Sourcing Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic Obsidian from Iraq and Iran: New Perspectives from Tell Nader and Yanik Tepe

Summary

Historically Near Eastern obsidian characterisation studies have focused on south-eastern Anatolian and Levantine assemblages of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic as a means of contributing to debates upon Neolithisation. This study contributes to redressing this spatial and chronological bias, by detailing analyses of artefacts from 6th-5th millennium BC contexts in Iraq and Iran. The first assemblage comes from the new excavations at Tell Nader, a Ubaid to Assyrian period settlement near Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, the second from the 1960’s work at Neolithic Yanik Tepe in NW Iran. Further brief references are also made to material from Tell al-‘Ubaid, Seh Gabi and Arpachiyah.

The artefacts were elementally characterised using the non-destructive technique of EDXRF. Our results indicate a variety of different sources being exploited by different communities at different times, including products from both Cappadocia (many hundred kilometres to the west), plus eastern Anatolia, north-eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia.

Our results reflect the general trend for an expanded range of source materials being consumed after the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the discussion focusing on the significance of the various exchange networks and the other media and ideas that would have flowed through them alongside the obsidian, not least the early circulation of metals.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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