South-eastern Iran flourished during the Bronze Age and several important settlements from this period have been excavated. Few contemporaneous cemeteries, however, have been investigated. Excavations at Bampur 14 have revealed 10 graves dating from the late fourth to early second millennium BC. Finds include a copper-bronze seal and a stone column, demonstrating connections with north-eastern Iran and Central Asia.

Based primarily on British consular reports, this article studies transborder movement in Iran's eastern borderlands during the two decades following the rise of Reza Khan in 1921. It discusses two kinds of transborder movements: tribal exodus and smuggling. By examining the contexts of these transborder movements, this article explores the desire of the new state to assert sovereignty as it appeared in the borderlands and demonstrates that, rather than simply closing the borders, the Pahlavi state attempted to control the flows of people and goods, with dual effects. It introduced new constraints to mobility and as well fostered the development of borderland networks that enabled diffused transborder movement, making it harder for the authorities to control.

This first report of the occurrence of a kimberlitic rock in Pakistan is supported by its field relations, textures and mineral chemistry. Linear dykes, lenses, conical and pipe-like bodies, plugs and sills intrude non-orogenic, early Jurassic limestone near the SW extremity of an Eocene-emplaced ophiolite on the transform-type Indian plate margin; far away from the stable Precambrian craton. The rock resembles ‘micaceous kimberlites’ petrographically and contains olivine, phlogopite, perovskite, chromian spinel, monticellite, chlorite, serpentine, calcite, apatite, pectolite, clinopyroxene, amphibole, nepheline, magnetite and titanomagnetite. The minerals and their microprobe analyses resemble those of kimberlitic rocks.

Phenomenally large (up to 2 mm) oil-bearing and associated brine inclusions in fluorite from carbonate-hosted, epigenetic, fluorite-calcite-(baryte) deposits of the Koh-e-Maran area are investigated using a combination of microthermometry, UV-microscopy and FTIR microspectroscopy. The liquid hydrocarbon phase in primary ‘oil’ inclusions is brown in colour and is dominated by saturated, low molecular weight, aliphatic hydrocarbons.

Two types of mixed aqueous and ‘oil’ inclusions occur. Aqueous/oil types represent co-eval trapping of immiscible drops of oil and brine during primary growth. In oil/aqueous inclusions the oil appears to ‘wet’ the aqueous phase resulting in an odd ‘dish-shaped’ meniscus. The oil or liquid hydrocarbon part of the inclusion is primary but the aqueous part is thought to represent a secondary infill. The fluid inclusion evidence suggests that fluorite precipitated from a dilute (3.5 wt.% NaCl) brine at temperatures around 110–140°C in the presence of an immiscible liquid hydrocarbon phase dominated by saturated, light hydrocarbons. This ‘oil’ was present as an emulsion in the aqueous fluid and the phenomenal size of the inclusions is thought to reflect the large droplet size in the emulsion. Infiltration of a more saline, calcium-enriched brine into pre-existing oil inclusions resulted in complex oil-water inclusions showing a reversal in the nature and shape of the oil-water interface due to the presence of unspecifed surfactants in the brine which affected the wetting characteristics of the oil.

The homogenization temperatures and the presence of liquid petroleum inclusions are characteristic of Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) and manto-type fluorite deposits in many other parts of the world.

Beatrice de Cardi has been a figure in British archaeological life for much longer than most of us can remember. Less well-known outside Asia are her achievements as an explorer of the archaeology of the countries of the lower Persian Gulf. Here she offers a brief mémoire for us, penned at the age of 93. It is a story of pottery, peoples and vast tracts of ancient lands, then little known.