Ali Kosh


Ali Kosh is a small Tell of the Early Neolithic period located in Ilam Province in west Iran, in the Zagros Mountains. It was excavated by Frank Hole and Kent Flannery in the 1960s.

Site

The site is about 135 m in diameter.
Research has found three phases of occupation of the site over an almost 2,000 period, starting from about 9,500 years ago. It was occupied originally by pre-pottery peoples.
Pottery was introduced to Ali Kosh during the third phase of its occupation. Nearby Chogha Sefid has only one pre-pottery phase, after which the occupation extended into the Chalcolithic period.

Earliest agriculture

Ali Kosh was the earliest agricultural community in western Iran, where emmer was already cultivated in the eighth millennium BC. This crop was not native to the area. Wild two-row hulled barley was also present. Goats and sheep were also herded.
Similar site on the Deh Luran plain is Chogha Sefid, and also Tepe Abdul Hosein in Luristan. All three have similar stone tools. Ganj Dareh in Luristan, also similar, is even somewhat older than these.

Genetic analysis

Human remains from the area have been analyzed in 2016 for their ancestry. Researchers sequenced the genome from a 30-50 year old woman from Ganj Dareh. mtDNA analysis shows that she belonged to Haplogroup X.

Skull modification

In 2017, several skeletons were found by archaeologists in Ali Kosh. 7 crania were found, all showing the evidence of ritual cranial deformation.
Previously, similar crania were already excavated in the area by Hole and Flannery.

Ritual tooth avulsion

Another unusual cultural practice observed by researchers in these skulls was the ritual front tooth avulsion. Such a practice was quite common around the world in ancient times.
According to these researchers, such a custom has not been previously reported for the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent.

Relative chronology