Ethnoarchaeology of the Migration Routes of Summer Pastures around Mount Savalan

The Shahsevan tribes are the largest nomadic tribes in the northeastern of Iran. Every year, these tribes move from the northern parts of Ardabil province to the north, to the summer pastures of Sabalan Mountain, and spend about half of the year in these areas, living as nomads. The present study was carried out by means of an extensive archeological field study in Meshginshahr plain and the western and northern slopes of Savalan. The main hypothesis of the research is based on the fact that the present-day migration routes of the Shahsevan tribes are 3,000 years old and these migration routes have been used by the iron age nomadic tribes around the end of the second millennium B.C, before these tribes. Such a hypothesis has been tested with an archaeological field study during the present-day's routes of the Shahsevan tribes. In the study area, 15 current roads belonging to Shahsevan tribes were identified. The archaeological field research has shown that a large number of iron age archaeological sites are located longitudinally and in a ridge, parallel to the present-day migration routes. More than 90% of these sites are iron age cemeteries that are unrelated to the settlement sites and certainly belong to the iron age nomadic tribes, and these sites are both along the migration routes and located in the present-day summer pastures of Shahsevans. The results of this research indicate that the Shahsevan tribes have inherited (with a slight change) the same routes that the iron age tribes used to reach the slopes of Savalan.