ALI KOSH

Map showing location of Ali Kosh and other locations of early herding activity. Neolithic sites in Iran

Location : Ilam Province

Region : Iran

Diameter : 135 m

History

Cultures : Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Site notes

Discovered : 1960s

Archaeologists : Frank Hole, Kent Flannery

Ali Kosh is a small Tell of the Early Neolithic period located in Ilam Province in west Iran, in the Zagros Mountains. It was excavated by Frank Hole and Kent Flannery in the 1960s.

Site :

The site is about 135 m in diameter.

Research has found three phases of occupation of the site over an almost 2,000 period, starting from about 9,500 years ago (7500 BCE). It was occupied originally by pre-pottery peoples.

Pottery was introduced to Ali Kosh during the third phase of its occupation. Nearby Chogha Sefid has only one pre-pottery phase, after which the occupation extended into the Chalcolithic period.

Area of the fertile crescent, circa 7500 BC, with main sites. Ali Kosh is one of the important sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not yet settled by humans

Earliest agriculture :

Ali Kosh was the earliest agricultural community in western Iran, where emmer was already cultivated in the eighth millennium BC. This crop was not native to the area. Wild two-row hulled barley was also present. Goats and sheep were also herded.

Similar site on the Deh Luran plain is Chogha Sefid, and also Tepe Abdul Hosein in Luristan. All three have similar stone tools. Ganj Dareh in Luristan (seen on the map), also similar, is even somewhat older than these.

Genetic analysis :

Human remains from the area have been analyzed in 2016 for their ancestry. Researchers sequenced the genome from a 30-50 year old woman from Ganj Dareh. mtDNA analysis shows that she belonged to Haplogroup X (mtDNA).

Skull modification :

In 2017, several skeletons were found by archaeologists in Ali Kosh. 7 crania were found, all showing the evidence of ritual cranial deformation.

"The most striking feature of all crania was their more or less pronounced artificial deformation that was evident in spite of post-mortem alteration and fragmentation of all crania. In all cases circumferential modification was evident, resulting from application of a band wrapped around the cranium ... Artificial cranial deformation was common in the Near East and especially in Iran during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic..."

Previously, similar crania were already excavated in the area by Hole and Flannery.

Ritual tooth avulsion :

Another unusual cultural practice observed by researchers in these skulls was the ritual front tooth avulsion (removal of one or more teeth). Such a practice was quite common around the world in ancient times.

"Another cultural modification of the head observed at Ali Kosh was avulsion of the upper right first incisor in all adult males, but not in children nor adolescent individuals. ... Tooth avulsion was common during the Early Holocene in North Africa, and it was also occasionally observed in the Natufian culture ..."

According to these researchers, such a custom has not been previously reported for the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent.

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Ali_Kosh