Delazian: An Open-Air Upper Paleolithic Site in Central Iran

Summary

For a long time, most Paleolithic research in Iran was focused on the caves and rock shelters of Zagros Mountains. Only in recent years has this focus shifted to other parts of the country, leading to the discovery and study of many Paleolithic sites. Delazian is one such newly-discovered site with an assemblage of lithic artifacts indicating the presence of Paleolithic societies in central Iran during more hospitable periods of climate. In 2009, a systematic survey was conducted at this arid open-air site, which recovered an assemblage of 1344 artifacts. In this poster, we present a techno-typological analysis of this assemblage showing that Delazian was probably used as a residential camp at which tool production occurred as part of daily activities. We also find a general lack of evidence for the intensive reduction cores, which we consider to be a sign of easy access to local lithic raw materials. This conclusion is also supported by the presence of many unused blanks in the assemblage. This flake-based assemblage is characterized by the presence of some tool types common to the Upper Paleolithic and Epi-Paleolithic periods but the small sample size prohibits a definitive assignment to one particular time period.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage