The period c. 10,000-5000 BC witnessed fundamental changes in the human condition with societies across the Fertile Crescent shifting their alignment from millennia-old practices of seasonally mobile hunting and foraging to year-round sedentism, plant cultivation and animal herding. The significant role of Iran in the early stages of this transition was recognised more than half a century ago but has not been to the fore of academic consciousness in recent decades. In the meantime, investigations into Neolithic transformation have proceeded apace in all other regions of the Fertile Crescent and beyond. Here, 18 studies attempt to redress that balance in re-assessing the role of Iran in the early neolithisation of human societies.
These studies, many of them by Iranian scholars, consider patterns of change and/or continuity across a variety of topographical landscapes; investigate Neolithic settlement patterns, the use of caves, animal exploitation and environmental indicators and present new insights into some well-known and some newly investigated sites. The results re-affirm the formative role of this region in the transition to sedentary farming.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ preface
• List of contributors
• Chapter 1: The Neolithisation of Iran: Patterns of Change and Continuity
• Chapter 2: Investigating the Neolithisation of Society in the Central Zagros of Western Iran
• Chapter 3: Neolithic Settlement Patterns of the Sarfirouz Abad Plain, Central West Zagros
• Chapter 4: Tappeh Sarab-e Yavari: A Neolithic Site with Tadpole Ware on the Kermanshah Plain, West Central Zagros
• Chapter 5: The Neolithisation Process in the Seimarreh Valley: Excavations at East Chia Sabz, Central Zagros
• Chapter 6: Revisiting Neolithisation in the Zagros Foothills: Excavations at Chogha Golan, An Aceramic Neolithic site in Ilam Province, Western Iran
• Chapter 7: Proto-Neolithic Caves and Neolithisation in the Southern Zagros
• Chapter 8: The Neolithisation of Fars, Iran
• Chapter 9: Tepe Rahmatabad: a Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic Site in Fars Province
• Chapter 10: Mapping the Neolithic Occupation of the Kashan, Tehran and Qazvin Plains
• Chapter 11: Tepe Khaleseh, a Late Neolithic Site in Zanjan Province
• Chapter 12: Animals and People in the Neolithisation of Iran
• Chapter 13: Sediments, Soils and Livelihood in a Late Neolithic Village on the Iranian Plateau: Tepe Sialk
• Chapter 14: Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq: Investigations of a Neolithic Site in Northeastern Iran
• Chapter 15: Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq: A New Look
• Chapter 16: Northeastern Iran in the Neolithic: the Site of Pookerdvall
• Chapter 17: The Late Neolithic Site of Rashak III Rock Shelter, Mazandaran, Iran
• Chapter 18: Tell-e Atashi (Bam, Southeastern Iran) and the Neolithic of the Eastern Near East