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emphatically endorsed a Paleolithic occupation of the entire country, though he could say nothing beyond that (Herzfeld 1935, 1). It was not until 1949 that the U.S. physical anthropologist Carleton S. Coon (UM) conducted the first excavations with the objective of discovering the western Asian antecedents to the European Upper Paleolithic. Coon excavated in Hunter’s Cave at Bisitun (Kurdistan), Tamtama Cave near Rezaiyeh (Azerbaijan), and the Khunik rock shelter (southern Khorasan near the Afghan border), all of which contained only Middle Paleolithic deposits. In Belt Cave (Ghar-I Kamarband) on the Caspian foreshore and in nearby Hotu Cave, Coon found evidence of Mesolithic, Neolithic, and later occupations.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a brief flurry of activity in Paleolithic research with projects emanating from Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, and the United States. For example, in 1959 and 1960, robert braidwood (OIC) conducted a survey and excavated several Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites in the region of Kermanshah. Between 1962 and 1964, charles mcburney (University of Cambridge) investigated Mesolithic levels in the cave of Ali Tappeh near Beshshahr (1964) and Middle Paleolithic deposits in Mazandaran (1963). In 1969, McBurney also surveyed a number of rock shelters in the Zagros and a Middle Paleolithic rock shelter (Houmian) in Luristan and as well as several caves in the mountains around Mashad, including a very large one at Moghan. Frank Hole (Rice University) and Kent Flannery (University of Michigan) identified a Middle Paleolithic “main component” at Kunji Cave in the Khorramabad Valley, central-west Iran, in 1963. In the 1960s and 1970s, Paleolithic research concentrated in the Zagros region, but shanidar cave (Iraqi Kurdistan), with its rich Mousterian sequence, is still the preeminent site for the general area. Notwithstanding considerable foreign activity, interest in the Paleolithic among Iranian archaeologists has been virtually nonexistent.
One person’s periphery is another person’s center. By the end of the period from 1959 to 1979 it had become apparent that, far from being peripheral to the development of civilization in western Asia, Iran had played an important part in the Neolithic transition, the development of agriculture and pastoralism, and the development of urbanism. Western and southern Iran had generated polities that had brought about the collapse of the once-mighty Assyrian empire and had gone on to conquer much of western Asia under the Achaemenids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians. In addition, it was now possible to construct a prehistoric chronology for Iran based primarily on internal evidence rather than on parallels to Mesopotamia and other adjacent areas.
Limited references thus far to the work of Iranian archaeologists belies their overall contribution since much of their work has focused on the post-Achaemenid period. For the Parthian period alone, major excavations have been conducted in the Parthian cemetery at Hamadan (M. Azarnoush, ICAR), in the Anahita temple complex at Kangavar (Sayfollah Khambakhsh-Fard, ICAR), and in the city of Bishapur (Ali Akbar Sarfaraz, IAS). Also worthy of note is the extensive survey of Mazanderan and associated excavations at Qal’eh-i Kharab Shar in the late 1970s by M.Y. Kiani (ICAR).
There have also been several major foreign projects that have focused on the post-Achaemenid period. These include excavation of Shahr-i Qumis (ancient Hecatompylos), occupied in the Parthian, Sassanian, and Islamic periods; a Sassanian fire temple at Takht-i Sulaiman; the sprawling elite Sassanian complex at Qal’eh-i Yazdegird; Sirjan, the late Sassanian and early Islamic capital of Kirman Province and largest city in southern Iran by the tenth century a.d.; Islamic Ghubayra; Siraf, the famous medieval seaport on the Gulf, south of Bushire, with trade connections to India, china, and the eastern Mediterranean; and the rich Islamic site of Tepe Dasht-i- Deh.
Archaeological fieldwork came to a virtual standstill in the decade following the Islamic Revolution. In the early 1990s, work resumed on a moderate scale under the supervision of
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