TEHRAN – A team of Iranian archaeologists is to commence work on Tepe Ozbaki, a 9,000-year-old site, situated some 80 km from Tehran.

It will be the eighth season of excavation, which begins on August 23 at Tepe Ozbaki in Alborz province, the provincial tourism chief said on Tuesday.

In this season, archaeologists are aimed to throw a new light on the history of human settlement at the site, and to conduct protective measures to preserve what was done before, Rahim Khaki explained.

The official referred to the site as one of the important archaeological areas in the heart of the Iranian Plateau, saying: “I hope that by comparing previous studies and the new studies, we discover more about the site that contributed to cultural development in the center of Iranian Plateau.”

The site has yielded cultural relics dating from the first half of the 7th millennium to the first half of the first millennium BC, i.e. the Medes period.

Experts suggest that the discovery of certain objects in the hill indicates some kind of commercial links to Susa in the Khuzestan region, southwest Iran.

The discovery of objects such as tablets, statuettes, and ‘jagged’ earthenware in the hill indicates some kind of commercial link between Susa in Khuzestan and this in Tehran province, according to senior Iranian archaeologist Yousef Majidzadeh who has led excavations at Ozbaki, Qabristan, and Jiroft hills.

According to the available data, the first well-documented evidence of human habitation on the Iranian Plateau was found in several excavated cave and rock shelters, located mainly in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, dating to the Middle Palaeolithic or Mousterian period (c. 100,000 BC).

From the Caspian in the northwest to Baluchestan in the southeast, the Iranian plateau extends for close to 2,000 km. The land encompasses the greater part of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan west of the Indus River, containing some 3,700,000 square kilometers. Despite being called a “plateau”, it is far from flat but contains several mountain ranges, the highest peak being Damavand in the Alborz mountain range at 5610 m, and the Dasht-e Loot east of Kerman in Central Iran, falling below 300 m.

AFM