TEHRAN -- A large pot, which is thought to be a prehistoric artifact, was recently discovered accidentally by a gardener working on his patch near the 7500-year-old Sialk Tepe site in central Iran.

“The large pot was discovered inside the second perimeter of Sialk Tepe, where the gardener was grading the earth to fence his garden,” archaeologist Zahra Sarukhani of the Kashan Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Office told the Persian service of CHN on Wednesday.

A team of archaeologists has transferred the pot to the office.

It is one of the biggest pottery works ever discovered at the site, with the mouth of the pot measuring 120 centimeters in diameter.

The discovery shows that the second perimeter of Sialk Tepe stretches over 100 meters beyond the first perimeter to an area where a number of construction projects have destroyed some parts of the site.

Sialk Tepe has been surrounded by houses that have been constructed illegally over the few past years.

Located in the suburbs of the city of Kashan, Sialk Tepe was excavated for the first time by French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman and his team in 1933 and then again in 1934 and 1937.

What is believed to be the world’s oldest ziggurat and many artifacts have been discovered at Sialk Tepe.

Sialk Tepe consists of two mounds known as northern and southern Sialk, located about 600 meters apart. The artifacts unearthed in the northern mound are more ancient than those of the southern one.

As early as 3200 BC, the inhabitants of Sialk used a type of script known as proto-Elamite, whose signs combined pictograms and numerals. Sialk was eventually abandoned at the end of the Iron Age, before the advent of the Medes.

Recent studies by Iranian archaeologists indicate that the first houses were built at the Sialk site about 7500 years ago.