<home # start here # guides # builds # services # shop # about # categories>

One of the most important early Neolithic sites is located in the central Zagros (western Iran, Kermanshah valley). It’s broadly dated to the late PPNA / very early Neolithic horizon (~11,500–10,000 BC, depending on calibration and definition). It is especially famous for early communal architecture and pre-domestication subsistence evidence.

Apart of a different “wing” of the Fertile Crescent zones. Different than Qermez Dere and M’lefaat
Known as the Zagros “core emergence zone” of early village social structure. Its location was in a river valley of the Kermanshah region within Zagros foothills ecotones. Set between upland oak–pistachio woodland, seasonal grasslands and riverine resource zones. In one of the early SW Asian Holocenes richest ecological mosaics.

Asiab is not a dense village like Çatalhöyük. Instead it is a semi-permanent aggregation site, likely used seasonally or repeatedly, associated with mobile groups becoming sedentary and strongly tied to hunting + early animal management.
Yes there is a communal structure

It is famous because excavations identified a large circular/ovoid subterranean structure interpreted as communal
It was a large sunken pit/structure and stone-lined or with defined edges. There was evidence of group-level construction efforts. And, it was associated with special deposits (animal remains and activity concentrations). This was one of the earliest communal architectural expressions in the central Zagros. Comparable in concept to: Göbekli Tepe (symbolic enclosures); Jerf el Ahmar (Levant communal buildings); and Hallan Çemi (Anatolia’s early aggregation structures). Important nuance though, not a “temple” but more likely a shared social/ritual aggregation space.

Circular pit architecture dominates
Likely light superstructures above ground, not standardized rectangular houses yet

Wild grasses and gathered seeds are found
Early wild cereal exploitation wild barley: (Hordeum spontaneum), and wild wheat relatives.

Early goat management signals and hunting
Wild goat (ibex / Capra aegagrus) exploitation. And, hunting of gazelle, wild boar (regionally) and other Zagros fauna

Epipalaeolithic: mobile foragers
Asiab phase (PPNA-like horizon): semi-sedentary aggregation, wild plant harvesting, early animal management and communal structures appear
It was later Zagros Neolithic, like Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh. When full domestication of goat/sheep and stable farming economies appear.

There are limited stratigraphy (not a deep tell)
One major communal structure context with multiple occupation/use episodes within it

Archaeoloists include original excavator Robert Braidwood 1960s
Tobias Richter and collaborators, Zagros early Neolithic research consortium and Academic tradition

The site demonstrates communal construction is not limited to the Levant or Anatolia, Social aggregation existed before farming dominance and that ecology was a transition
Materials were mostly local flint and chert because Obsidian fields were farther away. It was in a resource-rich but non-volcanic zone, dependent on regional exchange for obsidian.

10 to 12 thousand years ago, early Holocene Zagros conditions were different (wetter, expanded woodland, ecologocial diversity, climate instability/pulses)

1. Wetter foothill environment: stronger seasonal rainfall and more reliable springs and rivers;
2. Expanded woodland belt: oak–pistachio forest more extensive and richer browse for goats;
3. High ecological diversity: valley crops (wild cereals), upland hunting zones and riverine resources (fish, reeds, molluscs); and
4. Climatic instability pulses: there were short cooling/drying events (e.g., 8.2 ka event).
   Overall more productive than today

A very early Zagros aggregation site where people gathered in semi-sedentary seasonal groups, built one of the earliest known communal structures in the eastern Fertile Crescent, relied on wild cereals and hunting with emerging goat management, and lived in a wetter, more ecologically diverse early Holocene landscape before full agriculture took hold.

References: Braidwood, L. S., Braidwood, R. J., Howe, B., Reed, C. A., & Watson, P. J. (Eds.). (1983). Prehistoric archeology along the Zagros flanks. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Bangsgaard, Pernille & Yeomans, Lisa & Darabi, Hojjat & Gregersen, Kristian & Olsen, Jesper & Richter, Tobias & Mortensen, Peder. (2019). Feasting on Wild Boar in the Early Neolithic. Evidence from an 11,400-year-old Placed Deposit at Tappeh Asiab, Central Zagros. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 29. 1-21. 10.1017/S095977431900009X.