درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The Qara Zia-eddin plain is considered a prime example of land use in Southeastern Urartu in the Khoy region of West Azerbaijan. Since 2016, archaeological investigations have been carried out in the Bastam hinterland through the Iranian-Austrian cooperation with the aim of investigating the interaction of settlements with local hilltop fortresses and the use of landscape use in the time of the Urartian Kingdom. The starting point of the project work was in the south of the Qara Zia-eddin plain, with the special focus on the range of hills near the village of Chors. The Urartian fortified settlement of Anaqizly Tappeh was explored using both geomagnetic and archaeological surveys.

According to historical and geographical sources, Totanjeh has been one of the important cities of Tabaristan in the early Islamic centuries. This city had a military function in the Abbasid period. In historical sources, Toranjeh has been recognized as Borji, Toranji, Torji, Tariji, Toranjir, and Tazhir which is located in the lowland zone between Mamatir (Babol) in South, Mileh (Southeast of Amol) in West and Sari in the East. The noteworthy political and military aspects have focused on the localization of Toranjeh city in early and medieval Islamic periods by historical sources and archaeological findings. On the base of documentary evidence, it can be given that the cultural sequence of the city of Toranjeh is divided into three phases. The formation of the Espahbodan Tabarestan reign, the development phase, and finally the collapse of the Samanid rule in the Mazandaran Marashyan period. The authors in the framework of a program of archaeological research surveyed Abolhasan kola-i- Babol located in the province of Mazandaran. The findings and review of archaeological and historical evidence suggest that the studied area (the village of Abolhasan kola-i- Babol) is the probable location of the city of Toranjeh.

The rock paintings of Iran are extremely significant and after five decades of research on them, nearly twenty different regions have been identified in different parts of the Iranian plateau. Each of these regions has its own unique local style. One of the most important areas is the “Eshkaft-e-Ahou” site, which has been identified for nearly two decades, but unfortunately, no research has been conducted on it. This research, using field and library methods, describes and compares the motifs of this site, and at the end, after investigating the climatic texture of the region, the authors have tried to reconstruct the life style of the creators of the paintings. This area is located in a very impassable region and in the highest area of the Gav-Bast Mountains. In order to reach the site, one must ascent a long distance with a steep slope of the mountain. Due to the characteristics of the motifs of this place and the potential for shelter, it is possible to determine that a small population of hunters have used this place. This rocky shelter is considered a very inappropriate place in contrast to today’s concepts of settlement definitions.

Gender archaeology, the study of gender differences between men and women throughout history, is a significant subject that has evolved into a proper, prominent science in recent decades. Proto-Elamite is among the periods that give us great information regarding the status of genders. The abundance of tablets found from this period is among the oldest middle-eastern written scripts. Many of these are about paying wages to male and female laborers for manufacturing and stockbreeding jobs. Studying these texts provides essential information regarding the status of Iranian Plateau’s women at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. M388 sign is one of the most significant gender signs known. It probably symbolizes a man or a particular social class in proto-Elamite texts. It’s also been used before signs that might show names written using a phonetical structure. M124 is the opposite sign. It was probably considered a female gender sign. It has been used in some tablets or at the beginning of a series of phonetic signs (names). This research attempts to reconstruct two different signs at the beginning of the name sign-series. These signs probably assign gender to the names. Authors read 1500 tablets in Susa. Two hundred ninety-five of these tablets begin with M124 or M388 signs. There are more than 100 phonetic signs. The chances of 295 names being similar are slim. This strengthens our gender-specification hypotheses that M124 and M388 are gender symbols in the name sign-series.

Climatic events, especially severe droughts, have played a key role in cultural evolution and the challenge of civilizations. Climate change, which affects the natural resources and, consequently, the health and subsistence system of human societies, can lead to increased violence, migration, war, and the spread of epidemics. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the possible effects of climate on important events of the Sassanid era. Extensive regions of the Near East and Central Asia have been more vulnerable to droughts, which often recurred during cooling periods, due to semi-arid to hyper-arid environmental conditions. From the second half of the fifth century AD with the beginning of the cold event of the early Middle Ages, the occurrence of droughts and cold waves caused famines and epidemics. These tensions seem to have triggered many social and political events in the Sassanid realm and neighboring regions. These conditions in the sixth and seventh centuries AD caused the gradual decline and eventual fall of the Sassanid government due to Arab invasions. Historical and paleoclimate studies show that successive wars with Central Asian invaders in dry periods, and the frequent outbreak of plague associated with falling temperatures, especially following the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in AD 628, were affecting factors in the dynasty’s weakness and collapse. Besides, some civil wars and revolts, such as the Mazdaki movement, can be considered as indirect effects of climate tensions that contributed to the gradual decline of the Sassanid Empire. 

A regular hexagon is one of the shapes introduced in Plane Geometry and refers to a hexagon with equal sides wherein the size of each angle is 120 degrees. This geometric shape, which can be quickly drawn today, was constructed over a long period in the millennia BC In the Late Neolithic period in Mesopotamia, the primary geometric shapes, including triangles, quadrilaterals, arcs, and circles, were additionally painted on the surface of pottery ware. Naturally, these shapes had been initially drawn by hand, and the sides of the polygons were not comprised of straight lines, or the circles had not been drawn perfectly. However, in the Chalcolithic age, geometric shapes moved away from handmade forms and approached standard ones. This standardization was not possible without drawing tools. In the meantime, the role of compasses or other objects with a similar use was of utmost importance because drawing a circle with such tools paved the way for drawing regular polygons. In fact, from the Late Neolithic, handmade triangles and arcs in the Near East, the first regular hexagon in the late second or the early first millennium emerged over several thousand years. Constructing this geometric shape with the help of standard circles and arcs has been well documented in the Near Eastern archaeological evidence. On the other hand, regular hexagons have been attributed to the second half of the first millennium in the history of mathematics. Therefore, this study reflected on the construction process of this geometric shape and dated its drawing hundreds of years back.