TEHRAN – Tepe Ozbaki, a millennia-old archaeological hill situated in Alborz province, will be embracing an open-air museum, the provincial tourism directorate has said.

Following consultations with the cultural heritage ministry, preliminary studies are carried out to create a site museum at Tepe Ozbaki, the deputy provincial tourism chief said on Thursday.

Turning the spotlight on this archaeological hill and its previously excavated objects will help a lot to introduce this superb site, Shahbaz Mahmoudi said.

In this way, in addition to promoting the historical value of the historical hill, it also helps to attract more tourists, the official said.

The archaeological hill is situated near Nazarabad, some 80 km west of Tehran. 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