Papers by Marjan Mashkour
International audienceDuring the 1994 campaign of excavation in the interior of the site Mleiha (... more International audienceDuring the 1994 campaign of excavation in the interior of the site Mleiha (Sharja, U.A.E.), a necropole contemporaneous of the Greco-Roman period has been exposed, turning our attention to the privileged statute of some animals. Several human graves were indeed associated with camelids graves. In one case, one of the graves housed both a Camelid and an Equid. Anthropological studies will throw light on the specific Man/Animal relationships, still little unknown in this part of the world
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1998
Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003
Bastanshenasi, 2006
International audienc
ICHTO, 2003
International audienc
International audienceThis paper reports on a recent discovery of a cave-site with probable Middl... more International audienceThis paper reports on a recent discovery of a cave-site with probable Middle Pleistocene remains that seems to be the first known Lower Paleolithic cave site in Iran. Darband Cave is located on the north side of a deep canyon at southern slopes of Mount Dorfak, an extinct volcano at western Alborz. The site was discovered by V. Jahani in 2005, and revisited by Biglari, Jahani and Shidrang in 2006 who collected a sizeable number of faunal remains and 25 stone artifacts from disturbed deposit along the western wall of the cave.Flakes makeup the majority of the artefacts which mostly show some retouch that would allow us to classify them as marginal retouched flakes, scrapers, notched, awls, and end-scrapers. The collection also includes one core (core-chopper), some unretouched flakes, flake fragments, and debris. The faunal assemblage from the cave is dominated by cave bears, with a few ungulate remains. From the preliminary observations and considering the limited number of the bones it is possible to allocate these remains to Spelarctos deningeri. Remains of cave bears are absent at Palaeolithic cave-sites in the Zagros region and elsewhere in Iran; Draband Cave therefore represents the first evidence for this taxon from Iran. The presence of this carnivore at Darband Cave seems to be the farthest extension of the Caucasian population of Pleistocene cave bears to the southeast
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Papers by Marjan Mashkour
Food subsistence was mainly provided by fishing and gathering activities in the mouth of the Wadi Aday which drains the mangrove. Also terrestrial (small ruminants and dog) and marine mammals (dolphin) as well as reptiles (green and leatherback turtle) were also exploited.
Shells and fish remains represent the largest amount of ecofacts discovered at the site. The first are mostly constituted by Potamidae, Ostreidae, Arcidae, Pteridae and Strombidae families. The second indicates that available inshore habitats where exploited, including the mangrove swamp and nearby corals and that large pelagic species such as Scombridae and Carangidae families where particularly targeted.
The results presented here bring new data on coastal human adaptation during the Early/Middle Holocene along the southeastern shore of the Arabian Peninsula.