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The Origins of State Organizations in Prehistoridc Highland Fars, Southern Iran: Excavations at Tall-e Bakun A

by Abbas Ailzadeh

The late prehistoric Bakun A culture in Fars is a major source of information on the initial development of the evolutionary path which vertical mobile pastoralists of highland Iran may have taken to develop state organisations. Long before the appearance of administrative technology and physical segregation of administration, production, storage, and residential units in urban centers of the second half of the fourth millennium BC, Tall-e Bakun A, near Persepolis in the Marv Dasht region of Fars, stands as one of the precursors to the complex societies of the fourth millennium BC early urban centres. The present publication presents the final report of the last season's excavations at Tall-e Bakun A. The archaeological materials from this season are combined with the results of other pertinent data from surveys and excavations in the Near East to provide a foundation upon which pre-state social evolution in late prehistoric highland Fars has been reconstructed and interpreted. Based on the analysis of the available archaeological data as well as historical and ethnographic sources, Alizadeh argues that the specialised manufacture and administrative aspects at Tall-e Bakun A indicate the existence of differential status at the site, where a few families or ranking individuals controlled the manufacture and flow of goods. 300p, 41 charts, 76 figures, 25 plates and 41 tables (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 2005)

Review Quote

"This archaeological site report offers a stimulating theoretical perspective and a substantive description of settlement analysis and excavation.[...]Thoroughly admirable is the combining of closely argued theoretical perspectives with archaeological date recovered from survey and excavation.[...]This report can be profitably read by all archaeologists working in the Near East. It is a model of theoretical discourse in the presence of a speceifc body of data."

C.C. Lamberg-Karlocsky
Journal of Anthropological Research (2008)

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