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KEYWORDS: Iran - Hamadan - Azandaryan - Petroglyph
Abstract. The subject petroglyphs in this article have all been newly discovered near Azandaryan in Hamadan Provence, western Iran. They are in total 631 petroglyphs, located on the hillsides and valley floors of mountains in Qeshlagh Dali, Baghali Darasi, Ashaghi Kolangah and Ashaghi Nehanjah. These petroglyphs have been made using rubbing, hammering and less frequently engraving techniques. The themes of the studied compositions include images of 'ibexes', 'dogs', 'vegetal' motifs and anthropomorphous ones. The anthropomorphs are subjectively described as riding, hunting, shooting and fighting humans. All these petroglyphs are comparable with those of other regions in Iran or even some others beyond Iran's current borders. In the end, it is to be stated that conducting direct dating studies is needed.
Introduction
Compared with other areas of archaeological research, rock art became only recently targeted in Iran. Although such works are abundantly seen across the country, they are less known than other archaeological remains. However, some researchers became recently focused on rock art, which could pave the way to revise previous views in this area of investigation.
Petroglyphs are regarded as one of the most outstanding artistic cultural remains in different fields of study, such as archaeology, history of art, social sciences and so on. So far, a large number of such petroglyphs have been identified from different parts of Iran, including the Divin valley of Alvand in Hamadan (Saraf 1997), Timareh (Farhadi 1998), Kurdistan (Lahafian 2004, 2010), Arasbaran (Rafifar 2005), QalehBozi in Isfahan (Ghasrian 2006), Sangestoon (Mohamadi Ghasrian 2007), Eshkaft Ahoe Bastak (Asadi 2007), Mazrae Haj Mad and Dare Morad Beig (Rashidi Nejad and Zamaniyan 2009), Basin area (Azizi Kharanaghi et al. 2011), Cheshmeh Malek and Dareh Divin (Rashidi Nejad et al. 2012).
Hamadan Province with an area of 19546.818 km2 is a part of the Iranian highlands which is surrounded by other provinces such as Zanjan and Qazvin in the north, Lurestan in the south, Markazi in the east, and both Kermanshah and Kurdistan in the west. Hamadan generally has a cold climate during winter and a mild one in summer, and it has lush green vegetation. The town of Azandaryan is located in Hamadan Province, 45 km to the south-east of Hamadan city, and...