A Preliminary Analysis of Prehistoric Pottery from Carleton Coon's Excavations of Hotu and Belt Caves in Northern Iran: Implications for Future Research into the Emergence of Village Life in Western Central Asia

This paper presents reconstructed excavation plans and stratigraphic profiles of the 1949 and 1951 excavations of Hotu and Belt Caves (Ghar-e Hotu and Ghar-e Kamarband) in northern Iran based on examination of Carleton Coon’s unpublished field notes and drawings in the University of Pennsylvania Museum، Harvard University and Smithsonian Institution archives. Recalculated and calibrated radiocarbon dates of early Mesolithic to post-Achaemenid period occupations of these caves are also presented in the context of cultural horizons or stratigraphic units from which assays were supposedly obtained. However، inconsistencies in the methods used in the recovery and recording of discoveries at both Hotu and Belt Caves (combined with the wide range of statistical variability associated with early ‘conventional’ radiocarbon dating techniques) prevent a high-resolution occupational sequence from being developed، and inferences on trajectories of cultural influence from being conclusively drawn. These uncertainties underline the pressing need for further fieldwork aimed at uncovering the natural and cultural processes giving rise to the emergence of village life in western Central Asia following the last Ice Age.