Quartz Usage as a Raw Material and Its Influences on the Strategy of Lithic Technology: Thibault’s Survey Assemblage at the Northern Littoral of Strait of Hormuz 1977; Collection of Iran National Museum

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Hormozgan Provincial Office

Abstract

The 1977 joint French-Iranian geological survey carried out by Thibault and Kadjar, gave rise to one of the important contributions to Paleolithic knowledge on the northern coastline of the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea in the pre-revolutionary years. During this survey, a remarkable lithic collection composed of 160 artifacts with cores, pebble tools, flakes, and flake-tools was collected above a sequence of successive pediment surfaces, but unfortunately, the final report of Paleolithic finds was never published. The lithic collections kept at the Paleolithic Department of National Museum of Iran (NMI). This paper presents the techno-typological characteristics of quartz as a raw material in this collection. The most prominent feature of this collection is the core-flake industry on quartz pebbles and cobbles. Technologically, quartz flaking has been done by direct percussion and bipolar anvil technique. One of the characteristic features of this collection is using bipolar anvil technique that results in small flakes. In addition, pebble tools and core-choppers, retouched pieces including scrapers, notches/denticulated, burins, and borers are tools made from this rock. This collection can be considered as a new insight into the technological behavior of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in this poorly known part of the Iranian plateau. This article investigates the use of quartz as a raw material in the Pleistocene epoch in Thibault’s collection.

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