High-Altitude Adaptation in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Zagros Mountains, Iran: a view from Houmian

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Intensification of fieldwork in the Zagros Mountains over the past two decades have provided crucial new insights into the region, revealing a much more complex patchwork of MP lithic industrial variability than hitherto appreciated. We present a series of new case studies on the high-altitude MP rockshelter of Houmian in the Iranian Zagros. Posited to be one of the oldest, highest-lying MP sites in southwest Asia, contextualizing a series of new findings offers both site-specific and regional implications for cultural change and variability. This paper will focus on a re-analysis of the lithic and pollen records, making the claim for multi-seasonal occupation at ca. 2000 m.a.sl. A lithic techno-functional study identifies separate – and non-Mousterian MP – technological strategies of production within different layers of the stratigraphy. A use-wear study reveals evidence of specific resources targeted by MP hominins in the surrounding landscape. We highlight a successful approach for extracting high-quality lithic use-wear data from museum collections using state-of-the-art portable equipment. These findings serve to both confirm and refuse previous behavioral and environmental interpretations surrounding MP land-use in the Zagros. The resulting implications contribute to a re-appreciation of the MP of the Zagros as a dynamic region of hominin complexity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39538.0