Yafteh

The Upper Paleolithic cave site of Yafteh located at the foot of Yafteh Mountain at NW of Khoramabad at Western Zagros. The site was located and later excavated by two American archaeologists, Frank Hole and Kent Flannery in 1960’s. The site contained a thick Upper Paleolithic sequence which yielded Early Upper Paleolithic industry rich in bladelets and tools made of them. A number of C14 dates indicate that the site was occupied mainly between 30 to 35 thousands years ago. Hole and Flannery published some results of their excavation at Yafteh in a general paper about their excavations in prehistoric sites in Luristan and Dehluran. The lithic assemblages from 1967 excavations was re-analyzed by Jean-Guilleum Bordes and Sonia Shidrang in 2005 and later these assemblages were the main subject of Shidrang’s MA thesis in 2007 in the University of Ferrara, Italy. The site was re-excavated in 2005 by a joint Belgian-Iranian team directed by Marcel Otte and Fereidoun Biglari and recently excavated again by Otte and Sonia Shidrang in 2008. Yafteh has yielded the largest number of C14 dates from a single Paleolithic site in Iran that are clustered around 28-35 thousands years ago. A rich collection of ornaments 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 rich collection was analyzed and published by Sonia Shidrang in the Iranian Journal of Archaeology and History.

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 Farsi, 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.