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First radiocarbon dates for a long-standing chronological hiatus in the 7th millennium BCE Neolithic sequence of northeast Iran from Rouyan: A proto-ceramic site east of the Zagros Mountains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2025

Kourosh Roustaei Open the ORCID record for Kourosh Roustaei [Opens in a new window]
Kourosh Roustaei*
Affiliation:
Iranian Center for Archaeological Research, Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Tehran, 1136913431, Iran
*
Corresponding author: Kourosh Roustaei; Email: k.roustaei@richt.ir
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Abstract

The Neolithic of the northeastern Iranian Plateau is defined basically by the materials recovered from the twin mounds of Sang-e Chakhmaq, the West Mound and the East Mound. The radiocarbon dates from these mounds span almost two thousand years, from around 7000 BCE to the last centuries of the sixth millennium BCE, with a chronological hiatus between ca. 6700–6200 BCE. Recent excavations at a proto-ceramic Neolithic site, Rouyan, in the vicinity of Sang-e Chakhmaq, provided occupational evidence, augmented by a series of Radiocarbon dates, which fill in the long-standing temporal hiatus of the Neolithic of the region. Both 14C dates and archaeological evidence from this excavation suggests that Rouyan was founded simultaneously with the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq, but its occupation continued without discontinuity into the fifth millennium BCE. The excavation also yielded a small ceramic assemblage from the earliest deposits of the site, indicating the site’s first settlers were familiar with this technology as early as ca. 7000 BCE.

Keywords

14C datingChakhmaq CultureNeolithicRouyantransition

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Research Article
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Radiocarbon , First View , pp. 1 - 23
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Arizona

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