Excavation at Toll-e Gap of Kenareh Marvdasht, Fars

After years of excavations and surveys in Kur River Basin and in Fars province, there are still major problems and huge unanswered questions in the local chronological sequence. Archaeological excavations and surveys showed that the number of settlements was greatly reduced after the Tall-i Malyan urban phase (Middle Banesh phase, late 4th and early 3rd millennia B.C.) whereas few evidences illustrate the subsequent Late Banesh phase. There are discontinuities in the chronological sequences of most of the sites excavated up to now between middle Banesh and Kaftari epochs. Considering archaeological surveys, soundings and C14 dating, it seems that the Kur River Basin consequently faced a remarkable population reduction in the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. Sumner proposed to consider the mid-3rd millennium B.C. as a gap between late Banesh (2800-2600 B.C.) and early Kaftari (2200-1900 B.C.) phases, suggesting that during this interval, most of the inhabitants of the Kur River Basin turned to pastoralism, explaining the sparsely occupation of this territory. This view relied on evidences from ABC trench cultural layers in Tall-i Malyan, on C14 absolute dating, on the discontinuity between Banesh and Kaftari surveyed settlements and on an obvious recess in the pottery sequence in the Kur River Basin. Recently published evidences from trench H5 and new excavation in H1s sounding in Tall-i Malyan, however slightly modified this scenario and pointed on a certain continuity between Banesh and Kaftari periods in Tall-i Malyan. Regarding the current archaeological information, it seems necessary to excavate sites with both Banesh and Kaftari periods to explore the 3rd millennium B.C. in Fars. Through visits and surveys in the Kur River Basin, the authors decided to open trenches in Toll-e Gap Kenareh in order to get more information about this crucial period. Toll-e Gap Kenareh is located 5 Km southwestward of Persepolis and 3 Km northeastward of Marvdasht in the Kur River Basin. Covering around 0.5 hectare, it is situated 1629 m above the sea level and is 4 m higher than the current surrounding plain. Toll-e Gap was firstly excavated by L. Vanden Berghe in the 1950s for two days while Alizadeh presented the site as belonging to Shogha, Iron Age III, Achaemenid, Sasanian, and Islamic periods. The first season of excavation at Toll-e Gap was conducted in Sept/Oct 2012 to identify the cultural stratified sequence of the site and to get relative and absolute dating for the 3rd millennium B.C. Fars. Two trenches (A and B) were excavated during this season of excavation on the east and west sides of the site and reached the virgin soil at 5.3 m depth. Recovered materials include potsherds, bone fragments, metal, stone, glass objects, tokens, and so on. According to the recovered potsherds and comparing them to the other sites of the Kur River Basin, it can be inferred that the chronological sequence found in Toll-e Gap Kenareh displays early Islamic, Sasanian, early Kaftari, and Banesh (early, middle, and late?) periods. Toll-e Gap Kenareh open then new horizons in the archaeology of Fars during the 3rd millennium B.C, above all for the transition between the well-known Banesh and Kaftari periods. Above Kaftari Period layers, there is a Sasanian Period settlement, which shows that this site has been used temporarily during the Sasanian Period. The more recent artifacts in this site belong to the 9th and 10th centuries A.D., and as the site is close to Estakhr, its function could have been related to this city.