Upper Palaeolithic Raw Material Economy in the Southern Zagros Mountains of Iran

Abstract

It is believed that there is a strong link between raw material exploitation and lithic technology. The raw materials play an important role in imposing special technology to hunter gatherers for adapting themselves to their environment. The Zagros region with complex topography, as an island of moisture and the rainfall, provided sufficient food, water and raw material resources. In this paper, we focus on southern Zagros where the compromise between technological needs and the raw material resources in the Dasht-e Rostam-Basht region, led us to propose a model of “optimization of mobility, technological strategies and land use. This model examines this hypothesis that the residents of the region during their seasonal movements for following migratory preys adopted the lamellar technology of the Rostamian in order to minimize time and energy costs associated with raw material procurement and transport. Testing this model in the southern Zagros was based on the techno-typological analysis of the lithic assemblages from the survey sites in the Dasht-e Rostam-Basht region and the stratified lithic assemblages from the Ghār-e Boof Cave.