Darra-e Kur: An Archaeological Rock Shelter in Afghanistan

History

Darra-e Kur is an archaeological rock shelter in Afghanistan, in Badakhshan Province northeast of Kalafgān, near Chinār-i Gunjus Khān and the hamlet of Bābā Darwīsh. Its deposits preserve two principal occupation phases, a Middle Paleolithic phase and a later phase broadly assigned to the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age, making the site an important source of evidence for human activity in the region across widely separated periods.

Middle Paleolithic occupation

The deepest deposits date to approximately 50,000–30,000 years ago. They contain Mousterian tools, a Middle Paleolithic stone-tool tradition commonly associated with Neanderthals, although the tool tradition alone cannot establish who made them. The artefacts were produced partly with the Levallois method, in which a prepared stone core allows flakes or points to be struck in planned shapes. A separate Mousterian layer dates to around 30,000 years ago.

Later occupation and excavation

A later settlement phase was described by the excavators as a “Goat Cult” Neolithic layer and dated to around 3,780 years ago. The later occupation is also dated to approximately 2,200–1,900 BC and is associated with crude black pottery, decorated examples, domesticated sheep and goats, and three articulated goat burials. The site was excavated in 1966 by the American archaeologist Louis Dupree on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History, a scientific and cultural institution in New York. Excavated materials were collected by that museum and the Kabul Museum.

Reinterpretation of the human bone

A fragment of a human right temporal bone was first regarded as Paleolithic because it lay in a deposit containing Mousterian and Levallois artefacts. It was therefore once linked to a possible Neanderthal presence. Direct accelerator mass spectrometry dating instead placed the bone at approximately 4,530–4,410 years ago, identifying it as the remains of a Neolithic individual. The bone probably came from a later burial that entered the older Mousterian layer, likely in connection with the “Goat Cult” occupation.

In 2017, researchers successfully extracted DNA from both the petrous and squamous portions of the temporal bone. This was the first ancient human remain from Afghanistan to yield a successful DNA sequence. The individual belonged to haplogroup H2a, a branch of mitochondrial DNA used to trace shared maternal ancestry. That identification does not by itself establish the person’s place of origin or cultural identity.

Remains

Darra-e Kur is a cave or rock shelter at an elevation of approximately 1,590 metres, positioned at the top of a valley side near Bābā Darwīsh. Its deposits lie in silt laid down by a stream and are well layered, allowing the Middle Paleolithic and later occupation phases to be distinguished. Around 800 stone implements were recovered from these deposits.

Shelter and occupation traces

The only architectural traces consist of 80 post-holes. Their arrangement was interpreted as evidence suggestive of tent-like structures, providing a physical indication of how part of the shelter may have been used during occupation. The stone assemblage includes flint pieces, sickle-like blades, large diabase points, celts, scrapers, pounders, blades, and simple ornaments. The older implements are Mousterian and include tools made with the Levallois technique.

Pottery and animal remains

Pottery from the shelter is mostly crude black ware, with some decorated pieces. Faunal remains include fish, rodents, wild horse, domesticated sheep and goats, and onagers. These finds occur alongside numerous other bone remains and three fragments of tin and bronze, extending the material evidence beyond the earlier stone-tool occupation.

Burials and human remains

Three articulated goat burials were found at the site, and the remaining graves contained goat remains. The fragment of a human right temporal bone was recovered from a layer with Mousterian Levallois artefacts, but its later radiocarbon-era date places the individual in the Neolithic period. DNA recovered from the bone in 2017 assigned the individual to mitochondrial haplogroup H2a.