Landscape affordances, GIS, and the hunting landscape of rock art in the Central Iranian Plateau

Abstract

Hunting is the most common narrative scene in the rock art of Iran. This prevalent use of hunting scenes, along with the potential use of some rock art regions for hunting purposes both today and in ancient times, have led to one main interpretation of rock art as depictions made by hunters and in relation to hunting activities in the Central Iranian Plateau. However, this assumption has not been thoroughly tested and is not explored on a broader landscape scale. Using a GIS-landscape approach, this study attempts to analyze the intersection of the petroglyphs, hunting blinds, and landscape affordances to reconstruct the hunting landscape of rock art in the Central Iranian Plateau. Rather than a chronological association, this approach emphasizes how the environmental affordances link the petroglyphs, hunting blinds, and hunting activities within the landscape of rock art. This suggests that the same locations and their capacities could have been recognized and used by different land users, whether contemporaneously or across different periods. Additionally, this paper discusses how the placement of petroglyphs enhanced the readability of the landscape’s affordances in relation to hunting and marked the key areas with hunting potential.