Objectives and Prospects
Gohar Tepe is situated at an important crossroads between the cultures of the Iranian Highlands and Central Asia. On account of its favourable location, the settlement had continually entertained close relationships with various regions, the backgrounds of which will be closely examined within the framework of this project. During the Early Bronze Age there used to exist a fairly large, probably town-like, settlement, which we have so far reached only by means of sondages. The objective of the coming excavations is to lay open a larger area of Early Bronze Age levels. We furthermore plan to look more closely into the so far relatively unknown stone-age and chalcolithic periods in the surrondings of Gohar Tepe, as well as into the still unexplained transit from the Bronze to the Iron Age.
ln future campaigns we will above all work interdisciplinarily. Examinations of human and animal bone finds have already started and will be continued. Apart form archaeometallurgists, also geophysicists and geomorphologists will come to Iran to clarify on site the influence of ancient climatic changes on the disappearance of the Bronze Age cultures in North-Eastern Iran.
Jar Burial