Ali Mousavi

Late Bronze Age in North-Eastern Iran: An Alternative Approach to Persisting Problems

Abstract The break in the chronology of the second millennium B.C. in northern Iran has always been a major problem for archaeologists. A number of studies have been devoted to the widespread distribution of the pottery in northwestern Iran as a sign of “considerable cultural uniformity”. It seems that there are close affinities in material culture that exist between the data available from the sites in the north-east and those of the central regions of the Iranian Plateau. This is why a reassessment of archaeological evidence from both the old and recent excavations and surveys in the north-east, along with other less explored fields such as population pressure and environmental factors, is useful in understanding the chronology of the second millennium in northern Iran.