The flaked stone assemblage of Soha Chay Tepe and the chalcolithic chipped stone industries of the Zagros Region

Since the 1990s, the Late Neolithic and post-Neolithic chipped stone industries of the Zagros region have been categorised as belonging to the Mlefatian industry. In recent years there has been a notable increase in field investigations and re-examination of old museum materials, leading to an expansion of the existing categorisation. This article is concerned with a chipped stone assemblage from Soha Chay, a Middle Chalcolithic site located in the north-eastern Zagros Mountains and presents a reassessment of the lithic industry during the Chalcolithic by reviewing old and new assemblages. Two distinct clusters of sites have emerged for comparison, the first consisting of sites located in the northern and central Zagros regions, while the second comprises sites situated in southern Zagros. Despite the existence of regional variability in technological organisation, the present research elaborates on the broad regional cohesion of technological and functional aspects in the chipped stone industry of the Zagros. The most important component of variation between Chalcolithic industries of the southern Zagros and the northern and central Zagros is the two-fold organisation of chipped stone production in the latter, a characteristic which appears to be shared with northern Mesopotamia and the northern Central Plateau of Iran.