed by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,” Mounesan said.

In February 2018, and following years of ups and downs, the fate of those ancient Persian artifacts, was left in the hands of a U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Iran.

Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

Archaeologists affiliated with the University of Chicago discovered the tablets in 1930s while excavating in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. However, the institute has resumed work in collaboration with colleagues in Iran, and the return of the tablets is part of a broadening of contacts between scholars in the two countries, said Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

The tablets reveal economic, social and religious history of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC) and the larger Near Eastern region in the fifth century BC.

Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

Darius I (born 550 BC—died 486), king of Persia in 522–486 BC, one of the greatest rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty, who was noted for his administrative genius and for his great building projects. Darius attempted several times to conquer Greece; his fleet was destroyed by a storm in 492, and the Athenians defeated his army at Marathon in 490.

The Achaemenid [Persian] Empire was the largest and most durable empire of its time. The empire stretched from Ethiopia, through Egypt, to Greece, to Anatolia (modern Turkey), Central Asia and to India.

Source: Tehran Times [October 01, 2019]

3000-year-old bas-relief found in western Iran

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 12, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

A magnificent bas-relief carving, dating back to over 3,000 years ago, was discovered by a local a few days ago in a mountainous region, somewhere between Ezgeleh and Sarpol-e Zahab in Kermanshah province, western Iran, provincial tourism chief Omid Qaderi said on Wednesday, ISNA reported.

Credit: IRNA

"After the discovery was reported, a team of archaeologists and heritage experts was dispatched to the place, which is on the face of a cliff adjacent to a river," the official noted.

"Surveys revealed that this treasured work belongs to Mesopotamian civilization and [the then] rulers of this region," Qaderi said.

The bas-relief highlights the "strategic" importance of Ezgeleh and Sarpol-e Zahab in prehistoric times when the two served as a boundary between Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau, the official explained.

"Information obtained from this prominent rock-carved relief shows that many wars were waged in the region at that time when rulers left this valuable work to show their power."

Qaderi added that the newly-discovered relief is on a par with Anubanini reliefs, which are widely believed to be the oldest rock reliefs in the country.

Situated about twenty kilometres east of the border with Iraq, the four heavily damaged reliefs depict Lullubian kings as conquerors.

The kingdom of Lullubi, in the valley of the Diyala river, is mentioned several times in the cuneiform texts from ancient Iraq; the first references date to the third millennium BC (Naram-Sin’s famous Victory Stela in the Louvre), while the most recent texts belong to the Neo-Assyrian age.

Source: Tehran Times [September 12, 2019]

Neanderthal tooth unearthed near Iran’s Zagros Mountain

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on August 17, 2019 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Early Humans, Fossils, Iran, Middle East

A new find, published this week in Journal of Human Evolution, suggests that Neanderthals were roaming at the Iranian Zagros Mountain sometimes between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago.

Credit: Zanolli et al. 2019

The new study on a human tooth discovered in 1999 in a cave called Wezmeh near Kermanshah, west of Iran, showed that this tooth that previously thought to be modern human in fact belongs to a Neanderthal child.

According to the Public Relations section of the Iran National Museum, the results of the study by paleoanthropologists and archaeologists at the Iran National Museum, University of Poitiers, University of Bordeaux, Iran's Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, and Bioarchaeology Laboratory of the University of Tehran confirmed the existence of Neanderthals in Iran.

Jebrael Nokandeh, director of the Iran National Museum said the results of this new study that was published this week in the international "Journal of Human Evolution" definitely prove that Neanderthals lived in the Zagros region. He further said that given the importance of the results of this discovery, the tooth will soon be displayed in the Paleolithic Gallery of the Iran National Museum.

According to Fereidoun Biglari, head of the Paleolithic Department of the Museum and co-author of the article, this premolar tooth belongs to a Neanderthal child who was between six and ten years old at the time of death. He added that the tooth was discovered during the Islamabad Archaeological Research Project, led by Kamyar Abdi in the late 1990s. This human tooth has been studied several times since then using various methods.

In a recent study, Biglari said the specimen was re-analyzed by Roberto Macchiarelli and Clement Zanolli by X-ray micro-CT imaging that revealed the inner structure of the tooth, especially the enamel-dentine junction which aligns the tooth closely with Neanderthals and shows that it is distinct from modern humans. He added, therefore, this tooth is the first direct evidence of the Neanderthal presence in the Iranian Zagros.

Biglari said since the Neanderthals were extinct before 40.000 years ago, and the earliest dated animal remains from the Wezmeh Cave is about 70.000 years old, this individual lived in the region during that time period.

He said the significance of the finding is that according to research done so far only one Middle Paleolithic human bone has been found in Iran, which comes from late 1940s excavations in Bisotun Cave near Kermanshah. Biglari added the human bone fragment from Bisotun is a forearm (radius) fragment that was found with Mousterian stone tools and animal fossil remains. This important fossil is held in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Comparison of its dimensions to those of Neanderthal and other specimens aligns it predominantly with the Neandertals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans.
He also mentioned that the discovery of a canine tooth of a Neanderthal child at a shelter near Kermanshah was announced in the media last year, but as the results of its analysis are not yet published in academic journals, it is not possible to evaluate it.  In closing, Biglari said, as some researchers are not certain about attribution of Bisotun fossil to Neanderthal, the tooth found in the Wezmeh Cave put an end to these debates, and therefore this new research placed Iran on the list of countries that Neanderthal human remains have been discovered.

Marjan Mashkour, an associate researcher of Iran National Museum and a research member of Natural History Museum in Paris, who is a co-author of the article too, said in addition to the Neanderthal tooth, large numbers of extinct animal fossils including cave lion, spotted hyena, rhinoceros and wild cattle, as well as other species such as leopards, wolves, foxes, wild horses, onager, boar, and deer,  have been found in the cave.

She added that the cave was a carnivore den during late Ice Age when predators carried herbivores carcasses into the cave. She added that this animal remains provided a wealth of new information about predators who roamed in the Islamabad Plain of western Zagros between 11000 to 70000 years ago when Neanderthal and Modern humans were present in the region.

Source: Tasnim News Agency [August 17, 2019]

Archaeologists shed light on early settlement eras of Iran’s Manujan

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on August 06, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

A team of Iranian archaeologists has found ancient relics and evidence that could shed new light on early settlement eras of Manujan county in southeastern Kerman province.

Credit: Tehran Times

The team commenced new rounds of survey and excavations back in January at a ruined fort (locally known as Manujan fort) and its environs. At that time, a restoration project was also started on the mudbrick citadel.

Excavations at the fort has yielded a special kind of pottery as well as pieces of jewelry and glassware works that throw light on different periods of the area, ILNA reported on Tuesday.

“The [newly-excavated] pottery is simple and handmade and it can be classified as rough potteries,” archaeologist Alidad Soleymani said.

Paint of the earthenware is resembling pottery-painting manners, which were practiced in prehistorical eras, the archaeologist explained.

“We are trying to revive the way they build this [kind of] local pottery,” he said. “We have evidence that testifies glassware and even jewelry were made [in workshops] in the region.”

Most of the pottery [pieces] found [in Manujan] are broken and only about two flawless pottery have been discovered in the area, he added.

In January, Soleymani said during previous rounds of excavation, the fort had yielded relics and remains dating to various Islamic eras.

Manujan fort is nested on top of a smooth natural rock and in the heart of a city of the same name in Kerman province, which is bounded by the provinces of Fars on the west, Yazd on the north, South Khorasan on the northeast, Sistan-Baluchestan on the east, and Hormozgan on the south.

Source: Tehran Times [August 06, 2019]

Parthian-era citadel to undergo restoration

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 22, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Heritage, Iran, Middle East

The crumbling Narin citadel, which is said to date from the time of Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 CE), is about to undergo renovation set to last two months and cost 910 million rials (about $22,000), CHTN reported on Sunday.

Credit: Richard I'Anson/Getty Images

The plan, unveiled by the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization in June, will restore foundation and façade of the mudbrick citadel using building material that is the same as the original.

Narin citadel is located near the city of Na’in in Isfahan province, central Iran.

“This overhaul will be done with the use of mud, bricks and cob in perfect harmony with the original elements of the castle,” Isfahan province’s tourism chief Fereydoun Allahyari said.

In terms of structure and history, Narin citadel is very similar to its fellow, Narin citadel of Meybod that is situated in Yazd province, the official said.

By completion of archaeological and architectural studies, more information can be gained from the history of the monument as well as the social scene of the people who lived in the central Iranian plateau, he explained.

Credit: Tehran Times

Na’in is one of the oldest continuously settlements in central Iran, located on the junction of the desert road to Tabas and Mashhad. The city has been an important crossroad on converging trade routes for thousands of years. It is well regarded for its handicrafts as well.

The Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran. The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures.

At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han dynasty of China, became a center of trade and commerce.

Source: Tehran Times [July 22, 2019]

Construction work exposes historic quarter of Tabriz city in NW Iran

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 09, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

Following excavation work during the course of a development project, signs of the ancient quarter of the city of Tabriz in northwestern Iranian province of East Azarbaijan were unearthed. An expert said the remains are clearly part of the old district of Tabriz.

Credit: Mehr News Agency

“The nature of these remains is not clear yet, but the structure looks like an underground water canal, and there is a possibility that it could belong to a minaret,” said Karim Meimanatnejad, a historian and researcher.

Credit: Mehr News Agency

He added the new city of Tabriz was constructed on the old one, which was destroyed in the 1780 earthquake.

Credit: Mehr News Agency

He said the then ruler of Tabriz built the new structures on the old, destroyed ones because the people of Tabriz were very attached to the city, and at the same time it was difficult to remove the debris.

Credit: Mehr News Agency

“So, there is a possibility that historical items belonging to Old Tabriz will be discovered during excavations and other construction work, especially in the centre of the city,” he noted.

Source: Iran Front Page [July 09, 2019]

Ancient underground 'city' investigated by Iranian archaeologists

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on May 30, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

A team of archaeologists has commenced an extensive research on a centuries-old underground “city”, which is located in Salehabad district of Hamedan province, west-central Iran, ISNA reported on Friday.

Credit: Mizan Online News Agency/Adel Bakhoda

The site, estimated to date 800 years, was found some three years ago but the story didn’t publicized in order to prevent any possible looting from the underground city before the appropriation of credits for the beginning of studies, a provincial tourism official Ahmad Torabi said.

The official said that initial works found at the site are pieces of pottery, which are related to the Islamic and earlier eras, emphasizing “We need more time to do further research and exploration so that we can fully investigate this area.”

Credit: Mizan Online News Agency/Adel Bakhoda

“At the time when Russian soldiers crossed the area [during the World War II], the men of the region concealed their families in the underground city so that no one noticed their presence,” Torabi added.

It is the third underground city being discovered in Hamedan province after Samen and Arzan-Fud, which some archaeologists attribute the two to the times of Medes (678 – 549 BC) so that Hamedan may be named as a pioneering region of troglodyte architecture in the country, he explained.

Credit: Mizan Online News Agency/Adel Bakhoda

Last October, Hamedan hosted the 3rd International Troglodytic Architecture Conference in which tens of experts, researches and academia discussed troglodyte-associated architecture, culture and technology.

Modern Hamedan largely lies on ancient Ecbatana, which was the capital of Media and subsequently a summer residence of the Achaemenian kings who ruled Persia from 553 to 330 BC.

Source: Tehran Times [May 30, 2019]

Italian team to partially restore Persepolis

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 17, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Heritage, Iran, Middle East

A team of Italian archaeologists and restorers is scheduled to partially rehabilitate some ruined monuments and bas-relief carvings in Persepolis, which was once the ceremonial capital of the mighty Achaemenid Empire.

Ruins of the Gate of All Nations, Persepolis [Credit: Alborzagros/WikiCommons]

The team is associated with the foundation “Archaeology Without Borders”, which supports archaeological education and training in developing countries and helps to strength regional networks of students in archaeology.

The restoration project is set to be conducted from April 27 to June 7 based on an agreement Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization had reached with the foundation, IRNA reported.

The open-air stone works of Persepolis are threatened by spreading lichens due to periodic moisture that many experts believe are impossible to completely eradicate.

A UNESCO World Heritage site, Persepolis lies just only an hour’s drive from north-east of Shiraz, itself a major tourist destination of the country.

Persepolis boasts extensive structures, including monumental staircases, exquisite reliefs and imposing gateways as one of the great wonders of the ancient world.

Source: Tehran Times [April 17, 2019]

Declassified U2 spy plane images reveal bygone Middle Eastern archaeological features

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 08, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Middle East, Syria

In the 1950s and early '60s, with the Cold War at its peak, the United States flew U2 spy planes across Europe, the Middle East, and central eastern Asia, taking images of interesting military targets. Though the missions typically connected Point A to Point B, say an air field and an important city, in many cases the camera kept recording between those spots, capturing thousands of photos of the desert, steppes, fields, and villages below.

Desert kites, stone wall structures that date back 5,000 to 8,000 years like those shown above, were used to trap gazelle and other similar animals. The dry desert of eastern Jordan preserved many of them, but agricultural expansion in western Jordan dismantled or destroyed many more [Credit: University of Pennsylvania]

Such a collection can represent a goldmine for landscape archaeologists like Emily Hammer of the University of Pennsylvania and Jason Ur of Harvard University. But for decades, all film and documents from these missions--code-named CHESS by the U.S. government--remained classified. And even when they became public in 1997, they weren't indexed or scanned.

Until now, the majority of this kind of historical aerial documentation came from the CORONA spy satellite program, which the U.S. ran between 1959 and 1972. But only the highest-resolution CORONA images, taken during the program's final five years, are useful for most archaeological purposes. The U2 photos are earlier and a higher resolution than even the best CORONA images, offering the chance to see historical features undecipherable by CORONA or already gone by the time of those missions.

Knowing the potential insight offered by the U2 images, Hammer and Ur began sifting through the materials. By analyzing thousands of high- and low-resolution frames, they discovered many historical and archaeological features, including prehistoric hunting traps, 3,000-year-old irrigation canals, and 60-year-old marsh villages no longer visible today. The work, which they published in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice, represents the first archaeological use of U2 spy plane imagery--and a new and exciting window into history.

"The photos provide a fascinating look at the Middle East several decades ago, showing, for example, historical Aleppo long before the massive destruction wrought in the ongoing civil war," says Hammer, an assistant professor in Penn's Near Eastern languages and civilizations department. "Plus, the work and the accompanying online resources will allow other researchers to identify and access U2 photos for the first time."

Hammer and Ur have both conducted research in the Middle East for decades, in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They've also both used CORONA spy satellite imagery extensively. However, many of those image sets didn't date back as far as Hammer wished they would. "We knew that U2 spy planes must have taken thousands of images across large parts of the Middle East, but there was no easy way to access or reproduce the film negatives," she says.

The canal system above, from northern Iraq, provides insight into how an early empire maintained its power and governed [Credit: University of Pennsylvania]

A chance encounter with Lin Xu, a researcher who had retrieved U2 images of his hometown in China, led Hammer and Ur to press on. "Seeing the amazing quality of those archival photos," Hammer says, "we knew that it would be worth the detective work it would take to build a systematic index of them."

It wasn't an easy process. Ahead of time, they had to select the film rolls they wanted moved from the National Archives' storage center in Kansas to the aerial film section in Maryland. Once there, the researchers unspooled hundreds of feet of film over a light table to identify pertinent frames, then photographed the negatives in pieces using a 100-millimeter macro lens. Later, they stitched together and adjusted each frame, before geo-referencing the photos using GIS software to match up images with coordinates of real-world places.

Despite the tedium of some of the individual tasks, the process excited Hammer. "As you turn the spool of a film roll following the path of the U2 plane, you may not know exactly what you'll see in unfamiliar places, so there's often a sense of exploration and discovery," she says. "Other times, the pilots were flying over regions I knew by heart from travel and study, and I would almost hold my breath, hoping that the plane had veered just a little to the right or left."

The hours of work paid off, revealing many important archaeological features, including prehistoric hunting traps called desert kites in eastern Jordan, an Assyrian canal system in northern Iraq, and marshes in southern Iraq, case studies the researchers highlighted in their paper.

Desert kites, stone-wall structures that date back 5,000 to 8,000 years, were used to trap gazelle and other similar animals. The dry desert of eastern Jordan preserved many of them, but agricultural expansion in western Jordan dismantled or destroyed many more. The satellite images bring them back to life, showcasing a web of diamond-shaped enclosures with what look like long kite tails, offering the best view, to date, of these important hunting tools.

The U2 images of southern Iraq present the layout, size, and environmental position of Marsh Arab communities  in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of which disappeared after massive hydroelectric dams impounded  the rivers, and after the government of Saddam Hussein deliberately drained the marshes [Credit: University of Pennsylvania]

The second feature, the canal system in northern Iraq, provides insight into how an early empire maintained its power and governed, Hammer explains. "The Assyrians built the first large, long-lasting, multi-cultural empire of the ancient world, so many people are interested in how they organized territory, controlled people, built their huge cities, and managed the land," she says. "The irrigation system fed the royal capitals, made agricultural surplus production possible, and provided water to villages."

Finally, the U2 images of southern Iraq present the layout, size, and environmental position of Marsh Arab communities in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of which disappeared after massive hydroelectric dams in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq impounded the rivers, and especially after the government of Saddam Hussein deliberately drained the marshes. Before that, "people lived a unique lifestyle there for thousands of years, herding water buffalo, building houses and all manner of things out of reeds, living on floating islands of reeds, planting date palms, and fishing," Hammer says. "Now we can study the spatial organization, demography, and lifestyles of these communities."

Though the three archaeological features represent different historical time scales, going back thousands of years or just decades, they all demonstrate how humans are changing the natural landscape, often in ways visible only from a 70,000-foot view.

Aerial images like those from the U2 spy missions allow archaeologists like Hammer and Ur to travel back in time. "The activities of ancient human communities frequently left large-scale traces on the landscape," Hammer says. "You can't see these patterns when you're standing on top of them, but just like stepping back from the blobs of paint on an Impressionist painting reveals the full picture, aerial and satellite imagery allow the patterns to emerge."

Author: Michele W. Berger | Source: University of Pennsylvania [April 08, 2019]

4,000-year-old burial of pet monkey discovered in Iran

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 01, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Middle East

Modern people aren’t the first to cherish their animal companions. A monkey that died more than 4,000 years ago in the Middle East was laid to rest in a human cemetery in a type of grave used for infants, suggesting that it was a treasured pet.

This young rhesus macaque was buried in 2800–2200 BC in a human cemetery near the modern-day Iran–Afghanistan border [Credit: Claudia Minniti]

The monkey was buried in the vast cemetery of Shahr-i Sokhta, an ancient city near modern-day Zabol, Iran. According to work by Claudia Minniti at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy, and Seyed Mansour Seyed Sajjadi at the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research in Tehran, the animal was interred in a single pit, as were the infants in the cemetery. The pit contained the same type of pottery found in the cemetery’s human graves.

For Middle Easterners of that time, pet monkeys were status symbols. The buried primate — a rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) — might have been bestowed as a luxury gift and represents one of the earliest examples of a pet monkey.

The discovery has been published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

Source: Nature [March 31, 2019]