Research Paper
Uniformitarianism: A Comparative Study of the Global Transitional Climatic Area Influences on the Bampur Valley
Authors: Mohammad Salighe, Mehdi Mortazavi & Fariba Mosapour Negari
Year: 2012, Volume: 3, Page/Article: 1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/aa.12302
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine the interactions between people and the natural
environment against a background of climatic change. The focus of attention is on the
Bampur Valley, which is located in the global transitional climatic area. During the
fourth and third millennium BCE, an important urban society, which was in close
economic contacts with the urban societies of the Sistan Basin, Jiroft, Soghan Valley, the
Indus Valley and Mesopotamia, emerged in this Bampur Valley along the river bed of the
Bampur River. This Valley, which is located along the main natural overland trade
routes, not only developed as intermediary for long-distance trade between east and west
but also functioned as an important industrial and economical pole in southeast Iran.
It is argued that the global transitional climate area, which is generally located between
tropical and subtropical areas, has constantly been faced with periodical changes
including dry and humid during worm period. Based on the archaeological and
environmental evidence, with reference to uniformitarianism theory and with using GIS,
it will be attempted to evaluate movement, collapse and interaction between settlements
and natural environment in the Bampur Valley. The disciplines of archaeology and
geography have much in common, being concern respectively with the spatial and
temporal dimensions of the human condition. Archaeology deals with those aspects of the
human past which are mainly elucidated using material remains rather than written
sources. The prime concern of geography is to understand the processes that operate
within the natural environment (physical geography) and to evaluate the ways in which
people interact both with their environment and with each other (human geography).
Evidence discovered from the archaeological and geographical surveys carried out in the
area between 2002 and 2005 by authors testify to environmental changes, which caused
instability and collapse of the human communities in prehistoric and the present times in
the Bampur Valley.