Excavations at Ghār-e Boof in the Fars Province of Iran and its bearing on models for the evolution of the Upper Palaeolithic in the Zagros Mountains

Abstract

The Upper Palaeolithic (UP) record of the Zagros Mountains is of critical importance for our understanding of the dispersal of modern humans into Southwest Asia. Most researchers interpret the record as reflecting the existence of two developmentally related cultural groups, the Baradostian of the early UP and the Zarzian of the late UP or Epipalaeolithic. In this paper we analyse techno-typological characteristics of early UP assemblages from the Zagros to assess the degree of variability. We use here new chronometric and typo-technological data from the early UP assemblages of the cave site Ghār-e Boof in the north western Fars province of Iran and compare these data with key sites of the Zagros UP, including Shanidar, Warwasi and Yafteh. Our study reveals important technological differences between assemblages from these sites, which led us to argue that the UP record of the Zagros Mountain range reflects multiple technological traditions instead of a single one. We further argue that a model reflecting a mosaic pattern for the evolution of the early UP in the Zagros Mountains fits better with the increasing evidence for a chronologically deep and spatially complex process of the spread of modern human populations over Southwest Asia.