New Chronology for the Middle Paleolithic Sequence of Kaldar Cave; Insights from the Third Excavation Season

Subject Areas : Archaeology

Behrouz Bazgir ¹ , Elham Baharvand ² , Moloudsadat Azimi ³ , Jan van der Made ⁴

1 - Area de Prehistòria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Fac. de Lletres, Avenue Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain
2 - Area de Prehistòria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Fac. de Lletres, Avenue Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain
3 - Iran’s Research Institute for Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism, Tehran, Iran
4 - Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.

Received: 2022-04-14 Accepted : 2022-09-13 Published : 2022-09-30

Keywords: dating, Thermoluminescence, Middle Paleolithic, Zagros Chronology, Kaldar Cave,

Abstract :

As a key archaeological site, Kaldar Cave provides evidence of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Iran. It is also one of the earliest sites with cultural materials attributed to early AMHs in western Asia. Apart from the earlier obtained dates from its Upper Paleolithic sequence, we provide here the recent obtained Thermoluminescence date from the layer 5. In this paper, we elaborate and corelate this dating to a broader discussion within the Zagros Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites. In this study, we also present a brief information on the freshly recovered lithic industries, Paleontological data, the obtained T.L dating and its position in the stratigraphic sequence