History of Burnt City goes down 300 years earlier than previously thought

November 7, 2023 - 17:27

TEHRAN - The earliest period of human settlement in the UNESCO-designated Burnt City might have occurred in about 3500 BC, more than 300 years before what was previously thought, an Iranian archaeologist has said.

“In recent research and tests, based on the evidence and findings, we found out that the burnt city, contrary to what we thought, does not belong to 3200 BC,” archaeologist Seyyed-Mansour Seyyed-Sajjadi said on Tuesday.

“The site is at least 300 years older than what we thought, which means that this city was founded at least 3500 BC.”

Seyyed-Sajjadi made the remarks in a meeting in which he unveiled some prehistorical table games once played in Burnt City millennia ago.

Located at the junction of Bronze Age trade routes crossing the Iranian plateau, the remains of the mud brick city bear witness to the emergence of the first complex societies in eastern Iran.

Also known as Shahr-e Sukhteh, or Shahr-i Sokhta, Burnt City is associated with four rounds of civilization, all burnt down by catastrophic sets of fire. The site is situated in the Sistan-Baluchestan province, which was once a junction of Bronze-Age trade routes crossing the Iranian plateau.

According to the UN cultural body, changes in water courses and climate change led to the eventual abandonment of the city in the early second millennium. The structures, burial grounds, and a large number of significant artifacts unearthed there and their well-preserved state due to the dry desert climate make this site a rich source of information regarding the emergence of complex societies and contacts between them in the third millennium BC.

Burnt City was populated during four main periods up to 1800 BC. Previous rounds of excavations showed that its residents had great skills in weaving, and creating fine arts such as decorative objects, stone carving, and pottery painting.

AFM