Epipaleolithic Site Discovery in Southeastern of Iran, Rayen

In the spring of 2012 an archaeological survey was conducted within the Rayen region in order to explore all archaeological periods in this state and document all archaeological settlement patterns of this region. In general 52 archaeological sites were discovered and documented which included all prehistoric and historic sites. Among these sites, three of them seems to belong to the Paleolithic periods. This paper aims to describe one which, based on the available materials, technological and typological characteristics is most likely from the Epi-Paleolithic, which is not well known from other parts of Iran. This specific era in Iranian Paleolithic studies and its existence and all its characteristics, complexity and their distributions around the country are highly unknown, especially from the south of Iran. Since this site is an open-air location, the only way to determine its approximate age is based on the available materials. To achieve this, we have done some analysis over the technological and typological characteristics of this site’s lithics. In this paper, we describe the lithics and their technological and typological characteristics in order to determine the main production techniques and approximate age.