TEHRAN - The last centuries before 3,000 BC were of immense significance in Iran and Mesopotamia as there arose distinguishing civilizations: the proto-Elamite and the Sumerian.

Various seasons of excavation at Tepe Yahya have yielded treasured relics and valuable information not only of southeastern Iran and the homogenous and distinctive culture which existed in this large area throughout the Early Bronze Age but also indicated its significant relations with Mesopotamia on the west.

Situated in the Dowlatabad region of Kerman province, Tepe Yahya, Tepe Yahya provides us with the longest prehistoric sequence of occupation in southeastern Iran.

According to Penn Museum, the cultural sequence at the site begins c. 4500 BC and continues without a major hiatus until the middle of the third millennium based on radiocarbon dates.

The outcome of excavations suggests that Tepe Yahya was almost continuously occupied from the middle of the 5th millennium to the end of the 3rd millennium BC.

The site was apparently abandoned during the 2nd millennium BC but was reoccupied from about 1000 BC to about 400 CE.

Tepe Yahya may have been a center for the production and distribution of steatite (soapstone), a material used in making vessels, seals, and other objects.

As mentioned by Britannica, the trade in Tepe Yahya may be locally controlled at first, but it may later have come under Elamite influence.

“Design motifs on steatite bowls from Tepe Yahya parallel many motifs found in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley and indicate that Tepe Yahya filled an important position in the economic and cultural relations between Mesopotamia, the Iranian Plateau, and the cultures to the east.”

According to the museum’s website, excavations at a number of sites throughout southern Iran, undertaken since World War II, have appreciably increased our understanding.

Since World War II, American archaeologists have not directed their attention to the excavation of a comparable number of Early Bronze Age sites on the Iranian Plateau and northern Iran, where American interests have profitably focused on Neolithic and later first and second-millennium sites.

The important Bronze Age sites of Yarim Tepe, Yanik Tepe, Geoy Tepe, Tal-e Nokhodi, Godin Tepe, and Tureng Tepe involve problems distinctive from those of southern Iran and appear to belong to different cultural zones largely unrelated to the Early Bronze Age proto-Elamite culture of southern Iran.

Proto-Elamite (Susa III/Banesh) period, ca. 3400/3200-2800 BC was characterized by a distinctive assemblage of artifacts and an artistic style distributed from Lorestan in the west to Kerman in the east.

The establishment of a city at Anshan during the Proto-Elamite period and smaller outposts at Tepe Sialk and Tepe Yahya in the eastern highlands suggest that the foundations of the union between lowland and highland regions characteristic of later Elam were first laid in the late 4th millennium.

AFM