Yafteh is an
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
cave
A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...
located at the foot of Yafteh Mountain in the
Zagros Mountains
The Zagros Mountains ( ar, جبال زاغروس, translit=Jibal Zaghrus; fa, کوههای زاگرس, Kuh hā-ye Zāgros; ku, چیاکانی زاگرۆس, translit=Çiyakani Zagros; Turkish: ''Zagros Dağları''; Luri: ''Kuh hā-ye Zāgr ...
range, located northwest of
Khoramabad in western
Zagros
The Zagros Mountains ( ar, جبال زاغروس, translit=Jibal Zaghrus; fa, کوههای زاگرس, Kuh hā-ye Zāgros; ku, چیاکانی زاگرۆس, translit=Çiyakani Zagros; Turkish: ''Zagros Dağları''; Luri: ''Kuh hā-ye Zāgr ...
,
Lorestan Province of western
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
.
Description
Yafteh has yielded the largest number of C14 dates from a single Paleolithic site in Iran that are clustered around 28–35 thousand years ago. A rich collection of
ornaments
An ornament is something used for decoration.
Ornament may also refer to:
Decoration
* Ornament (art), any purely decorative element in architecture and the decorative arts
*Biological ornament, a characteristic of animals that appear to serve o ...
made of marine shells, tooth and hematite has been discovered in the early Upper Paleolithic deposits in both early and recent excavations in the Yafteh cave. This collection was analyzed and published by Sonia Shidrang in the ''Iranian Journal of Archaeology and History''.
Archaeological history
The site was found and later excavated by two American archaeologists,
Frank Hole and
Kent Flannery
Kent Vaughn Flannery (born 1934) is a North American archaeologist who has conducted and published extensive research on the pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations of Mesoamerica, and in particular those of central and southern Mexico. He has a ...
, in the 1960s. It contained a thick Upper Paleolithic sequence which yielded bladelets and tools. A number of
C14 dates indicate that the site was occupied mainly between 30 and 35 thousand years ago. Hole and Flannery published some results of their excavation at Yafteh in a general paper about their excavations in prehistoric sites in
Loristan and Dehluran.
The lithic assemblages from 1967 excavations were re-analyzed in 2005 by Bordes and Shidrang and later those assemblages were the main subject of a MA thesis in 2007.
The site was re-excavated in 2005 by a joint Belgian-Iranian team directed by
Marcel Otte
Marcel Otte (born 5 October 1948) is a professor of Prehistory at the Université de Liège, Belgium. He is a specialist in Religion, Arts, Sociobiology, and the Upper Palaeolithic times of Europe and Central Asia. In the book ''Speaking Australo ...
and
Fereidoun Biglari
Fereidoun Biglari ( fa, فریدون بیگلری) () is an Iranian archaeologist and a museum curator.
Career
Fereidoun Biglari is co-founder and head of the Paleolithic department in National Museum of Iran which established in 2001. He is se ...
and excavated again by Otte and Sonia Shidrang in 2008.
See also
*
Baradostian culture
*
*
References
* Hole, F., and Flannery, V (1967) The Prehistory of Southwest Iran: A Preliminary Report. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 33:147-206
* Otte, M., F. Biglari, D. Flas, S. Shidrang, N. Zwyns, M. Mashkour, R. Naderi, A. Mohaseb N. Hashemi, J. Darvish, & V. Radu (2007) The Aurignacian in the Zagros region: new research at Yafteh Cave, Lorestan, Iran, Antiquity 81:82-96
* Shidrang, S. (2006) The Zagros Aurignacian: The Perspective from Yafteh, Iran. 2006 ASOR Annual Meeting, Abstract Book, p. 34, Philadelphia.
* Shidrang, S. (2007) The Early Upper Paleolithic Ornamental objects from Yafteh Cave and Pa Sangar Rockshelter, Lurestan. Iranian Journal of Archaeology and History 41:38-44. (In Persian, with an English abstract.)
* Shidrang, S. (2007) - The Early Upper Paleolithic lithic assemblages from F15 test pit (2005), Yafteh cave, Iran: A typo-technological study, Master thesis, Universita degli studi di Ferrara, Italy.
* Shidrang S., Otte M., Bordes JG. (2020) Yafteh Cave. In: Smith C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_3270
{{Authority control
Caves of Iran
Archaeological sites in Iran
Landforms of Lorestan Province
Prehistoric Iran
National works of Iran