Climate and palaeoenvironmentHolocene Paleoenvironmental Change and Phases of Drought in the Iranian Highlands. A ReviewMartin Kehl, Babak Rafiei-Alavi, Hamid Alizadeh Ketek LahijaniThe Impact of Climate on Human Occupations in Iran from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age: An Attempt to Link Archaeological and Paleoclimate RecordsBabak Rafiei-Alavi, Martin Kehl, Hamid Alizadeh Ketek LahijaniEvidence of Neanderthal Resilience from Forty-five to Thirty-nine Thousand Years Ago at the Bawa Yawan Rockshelter, Kermanshah, Zagros HighlandsSaman Heydari-Guran, Nemat Hariri, Martin Kehl, Samran Asiabani, Faramarz Azizi, Elham GhasidianWater Stress and Imperial Politics in the Southern Zagros Mountains: An Interdisciplinary Approach in Long-Term PerspectiveAndrea Ricci, Silvia Balatti, Elodie Brisset, Morteza Djamali, Abdolmajid Naderi Beni, Ahmad Azadi, Pejman FiroozbakhshSettlement, subsistence and mobilityResilience in Practice: A View from the Kura-Araxes Cultural Tradition in IranSepideh MaziarReaching the Breaking Point? Developments in the Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age Varamin PlainSusan Pollock, Morteza Hessari, Reinhard BernbeckThe Bronze and Iron Age of Mazandaran (3200–1000 BCE): Resilience and Cultural AdaptabilityHassan Fazeli Nashli, Mojtaba Safari, Yunshi Huang, Zhenhua Deng, Hadi Davoudi, Xiaohong WuThe Environmental Limitations for the Pastoral-Nomadic Way of Life in the Karadagh Highlands of Northwestern Iran: Evidence from the Iron Age I-II and Modern TimesBahram AjorlooPolitical and economic institutionsSecond-Year Cows for Manlari. Elamite State Investment in Cattle Husbandry in the Southern Zagros MountainsAzam Rayat and Walther SallabergerCoping with Problems of Mining: Approaching Resilience Strategies through the Study of Resource-Scapes in the Iranian HighlandsThomas StöllnerImperial Control and Highland Resilience in the Parthian ZagrosMichael Brown and Shelir AmeliradResilience in Centralized State Systems. The Persepolis Fortification Archive and Achaemenid Institutional LongevityWouter F. M. Henkelman, Kai Kaniuth, Kourosh MohammadkhaniPrestigious Building and Urban Development in Ilkhanid Iran: The Rabʿ-i Rashīdī in Tabrīz as an Example of Resilience and Vulnerability in a Long-Term PerspectiveBirgitt Hoffmann, Lorenz Korn, Thomas Lorain, Jonas Elbers, Maryam MoeiniDynamics of Development and Resilience in Western Fars: The Bozpar ValleyStefan R. Hauser, Giuseppe Labisi, Elnaz RashidianThe collection of essays in this book focuses on the highlands of Iran in pre-modern times, reaching from the Paleolithic to the medieval period. What holds the diverse contributions together is an issue that is closely related to debates in our own times: crises and how societies in the past dealt with them. We start from the premise that general circumstances in the fractured topographic structure of the Iranian highlands led to unique relations between ecological, social, economic and political conditions.In three sections entitled “Climate and palaeoenvironment”, “Settlement, subsistence and mobility” und “Political and economic institutions”, the authors ask what sorts of crises afflicted past societies in the Iranian highlands, to what extent they proved resilient, and especially what strategies they developed for enhancing the resilience of their ways of life. Looking for answers in paleoenvironmental proxy data, archaeological findings and written sources, the authors examine subsistence economies, political institutions, religious beliefs, everyday routines and economic specialization in different temporal, spatial and organizational scales.This book is the first volume of a series published by the German-Iranian research cooperation “The Iranian Highlands: Resiliences and Integration in Premodern Societies”. The goal of the research project is to shine a new light on communities and societies that populated the Iranian highlands and their more or less successful strategies to cope with the many vagaries, the constant changes and risks of their natural and humanly shaped environments.