Introduction

Khar o Tauran is a present–day village district in northeastern Iran (see Fig. 4.1). On the map and in the minds of its inhabitants, the area is settled. But settlement everywhere is a dynamic rather than a static phenomenon. Its fluidity in Khar o Tauran is well attested from present–day evidence as well as from archaeological remains that show shifting locations and varying sizes of occupation across time. Some of this instability is inherent in the technology of settlement, part of an intentional production strategy typical of arid land occupations; some of it is visited upon the residents by factors outside their control.

The degree of settlement stability in Khar o Tauran varies with settlement type, size, and location relative to social and environmental resources. This variation has implications not only for an understanding of settlements as elements in the local strategies of production, but also for the archaeological reconstruction of population and land use.

Settlement stability (or instability) may be viewed in two ways, locational and occupational. I use the term locational stability as a spatial concept referring to the degree to which settlements are continuously or repeatedly located in the same places. Examples of locationally stable settlements might be seasonal pastoral stations that rely on patchy resources such as springs, to which the residents return year after year.

Occupational stability, on the other hand, is a temporal concept referring to how long an occupation continues without interruption at a given location.