Lunates out of the Fertile Crescent: Neolithic Chipped Stone Industry of Southeast Iran and Baluchistan, Pakistan

In this article the chipped stone industry from Neolithic sites in southeast Iran and Baluchistan is introduced with regard to aspects such as technology structure, tool typology and morphology. The chipped stone assemblages are from Neolithic sites including Tepe Yahya, Gaz Tavileh, Kuhbanan in Kerman and Mehrgarh and Kili gul Muhammad in Balochistan, Pakistan. Discovery of PPN site of Tell-i Atashi in Kerman resulted in clarification of the common charachteristics of the Neolithic chipped stone assemblages of the region which should be introduced both typologically and chronologically distincted from the chipped stone assemblages of the Fertile Crescent. So far, most of the Neolithic researches in Iran have been concentrated on Zagros Mountains, but the presence of a clearly distinct Neolithic chipped stone industry in southeast Iran and Balochistan Pakistan, which is characterized by abundance of lunate and backed tools, indicates that although the region deserves more intense archaeological studies, the archaeologists have ignored it because of climatic and geomorphological conditions. Lunates and backed tools in the Neolithic chipped stone assemblage of the area are extensively made and functioned in composite hunting tools at earlier phases, but with the expansion of agriculture their function shifted into inserts used in composite sickles.