On the High Road: The History of Godin Tepe, Iran

The mound of Godin Tepe rises like a small volcano out of the narrow plain of the Kangavar valley along the only route through Iran's Northwestern Zagros Mountains. But Godin is not a natural formation: its thirty metres of accumulated deposit is made entirely of the remains of people's lives. For four thousand years, from 4500 BC to 500 BC, people made their home in this strategic location, taking advantage of the passing traffic to trade, borrow, and occasionally fight with their neighbours in Mesopotamia. For five summers, from 1965 to 1973, T. Cuyler Young Jr. directed a team from the ROM and the University of Toronto that would uncover the lives of these long dead communities. A centre for trade with the first cities in the world, a communal feasting house, the regions largest town, and a Median palace lay in successive layers, each built on the ruins of the preceding period. The authors of this book weave a narrative of the remarkable 4000-year history of Godin while explaining how archaeological remains are used to reconstruct the past.