South-central Iran Research Articles

INFLUENCE OF PERENNIAL PLANTS ON CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF ARID CALCAREOUS SOILS IN IRAN

We conducted a study in Bajgah (a valley in south central Iran; 29° 32'N, 52° 35'E; 1810 m above sea level) to determine the influence of perennial plants on some selected properties of soils formed on the highly calcareous parent material. The major plant genera were determined to be Agropyron, Artemisia, Astragalus, Dianthus, Eryngium, Peganum, Polygonum, Stipa, and Thymus. Tops of plants genera were found to be significantly different in ash, N,P,K,Ca,Mg,Na,Mn,Zn, and Cu; the concentration of Fe was not significantly different. We found the plants to differ significantly in their influence on soil properties. Peganum caused an accumulation of organic matter (OM) as high as 7% in the soil, in an environment where the soils typically contain less than 1% OM. Soil concentrations of P,K,Mn,Zn, and Cu were also found to vary significantly beneath different plant genera. We suggest these differences in OM accumulation were caused by plant litter. Concentration of Fe in the soils formed beneath different plant genera was statistically unchanged.

National conditions and local-level political structures: patronage in prerevolutionary Iran

Recent theoretical examinations of patron-client relationships suggest that local conditions alone cannot account for their variant forms. Rather, it is argued that local-level relationships can only be explained if seen within a larger political-economic context. This paper employs a model of supralocal determination to account for the nature of patron-client relationships among a tribal population in Kerman Province in south-central Iran. The paper shows that in prerevolutionary Iran patrons derived material benefits from their clients while political clientism was absent. I argue that these local conditions arose through the overlay of Mohammad Reza Shah's oil-based centralization of political power upon the already present, general pattern of an upward flow of wealth that characterized 19th- and 20th-century Iran/Persia. [political anthropology, Middle East, patron-client relations, state power and revenue, Iran]

Volatility of animal wealth among Southwest Asian pastoralists

Accounts of Southwest Asian pastoralism often suggest that wealth in animals is volatile. However, no systematic study has been undertaken to determine either the potential for herd increase and loss or the likely long-term implications of this potential. Drawing on an analysis of data from the Komachi nomads of south-central Iran and other Southwest Asian pastoralists, this paper addresses these questions. It argues that, contrary to conventional expectations, (a) herds in the region do not show potential for dramatic increase; (b) radical shifts in individual economic status are unlikely to occur through normal gains and losses; and (c) to the extent that short-term gains or losses of individual holdings do occur, long-term economic differentiation within a population can be expected.

Geology of Eastern Iran

The Iranian plateau is a triangular area bounded on the north by the Elburz mountain system and on the southwest by the Zagros, the intervening area being arid and having a number of interior basins with no outlet to the ocean. The trends of the bordering mountains and intra-desert areas are in general east-west or northwest-southeast, but north-south trending ranges also exist in central and eastern sections. The country has been brought to this condition by tectonic forces which have faulted and overthrust the bounding ranges and much of the interior and have step-faulted the rocks downward in parts of the east and north. The regional structure is therefore complicated but is intercepted by basins in which more moderate types of folding exist. That the plateau is still in process of elevation is evident from recurrent earthquakes. The maximum composite thickness of the rocks aggregates nearly 100,000 feet. The formations range in age from possibly pre-Cambrian up to Recent, but the oldest positively known strata are Cambrian. Major unconformities exist, of which that at the base of the Cretaceous is the most intensive and far-reaching, but pre-Triassic, pre-Eocene, pre-Pliocene, and post-Pliocene unconformities are also important. Cambrian rocks, although known in a single locality in south-central Iran and not at all farther east and north, are 7000 feet thick in southwestern Iran. Ordovician and Silurian rocks are unknown. Devonian strata, mapped in a few places in the Elburz Mountains and central Iran, have a maximum known composite thickness of about 2000 feet. Carboniferous and Permian are likewise present in considerable areas of the Elburz and central Iran; these systems aggregate about 5000 feet thick in places. Triassic rocks are less common but are known to be over 2000 feet in a few places in central-eastern and northern Iran; Jurassic formations aggregate possibly 10,000 feet in the northeast and occur with lesser thickness in wide areas from south-central Iran to the northern frontier and from the Afghan border to central Iran. Cretaceous rocks amount to over 13,000 feet in extreme north-eastern Iran; they outcrop over wide areas north of the Elburz and numerous areas in central Iran. Tertiary rocks are of great thickness, aggregating in one place or another over 40,000 feet, of which more than half the column is locally Miocene. Eocene rocks, locally over 8000 feet thick, are known north of the Elburz and, in a number of interior basins south of these mountains; and cover wide areas in the East. Quaternary deposits consist mainly of outwash gravels but also include loess in the extreme north and deposits of alluvial nature in many places.