Steve Renette

STEVE RENETTE, then a professor at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, was approved funding in October 2022 to aid research on “Small-Scale Complexity: Social Integration of Dispersed Communities in the Zagros Highlands of Southwest Asia, ca. 3000-2500 BCE.” In March 2023, fieldwork resumed as part of Phase 2 (2022–2026) of the Kani Shaie Archaeological Project (KSAP) in the Bazyan Valley, Iraqi Kurdistan. This phase of the project implements detailed research on the Early Bronze Age societies (ca. 3100–2000 BCE) in the western foothills of the Zagros Mountains. Excavations targeted domestic architecture and administrative contexts within Area A, focusing on a “grill-plan” storage building that adjoined a multi-room complex. Evidence from these spaces, destroyed by conflagration, includes in-situ botanical remains, faunal deposits, ground stone tools, ceramics, and numerous clay sealings with cylinder seal impressions. Analysis revealed spatial organization of communal food storage, with emmer wheat predominating in most areas, but also with barley and chickpeas confined to a specialized section. Within a room containing cooking installations, mixed botanical remains found together with clay sealings show the location of centralized food preparation. Sealings indicate controlled access to storage and redistribution of food, paralleling administrative practices typically documented in Mesopotamian urban centers. These findings challenge prevailing interpretations of Early Bronze Age communities in the Zagros Highlands as rural and egalitarian. Instead, they suggest small-scale societies employed complex systems of resource management and social integration through regional networks. The results support the hypothesis of an alternative trajectory of social complexity, emphasizing communal organization and exchange rather than demographic aggregation.