Radical Restructuring in an Early Village: Rahmatabad (Fars Province, Iran) in the Fifth Millennium BCE

The archaeological site of Rahmatabad was excavated as part of a series of rescue projects during dam construction in the Bolaghi gorge near Pasargadae. The site lies at a strategic point where the Sivand river exits from the gorge. It has a long Neolithic sequence spanning aceramic to ceramic periods, but it is the early Chalcolithic period that is particularly well represented, with two major settlement phases from the Middle Bakun period. In our paper, we provide new information on the evidence recovered in 2005 on these two phases, their architecture, spatial organization of functions and settlement structure. The two Bakun phases are starkly different in terms of durability of buildings, the degree of planned layout and the diversity of installations. We discuss to what extent portable finds help us understand these rapid and fundamental changes. Finally, we integrate the evidence from 5th millennium Rahmatabad into larger discourses about Bakun period socio-political developments.