A Bronze Age Grave Discovered at Tepe Foroudgah, Iran: An Anthropological and Palaeopathological Study

Abstract

The first aim to study skeletal remains is to recognize and answer the human differences, sex, stature and demography. The next, and important reason, is skeletal palaeopathology. It examines remained bones and teeth to show dead reasons and find out the environmental diseases in ancient times. The result of this study illustrates re-establishment of ancient society and gives the main key for discussion and conclusion. This article focuses on remained bones, found from the first season of excavation, on Tepe Foroudgah, Khorramabad-Iran, in September 2014. This site is located among three prehistoric sites with almost 3 to 4 kilometers away from each other. No reports from those archaeological excavations have been issued on human skeletal remains so far. Tepe Foroudgah yielded human skeletal remains for the first time amongst them and from this point of view, the study of the found bones was put in the first job of excavation reports to answers many questions such as the reason of finding human skeleton, its identity, the reason of death, sex and age. Hence, this article tries to give a new light on Iranian ancient population in Western parts. Further, this article will focus on age and sex determination, human discrepancies and it will describe these main questions as well. General views and analysis on palaeopathologies show the stresses and lesions of individual. Therefore, the reason of individual death is discussed here. The methodology applied is based on current and standard studies methods in Physical Anthropology.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n6p259