British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Complexity on the margin: environmental change and socio-economic transformation in the Tehran plain
Professor Robin Coningham (University of Durham) on behalf of the British Institute of Persian Studies
The Tehran Plain has traditionally been interpreted as a marginal zone outside the precocious development of Mesopotamia. Although this has been attributed to the unstable alluvial fans of the Elburz Mountains, fieldwork suggests that a unique tradition of pyrotechnology emerged there in the fifth millennium BC.
This research was facilitated by the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS), in collaboration with the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft Organisation (ICHTHO) and the Universities of Tehran, Durham, Leicester and Bradford. It was funded by BIPS, The British Academy and the ICHTHO.
Summary
Traditional studies of the development of early urbanisation, social complexity and craft specialisation in the Near East have focused on the benefits of location within Mesopotamia’s lowlands. With access to the resources of the Tigris and Euphrates, the world’s first states pioneered irrigation agriculture and spread as their demand for raw materials and land increased. In direct contrast, communities on the 
Indo-Iranian Plateau have been portrayed as backward neighbours, benefiting from the earlier experiments in Mesopotamia. The Tehran Plain has been portrayed as a particularly marginal zone, away from the passes through the Zagros Mountains, and subject to frequent shifts in river and stream course.
In order to study the relationship between landscape change and human habitation in the Tehran plain, a team of archaeologists, geomorphologists and environmental archaeologists launched a programme of survey and excavation. Utilising a multidisciplinary methodology, which blends traditional survey and excavation with OSL dating and ICP-MS chemical characterisation, it is becoming clear that the plain’s human communities were significantly influenced by heavy sedimentation rates and shifting water resources within the alluvial fans of the plain. This general instability in settlement location remained within the plain until the development of the underground qanat channel system in the historic period.
However, far from remaining subject to the vagaries of the water supply, the inhabitants of one prehistoric settlement, Tepe Pardis, adapted early to the unstable fan environment by utilising their adjacent clay deposits. Developing an almost industrial rate of ceramic production by c. 5000 BC and cutting artificial channels parallel to the natural courses of the fan, this community managed both their water resources and their changing environment.
Other contributors
Dr Hassan Fazeli