Vegetation cover and wood exploitation strategies in the Shahroud and Bastam plains, NE Iran during the emergence of the first Neolithic communities

While the western Fertile Crescent has long dominated narratives of Neolithization, the Iranian Plateau remained largely overlooked, despite growing evidence of independent domestication in the Zagros and distinctive diffusion patterns. This shift in perspective warrants closer examination of how postglacial climatic change reshaped regional biodiversity and, in turn, the subsistence and timber management strategies of early Neolithic communities. We present new insights from the anthracological investigation of five Neolithic (Early Holocene) sites located in the Shahroud and Bastam plains, in the northeastern part of the Iranian plateau, covering the period of approximately 9,100 to 6,900 cal yr BP (7,150–4,950 ca yr BCE). The analysis identified 21 woody taxa from at least four distinct habitats: gallery forests, open scrub, open xeromorphic shrublands, and Hyrcanian montane forests. Whereas plant communities available in the vicinity of the sites seem to have been preferred, wood was also occasionally collected at a certain distance. The anthracological assemblage displays a wide range of plants belonging to an ecotone from the dry-adapted Irano-Turanian to temperate humid Hyrcanian trees, reminiscent of the present-day situation. Supported by archaeozoological data from the same sites, our results indicate that the increasing moisture at the onset of the Holocene appears to have facilitated the development of the open woodlands and shrublands available for human exploitation. This research provides new insights into wood exploitation strategies and contributes to current knowledge on the daily life of the first sedentary agro-pastoral communities in the interior Western Asia.