Mid-Holocene Environmental and Climatic Change in Iran

Past climate and environmental change is of longstanding and fundamental interest to archaeologists. A number of recent syntheses have examined the role of climate change and environmental modification in understanding the rise, spread, and in some instances collapse of early complex societies across southwest Asia (e.g. Staubwasser and Weiss 2006). In an Iranian context, various scholars have highlighted the role of human-environment interactions in the expansion of Neolithic communities, in the growth and decline of Chalcolithic pastoral societies, and for the development of the first urban societies (e.g. Hole 1994, 1998; Henricksen 1985; Miller and Kimiae 2006). Here we review proxy evidence of climatic and environmental conditions to provide an independent background to societal development in Iran during the fourth millennium BC. To put the fourth millennium BC (i.e. 5000 to 6000 years BP) into a long-term context, we look at the evidence for climate and environmental change from the early to mid-Holocene (c. 10000 to 2000 years BP). Antecedent conditions are particularly useful 1 in framing the magnitude and rapidity of climatic changes. As continuous records of change are relatively scarce from Iran itself and those that are available have limited spatial extent, we also draw on records from wider south-west Asia.