Few systematic investigations of Palaeolithic occupation have been carried out in southern Iran. Here, the authors present the first report from a systematic Palaeolithic survey of a region north of the Strait of Hormuz, providing ample evidence for hominin presence in this area since the Lower Palaeolithic.

This article contains ethnolinguistic observations and materials on the so called zâr cult, as practiced in present day Hormozgân province, Iran. The cult, which is spread across the Persian Gulf and central and north-east Africa, consists of practices and rituals of placation with which a category of spirits known as zâr and referred to as winds are warded off from a victim. The article, in particular, aims at offering an accurate description of the sub-lexicon associated with zâr in local Hormozgâni dialects, an aspect of research which has not been taken into consideration up to now.

This preliminary study explores the hypothesis that Arabic dialects spoken on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf exhibit the beginnings of contact-induced shift in word order from VO to OV. Although the basic VO order is still stable, there is some variation even in this very limited data set. Specifically two phenomena point to a change in progress: clause-final copulae and auxiliaries that are placed after the lexical verb, lending further evidence to the observation that a clause-final copula is an areal feature of western Asia. The study also investigates semantic and pragmatic factors that influence word order choice, pointing to a strong effect of information structure in terms of narrow focus and theme-rheme partition. Furthermore, the study also reveals an effect of semantic role, specifically as far as the preferred placement of goals and recipients in post-verbal position is concerned.