Moving Across the Iranian Plateau

Humans have always moved, initially by foot, and later with the help of animals and carts. We've sometimes moved short distances, sometimes very long ones. Some journeys are made once, some are made multiple times in different directions. When archaeologists have tried to reconstruct patterns of mobility in the past, they can typically identify start and end points, but traditional tools don't consider all of the topographic, environmental, and climatic factors that influenced these journeys.

A new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Research presents a conceptual approach to modelling movement across the Iranian Plateau throughout late prehistory.

The new study by Cameron Petrie, Friederike Jürcke and Toby Wilkinson from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Hector Orengo of the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre uses a novel technique to model corridors of movement across the Iranian Plateau from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. This approach makes it possible to create robust hypotheses about movement based on realistic assessments of the environmental factors and parameters that impacted early movement, helping us understand human dispersal, resource aquisition and exchange.