Stone Tool Production, Distribution and use during the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic on the Tehran Plain, Iran

Citation: H. Fazeli, R.E. Donahue, and R.A.E Coningham (2002) Stone Tool Production, Distribution and use during the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic on the Tehran Plain, Iran.
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Stone Tool Production, Distribution and use during the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic on the Tehran Plain, Iran
Download: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4300616
Tagged: Anthropology (RSS)

Summary

Tehran plain is located north of central Iran and is surrounded by mountains, deserts, and small salty lakes that divide the plain into various micro-environments. Tehran Plains was first excavated in 1997 by the Universities of Tehran and Bradford and the Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran. Before the completion of the research about to be discussed in this article, however, little information about stone artifacts were available. The other plains located not too far away, however, located various tools such as flint scrapers, arrowheads and flakes. The Tehran plains, however does not normally contain stone artifacts due to the site’s disturbance, site formation processes, agricultural activities, and possible archaeological studies done in the past.

During this research, six sites were used in order to collect stone artifacts. These sites included the site excavated in 1997, the location excavated in 1998 where they collected 424 stone artifacts that were only visible on the surface, and other locations such as Sadeghabadi, Fakrabad, Mafinabad, and Mehdikani. During this research they looked at the physical characteristics to categorize the artifacts to be tested using Inductively-Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometry for goodness of fit. The Raw material of the artifacts were also closely analyzed in order to better understand the mobility and culture of this group of people.

They found out that some of the sites they were using lasted longer than one phase of the Chalcolithic but more importantly, they found that there is a large variation or raw material in the various sites which resulted in the various organization of lithic technology. The stone tool production, however, was centered around a blade production system. Interesting enough, the study also showed that this group of people started off with good quality material but gradually decreased their quality from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Chalcolithic. This may be due to the collapse of lithic craft specialization that came with the increase in copper technology.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

One of the major topics in this article concerns the raw material and how it indicated a network across the region concerning lithic material. The finer or non-locally produced raw material were the most valuable. In an article entitled “Flint Daggers, Copper Daggers, and Technological Innovation in Late Neolithic Scandinavia”, Frieman also argues that the various dagger innovations are a sign of networking but not through their raw material. Rather, Frieman analyzed the daggers in Europe and saw that they all shared a similar idea of what a dagger should look like which makes her believe that daggers were boundary objects.

Overall the article is rather trustworthy, however, the author's lack of description of what an Inductively-Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometry is causes me to question how bias their article is since their focus seems to stray from how theiy reached their results.