Baluch Settlement and Features of Chipped Stone Resulting from Surveying Tepeh Baluch

Tepeh Baluch is located in the northeast of Iran in Khorasan Razavi Province and in the west of Neyshabour Miankouh Plain. Prehistoric studies, especially the Neolithic period of this section of the Iranian Plateau have been less considered compared with the western part. Tepeh Baluch was explored during a short season in the spring and summer of 2011 under the support of Neyshabur University. Organizing the production of lithic hand tools is one of the most important aspects of the study of stone artifacts. Such studies are important in explaining the differences between a set of stone artifacts belonging to one era in a region and their variability in different periods. Sequence models have special features that distinguish them from other archaeological structures. In this paper, a collection of stone artifacts from the exploration of Tepeh Baluch in terms of the technological structure, typology, and morphology of the tools are investigated and on this basis the function of the site and the organization of stone tools′ production are reconstructed. The feature of the stone artifacts of Tepeh Baluch is the abundance of chips most of which have been used as scratches; in contrast to the high frequency of blades and micro-blades, chips have the largest number in the collection. Most of the pieces are retouching. The cores in this set are often small in size and irregular in shape with uneven edges. Considering the use of chamfered blades to collect cereals, food production through raising livestock and hunting and food gathering were more common than agriculture in the Neolithic and chalcolithic layers of the Baluch hill. This article aimed to shed further light on the study and surveying these stone artifacts.