Over the Hills and Far Away: Modeling Mobility and Connectivity Across the Iranian Plateau in Late Prehistory (c. 10,000–2000 BC) Using Multi-factor Probabilistic Corridors

Abstract

Archaeologists have long been interested in mobility in the past, but tend to think about and visualize movement in simplified ways that do not account for the range of topographic, environmental, and climatic factors that influenced it. The Iranian Plateau is akin to a number of regions around the globe characterized by dramatic diversity in topography, natural resources, and climate that present local and regionally varied affordances and restrictions, which influenced the ways humans inhabited, exploited, and moved. Environmentally sensitive cognitive maps, developed by human communities over centuries, are likely to have guided localized decision making across these regions. These are only detectable in the large-scale cumulative effects on archaeological assemblages. This paper reviews previous approaches to modeling movement used by archaeologists—particularly least-cost paths—and presents an implementation of a novel computational method to model corridors of long-distance mobility in the past that is sensitive to environmental diversity. Three case studies relevant to movement across the topographically and environmentally complex landscapes of the Iranian Plateau have been chosen to demonstrate the applicability of modeling movement corridors between locations of archaeological relevance: (1) the initial dispersal of farming practices to the east of the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic; (2) the redistribution of exotic raw materials and dispersal of administrative technology in the Late Chalcolithic; and (3) the long-range exchange networks of the Bronze Age. By investigating chronologically distinct case studies across one geographical area, this paper presents a mechanism for reconstructing networks of movement that are responsive to human decision making in the longue durée .