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Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 88.4 (December 2025)

Pp. 260–271: “Burial Practices of the Bronze Age: An Archaeological Study of the Deh Dumen Cemetery in Southern Zagros, Iran” by Reza Naseri and Morteza Khanipour

Recent rescue excavations at the Deh Dumen cemetery near the Khersan III Dam in the southern Zagros identified 20 graves. This study, based on the first excavation season, sheds light on burial practices and cultural connections of local people in the Bronze Age. Likely within Elamite territory, the cemetery includes stone and jar graves for different social groups. The excavations yielded nearly 145 artifacts, including pottery, metal, and stones. The presence of imported items, such as lapis lazuli from Central Asia and metal artifacts from the Indus Valley, indicates extensive trade relations and cultural contacts with southeastern and northeastern Iran. These findings suggest that the Zagros region had access to a trade route connecting East and West and maintained strong connections with other Elamite communities during the Bronze Age. PLEASE NOTE: This article contains images of human skeletal remains.

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Pp. 272-281: “Time Capsules: Evidence for Foundation and Abandonment Practices at Middle Bronze Age Erimi, Cyprus” by Luca Bombardieri and Marialucia Amadio

This article focuses on the analysis of settlement building and abandonment activities and their impact on the formation of community ideologies and ideas. Specifically, the evidence of social practices will be discussed for Prehistoric Cyprus, taking the example of the Middle Bronze Age community at Erimi in South coastal Cyprus. Through the discussion of specific evidence recovered from the workshop complex and domestic areas at this site, we aim to explore the possible connection of construction and abandonment activities with ritualized practices performed by the community to ensure and sustain long-term social cohesion and construct social memory and communal identity.

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Pp. 282-291: “Āb Bād Rock-cut Tomb: Tracking Post-Achaemenid Burial Customs in Qir-o Karzin, Southern Pars, Iran” by Parsa Ghasemi, Leila Ghasemi, Alireza Mehrabi, and Aziz Rezaei

This article examines a newly discovered rock-cut tomb in Āb Bād village, Qir-o Karzin county, Iran. The tomb features a simple design with a single chamber and a burial cavity, or cist. Its facade is constructed with three overlapping rectangular registers in a stepped arrangement, devoid of decoration or relief. This reflects architectural continuity from Achaemenid rock tombs (550–330 BCE). Based on current survey evidence, it is highly probable that the construction of this tomb dates to the post-Achaemenid period (330 BCE–224 CE) and likely belonged to a high-ranking local ruler or noble of Pars under the Parthian Empire.

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Pp. 292-303: “First Observations on the Excavations in the Terrace Area of Uluköy Cave, Mardin/Türkiye” by Ergül Kodaş, Eşref Erbil, Charlotte Labedan Kodaş, and Mehmet Şan

The emergence of sedentary societies in southeastern Anatolia has been the focus of numerous studies in recent years, particularly those concentrating on Early Neolithic mound settlements located along the riverbanks of the Euphrates Basin and the Tigris Valley. However, research on the Late Epipaleolithic communities in this region remains limited. Currently, our knowledge of the early phase of the transition to sedentary lifestyle in southeastern Anatolia is based on information gathered from only five archaeological sites, most of which are situated along the Tigris: Körtik Tepe, Çemka Höyük, Boncuklu Tarla, Biris Mezarlığı, and Söğüt Tarlası. Recently, the excavation of Ulukoy Cave in 2023 and 2024, located in the Mardin Range, led to the discovery of Epipaleolithic architectural features and lithic tools in its terrace. This article presents our initial observations from this archaeological site.

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Pp. 304-312: “Potential Use of the Small-Eyed Needle from Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic Baʿja in Jordan” by Bellal Abuhelaleh, Hans G. K. Gebel, Carmela Vaccaro, and Ursula Thun Hohenstein

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites in Jordan represent important stages in the evolution of human social structures in the Middle East. These sites reveal a remarkably complex social differentiation, as well as cultural and technological advances that paved the way for stratified socioeconomic structures in the Transjordanian Highlands. One important Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic site is Baʿja (ca. 7200–6800 BCE). Dr. Hans K. Gebel and his team from the Free University of Berlin first excavated Baʿja in 1984. Excavations resumed in 1997 and continue today. This article examines a particular bone tool: a very thin, cylindrical eyed needle, recovered in the lowermost layer of Baʿja stratigraphy. The object is notable for its dimensional smallness. In order to gather more information about its possible production technique and use, the researchers conducted a scientific experiment to produce a replica similar to the original Baʿja eyed needle.

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Pp. 314-323: “Recent Progress in Deciphering Proto-Elamite” by M. Willis Monroe, Kathryn Kelley, Logan Born, and Anoop Sarkar

Within about a century of the earliest inventions of writing in southern Iraq and Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BCE, a third writing system was invented in southwestern Iran. This writing is called proto-Elamite, and it has remained undeciphered, even though a large number of tablets (now over 1,700) have been available for study since the early twentieth century. The name proto-Elamite is a conventional label, not meant to imply a known language, that was coined by V. Scheil. Proto- Elamite is a distinct corpus from the much later Linear Elamite writing system. With increasing digital documentation of this corpus, new avenues of research have opened, and over the past five years an interdisciplinary team of researchers has been making insights by combining traditional knowledge of the corpus with techniques developed in computational linguistics.

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Pp. 324-337: “Insights into Shogha-Taimuran Pottery: Exploring Making Centers and Cultural Significance” by Habib Emadi and Ali Aarab

The Shogha-Taimuran period refers to the second half of the second millennium BCE in the Kur River Basin of southwestern Iran, characterized by two visually distinct yet contemporaneous pottery types. To elucidate the causes of these distinctions, Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) were conducted on the samples. Previous researchers posited Tol-e Darwazeh as the production center for Shogha-Taimuran pottery. However, this study reveals that Tol-e Taimuran also served as a production center, indicating different origins for some Taimuran pottery types and reflecting two distinct pottery traditions in the mid-second millennium BCE (Middle Elam). Analyses of Taimuran pottery, alongside other site findings, indicate connections with other areas, positioning Tol-e Taimuran as a potential main center for Shogha-Taimuran culture following the abandonment of Tol-e Malyan.

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