The Varamin Plain Project (VPP) was conducted as a cooperation between the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR), under the direction of Prof. Reinhard Bernbeck, Prof. Dr. Morteza Hessari and Prof. Dr. Susan Pollock.

Started in 2018, the project has been funded since 2019 by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as “Mobile villages and dynamic landscapes: the Varamin Plain from the late 5th to the early 3rd mill. BCE”, and carried out within the framework of the Priority Program 2176 “The Iranian Highlands: Resilience and Integration of Premodern Societies”.

The project examines settlement dynamics and mobility patterns in the Varamin Plain from the late 5th to the early 3rdmillennium BCE. The Varamin Plain, located ca. 50 km southeast of Tehran, is shaped topographically and hydrographically by the alluvial fan of the Jajrud river, and characterized by changing river patterns that have produced over the ages a challenging, highly dynamic natural environment. The project has investigated the changing strategies of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age societies to cope with this environment and shown how varying rhythms and forms of social and economic mobility were crucial factors in enabling resilient lifeways in this region.

Fieldwork, which, to a large extent, could only be conducted in 2018, consisted of brief excavations at several Chalcolithic sites in the Varamin Plain, Ahmadabad-e Kuzehgaran, Chaltasian and Ajor Pazi, complemented by profile sampling at Late Neolithic Tappeh Moeinabad, as well as paleolandscape research. The full documentation and research data derived from the 2018 excavation season is being published here in stages.