User talk:Laxmi tumung/sandbox

Kaldar Cave (Persian: غار کلدر) is a key Paleolithic site situated in the northern part of the Khorramabad Valley, Lorestan province of western Iran. It is the first well-stratified Late Paleolithic locality to be excavated in the Iranian Zagros region with the earliest cultural remains attributed to early Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs) "Out of Africa" in western Asia.

Description
The site is located in a “Wild Life Sanctuary zone” at 1290 meters a.s.l. It is 16 m long, 17 m wide and 7 m high. The long Upper Paleolithic occupation of this site include four thermoluminescence (TL) dates for Layer 4, ranging from 23,100 ± 3300 to 29,400 ± 2300 BP, and three AMS radiocarbon dates from charcoal samples belonging to the lower part of the same layer, yielding ages of 38,650–36,750 cal BP, 44,200–42,350 cal BP, and 54,400–46,050 cal BP (all at the 95.4% confidence level). To date, no radiometric data are available for the Middle Paleolithic level of this locality. Zooarchaeological remains from this site not only suggest early AMHs here were among the first to come into contact with large Palaearctic mammals but, they also quickly adapted exploiting them as a resource.

Archeological history
The site was first field surveyed by Z. Bakhtiari in 2007 and registered with the file number 18796 in the Lorestan Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (LCHTO) archive as an Epipalaeolithic site. In 2010, Dr. Behrouz Bazgir as a part of his PhD research carried out a comprehensive field survey around the Khorramabad Valley. The surface collection from his fieldwork at Kaldar Cave showed that site is much older than what Z. Bakhtiari earlier believed.

As a result of the field survey, in 2011-12 four localities were selected for test excavation, out of which Kaldar Cave excavated for the first time under his direction. The limited 1x1 m test pit at Kaldar exposed 1.5 m of archaeological sedimentary deposit with a successive level from Middle Palaeolithic to Holocene. During this excavation season, the lithic assemblages supported evidence for presence of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic transition but without any concrete dating. After the successful test excavation, in 2014-15, with an Iranian-Spanish team the site was re-excavated by Dr. Bazgir for gaining a better understanding of the stratigraphy and obtaining samples for dating. As a result, the second season excavation at Kaldar Cave has yielded evidence of Baradostian (Layer 4) and Mousterian assemblages (Layer 5) in stratigraphic superposition. This is an exceptional find in the Zagros. The obtained dates from the lower part of the Upper Palaeolithic sequence in Kaldar Cave are some of the earlier dates attributed to a lithic industry produced by AMHs in western Asia.