The Bampur Valley: A New Chronological Development

The study of history gives one access less directly but often noless vividly – to hundreds of years of recorded time. But it is only archaeology, inparticular prehistoric archaeology, that opens up the almost unimaginable vistas ofthousands and even a few millions of years of past human existence (Renfrew &Bahn, 2001: 117). The stratigraphical sequence at Tepe Bampur, which has been dividedinto six periods, was firstly studied by De Cardi in 1966 (Lamberg-Karlovsky &Schmandt-Besserat, 1977: 114). Her chronology is mostly based on pottery classificationcompared with other sites in Iran (Tosi, 1970a: 12), demonstrating similarity over thewhole sequence. According to De Cardi’s chronology, the Tepe Bampur sequence begins withthe mid-third millennium BC and ends in the early centuries of the second millennium BC(Tosi, 1974a: 31). The present paper aims to re-examine the comparative chronology ofTepe Bampur and present a new comparative chronology for the third millennium BCsettlements in the Bampur Valley for the first time. The study is mostly based upon thefirst systematic survey of Tepe Bampur and a non-probabilistic survey in the BampurValley during July 2002 (Mortazavi 2004: 147). These surveys are the first systematicand non-probabilistic surveys of the valley since the time of Stein, and has providedimportant information concerning the settlement patterns and the chronology of the thirdmillennium BC sites. This paper represents the first systematic study of the BampurValley in the Iranian Baluchistan during the third and second millennia BC. This studyalso pilots the first application and review of concepts of settlement patterns andcomparative chronology of the valley based upon the ceramic typology using a combinationof published data and new data recovered during fieldwork in 2002 and a survey in2005