TEHRAN – A rarely seen golden vessel, excavated in 2003 in northern Iran, has been put on show at the Rasht Museum of Anthropology in commemoration of the International Museum Day.

The vessel dates some 3,000 years and it was excavated from the archaeological site of Toul, which lies an inter-mountain valley in the highlands of Talesh county, Gilan province’s tourism chief said on Thursday.

Toul is a seasonal village where local people from the region take refuge from the summer heat and humidity of the coastal plain.

The ancient cemetery, the burials of which range in date from the early first millennium BC to the late Sasanian period, is located within the confines of the Toul village.

Several ancient graveyards of Toul were excavated by Iranian archaeologist Mohammad Reza Khalatbari on behalf of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research and the local office of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization in Rasht between 2002 and 2003.

Other findings included weapons in bronze and iron, grey ware or redware pottery vessels (bowls, jars, goblets, and jugs), beads, small pieces of jewelry in silver or iron, as well as a decorated gold vessel.

Almost all of Gilan’s Iron Age cemeteries had a tradition of burying objects as funerary goods near the bodies. In most cases, these objects included: pottery, porcelain, metal objects, pottery and metal figurines, and metal weapons, including daggers, spears, axes, swords, maces, ornaments made of stone, metal, etc. It seems that they richly and plentifully stood in Associated with the degree of wealth or the social position of the person. This means that more valuable items are more likely to indicate that the deceased person was of higher social status.

Iron Age marks the final technological and cultural stage in the Stone –Bronze– Iron Age sequence. The date of the full Iron Age, in which this metal, for the most part, replaced bronze in implements and weapons, varied geographically, beginning in the Middle East and southeastern Europe about 1200 BC but in China not until about 600 BC, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Although in West Asia iron had limited use as a scarce and precious metal as early as 3000 BC, there is no indication that people at that time recognized its superior qualities over those of bronze.

AFM