Excavations at the Prehistoric Mound of Chogha Bonut, Khuzestan, Iran: Seasons of 1976/77, 1977/78, and 1996.

AuthorAlden, John R.
PositionBook review

Excavations at the Prehistoric Mound of Chogha Bonut, Khuzestan, Iran: Seasons of 1976/77, 1977/78, and 1996. By ABBAS ALIZADEH. Oriental Institute Publications, vol. 120. Chicago: THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE, 2003. Pp. xxi + 159, plates. $95.

Chogha Bonut, one of the earliest Neolithic settlements in lowland Iran, came to the attention of archaeologists as it was being bulldozed during a land-leveling operation in 1976. Helene Kantor, director of the Oriental Institute's Chogha Mish project, stopped the destruction, and during the next two winters she carried out salvage excavations at the site. That work uncovered several levels of Late Middle to Late Susiana (4800-4400 B.C.) architecture and, below that, several levels of Formative and Archaic Susiana (7000-6600 B.C.) habitation. A stratigraphic trench excavated in 1977-78 demonstrated the presence of an even earlier Aceramic Neolithic (7200 B.C.) occupation at the site. But the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War interrupted archaeological work in the region, and during those chaotic years much of the material that had been stored in the Chogha Mish dig house, both documents and artifacts, disappeared.

In 1996 Abbas Alizadeh, a senior research associate at the Oriental Institute, returned to Chogha Bonut to investigate the earliest stages of village life in lowland Iran. He excavated a 5x5 meter square and a stratigraphic trench about 1.5x8 meters in extent, in deposits dating from the earliest stage of the Archaic Susiana down through the Aceramic Neolithic to virgin soil. The volume reviewed here presents the results, as far as they are available, of all three seasons of excavation at Chogha Bonut.

Site reports like this are the building blocks of archaeological study, providing the information that professionals use to construct interpretive syntheses and design hypotheses to be tested. They are descriptive accounts, relating the procedures that were followed during an excavation and telling what was found, what it looked like, and where it came from. The crucial issues in a site report, therefore, involve data. Is the presentation clear and accurate? Can readers quickly and easily find the information they need, and can the report be used to address questions the excavator may not have considered? Because my answers to these questions will in part be critical, I want to preface my comments with a note of appreciation.

There are far too many archaeological excavations that have never...

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