Ancient Mining and Local Obsidian Sources in Miyaneh Region and Its Synchrony with Archaeological Sites and Artifacts in Eastern Parts of the Lake Urmia, NW IRAN
Director: Dr. Akbar Abedi
Partners: Dr. M. B. Kasiri, B. Vosugh, Q. Ebrahimi and M. Razani

Obsidian has a special significance in archaeological studies. Identifying and Survey of ancient mines and its synchrony with archaeological sites and artifacts is a hard work but it provides good opportunity for understanding the regional and inter-regional relations between the societies and also their subsistence and economies. Ancient mining is one of the most difficult parts of archaeological and archaeometrical research. For this study, two central and fundamental questions were raised:
1)  Due to existance of volcanic mountains (Bozghoush and Sabalan) in eastern parts of Lake Urmia is there any obsidian mine, source or outcrop is identifiable?
2)  What is the realtion between the possible obsidian mines and archaeological sites around the Lake Urmia Basin?
Since no ancient mining activity taken place in the Lake Urmia Basin in North Western Iran, this project could be consider as the first ancient mining activity in this region and also due to the special potential of obsidian mines according to volcanic context of Sahand, Sabalan and Bozghoush it seems this project could be answer to fundamental questions on obsidian mining and regional and inter-regional relations between NW IRAN’s societies.

 

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