LITMIR.BIZ

      Tepe Hissar, an Introduction

      Tepe Hissar was one of the first systematically excavated Bronze Age settlements in the northern Iranian plateau. Two cycles of excavation were undertaken at the site by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (hereafter Penn Museum). In June 1931, the Penn Museum launched its first archaeological expedition to Iran—then Persia—at Tepe Hissar and the monumental Sassanian palace, near the town of Damghan. Erich Schmidt was appointed to direct the project, which lasted until the end of 1932.¹ Almost five decades later, in 1976, another expedition was initiated at Tepe Hissar by the Penn Museum under Robert H. Dyson Jr.,² in collaboration with Maurizio Tosi of the University of Turin, and with the support of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research in Tehran.

      Both cycles of excavation resulted in publications (Schmidt 1931, 1937; Dyson and Howard 1989). While Schmidt’s excavations established the historical framework, Dyson and his team presented a stratigraphically clearer sequence for the site with associated radiocarbon dates. Nevertheless, a full study of the ceramic assemblages has not been published to date. In this publication, the new ceramic sequence from the Tepe Hissar settlement is established and linked to the grave assemblages, which should provide ample evidence for the chronology of the site, the nature of the progression and the abandonment of the settlement, and its chronological correlations on the northern Iranian plateau.

      A. Site Location and Description

      The site of Tepe Hissar (“Castle Hill”) is located on the Iranian Plateau, to the southeast of the Caspian Sea (36° 09’ N, 59° 22’ E), about 1.5 km from the modern city of Damghan (Fig. 0.1). It is situated along the historic east-west trade route between Tehran and Meshed. To its north are the majestic Elburz Mountains that provide the main source of water to the Cheshmeh Ali (Eye of Ali) spring, drained by the Damghan River (Fig. 0.2). To the south are the fringes of the Central Iranian Salt Desert (Dasht-i Kavir).

      The site’s favorable location must have facilitated the movement of prehistoric inhabitants and provided them with a wide range of natural resources, as evidenced by geomorphological and ecological studies (Meder 1989:7–12). Thus, in terms of subsistence strategy, the ancient populations of Tepe Hissar were able to exploit resources from the desert (kavir) to the Elburz range³ and, perhaps, from the Caspian coastal zone which is about 100 km over the mountain range. Diet would have been varied, for “natural resources are distributed around the [Damghan] basin. Equidistant from Tappeh Hesar are the high valley to the north, rich in flint, lead, wood, fruit, deer, stag, boar, fish and fowl and the arid periphery of the kavir to the south with its known occurrences of copper, gold, turquoise and semi-arid fauna with herds of gazelles and onagers” (Dyson and Tosi 1989:6).

      While the principal sustenance of the ancient population derived from different species of domesticated wheat, barley, and lentils, this was combined with a Mediterranean type diet that included wild grape and olive plant foods (Costantini and Dyson 1990).⁴ The diet was supplemented by meat mostly from caprines and cattle. The exploitation of aquatic resources is attested to by fish bones excavated during 1976. Mashkour’s references to the presence of onager (Equus hemionus) and “some cattle principally kept for traction,” indicate uses of onager in herding and distance travel and cattle in plowing.⁵

      Rising six to eight meters above the surrounding plain, Tepe Hissar comprises seven disconnected mounds and flat settlements. As of the mid-1970s (Fig. 0.3), it measured about 600 meters in diameter; roughly 12 hectares of visible mounded occupational remains were partly buried in the alluvial fan of the Damghan River (Meder 1989).