The fourth millennium BC was a critical period of socio-economic and political transformation in the Iranian Plateau and its surrounding zones. This period witnessed the appearance of the world’s earliest urban centres, hierarchical administrative structures, and writing systems. These developments are indicative of significant changes in socio-political structures that have been interpreted as evidence for the rise of early states and the development of inter-regional trade, embedded in longer-term processes that began in the later fifth millennium BC. Iran was an important player in western Asia especially in the medium- to long-range trade in raw materials and finished items throughout this period. The 20 papers presented here illustrate forcefully how the re-evaluation of old excavation results, combined with much new research, has dramatically expanded our knowledge and understanding of local developments on the Iranian Plateau and of long-range interactions during the critical period of the fourth millennium BC.

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
  • 1. Ancient Iran and Its Neighbours: the state of play.
• Environment, ecology, landscape, and subsistence
  • 2. Mid-Holocene environmental and climatic change in Iran
  • 3. Population and settlement trends in south-west Iran and neighbouring areas
• Sites and regions
  • 4. A bridge between worlds: south-western Iran during the fourth millennium BC
  • 5. Interpreting the role of Godin Tepe in the “Uruk expansion”
  • 6. Some thoughts on the mode of culture change in the fourth-millennium BC Iranian highlands
  • 7. The Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Qazvin and Tehran Plains: a chronological perspective
  • 8. Tepe Hissar and the fourth millennium of north-eastern Iran
  • 9. The Middle Chalcolithic in southern Turkmenistan and the archaeological record of Ilgynly-Depe
  • 10. Mamasani in the fourth millennium BC
  • 11. Northern Fars in the fourth millennium BC: cultural developments during the Lapui phase
  • 12. The Kur River Basin in the Proto-Elamite era – surface survey, settlement patterns, and the appearance of full-time transhumant pastoral nomadism
  • 13. Mahtoutabad I (Konar Sandal South, Jiroft): preliminary evidence of occupation of a Halil Rud site in the early fourth millennium BC
  • 14. Ceramic traditions and interactions on the south-eastern Iranian Plateau during the fourth millennium BC
• Technologies of craft and administration
  • 15. Iranian metallurgy of the fourth millennium BC in its wider technological and cultural contexts
  • 16. Imagery in administrative context: Susiana and the west in the fourth millennium BC
  • 17. The power of writing: administrative activity at Godin Tepe, central Zagros, in the later fourth millennium BC
  • 18. Chronological parameters of the earliest writing system in Iran
• Synthesis and discussion
  • 19. Scales, difference, and mobility
  • 20. Ancient Iran and its neighbours: emerging paradigms and future directions
• Appendices
  • Appendix A: Transcript of conference paper question sessions
  • Appendix B: Transcript of conference discussion sessions
    • Comments and discussion led by Guillermo Algaze
    • Comments and discussion led by Susan Pollock
    • Summation and discussion led by Cameron Petrie