Name
Morteza Gird / Qal’eh Morteza Gird قلعه مرتضی گرد/ قلعه مرتضی کرد
Map
Historical Period
Neolithic, Iron Age
History and description
Morteza Gird is located to the southeast of the Plain of Reyy. It is now a sizable suburb town of Tehran. The town’s development coupled with farming and industrial activities has largely destroyed the ancient mound. The mound was located half a kilometer to the northwest of the Qal’eh Morteza Gird. It consisted of a roughly circular mound, 300 x 260 m, and 5-6 m high.
Archaeological Exploration
Erich F. Schmidt carried out soundings at Tepe Morteza Gird on behalf of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania between 1934 and 1938. The excavation results have never been published in full, and there is no mention of Tepe Morteza Gird in his preliminary reports on Reyy. The site is briefly mentioned in his final report on Tepe Hissar. Schmidt recognized an occupation associated with grey ware above a Hissar IB layer. In his view, the grey ware stratum could be dated to the early Iron Age (Schmidt 1937: 323). In the 1970s, Yusef Majidzadeh restudied Schmidt’s excavated materials and documents housed at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. In his own unpublished doctoral dissertation, Majidzadeh published part of Schmidt’s unpublished Ray Expedition Report I, including two topographic plans of the mound (figs. 1 and 2). Majidzadeh dates most of the sherds to the Sialk III period, identifying some of them as second-millennium ceramics. Sherds from this excavation housed in the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago were studied by Yussef Majidzadeh in the early 1970s. Majidzadeh dates most of the sherds to the Siyalk III period, identifying some of them as second-millennium ceramics.
Finds
Pottery: Mostly potsherds of Sialk III and Cheshmeh-Ali types, typical Gray Ware of the Iron Age period.
Bibliography
Majidzadeh, Y., The Early Prehistoric Cultures of the Central Plateau of Iran. An Archaeological History of Its Development during the Fifth and Fourth Millennia B.C., unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of Chicago, 1976, pp. 20-21 (for Morteza Gird).
Majidzadeh, Y., “Sialk III and the Pottery Sequence at Tepe Ghabristan,” Iran, vol. 19, 1981, 142, 145-146 (for Morteza Gird).
Schmidt, E. F., Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Damghan, Philadelphia, 1937, p. 323 (for Morteza Gird).
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