Using early plant remains to understand transmission of farming eastwards through Iran into Asia
with Hannah Caroe
The Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent, whose eastern arc extends along the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, is renowned as a key world area for the origins of domesticated crops and livestock. Hannah’s current research focus is an interrogation of the ‘two corridors’ hypothesis for Neolithisation in Iran which suggests that, owing to Iran’s unique geomorphology (including desert and highland areas which present barriers to movement) transmission of people, animals, plants and ideas eastwards from the Zagros into Iran and, significantly, beyond into South and central Asia would have been funnelled along two ‘corridors’ to the north and south of the country respectively. She is studying charred plant remains from seven sites lying along these hypothesised routes (including in Fars and Mazandaran provinces), aiming to discern when and how Neolithic lifeways arrived in these regions, and any evidence here for de novo local crop domestication beyond the Zagros.
About the speaker:
Hannah Caroe studied for a Human Sciences BA at the University of Oxford (with a module in the archaeology of southern Africa hunter-gatherers) before taking an MPhil in Biological Anthropology at Cambridge, focusing on human evolution. This led to a graduate studentship at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, in which she aimed to combine philosophical, theological and scientific perspectives on humanness. She commenced a DPhil in Archaeological Science at Oxford in 2018, examining archaeobotanical evidence for malting and brewing in early medieval England. Her introduction to the Persianate world was a post-doctoral role at Reading University with Roger Matthews, studying evidence from charred plant remains for the origins and transmission of farming lifeways in sites from Iraqi Kurdistan and the Mazandaran and Fars provinces of Iran. This research into the Iranian Neolithic continues in her current role as Wainwright Fellow with the Oxford Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Faculty.