Name
Tol-e Teymūrān/Tol-e Teymūriānتل تیموران/تل تیموریان
Historical Period
Bronze Age (Kaftari), Middle Elamite, Neo-Elamite, Achaemenid, Parthian, Sasanian, Islamic
History and description
Tol-e Teymūrān is located in the vicinity of the village of Kūshk, near the southeastern end of the Kuh-e Rahmat, 60 km southeast of Persepolis. The site is a relatively large mound 200 x 160 m with a height of 6 m above the surrounding plain. The site was much larger and part of it was destroyed because of farming activities. Based on the surface potsherds, Tol-e Teimūrān seems to have two main occupation periods, one in the late Bronze Age or Middle Elamite known as Teimūrān A, and the other in the Neo-Elamite period, labeled as Teimūrān B.
Archaeological Exploration
Tol-e Taimuriyān was discovered in the summer of 1952 by Louis Vanden Berghe who conducted two excavation seasons there. During the first season, he dug two soundings on the site. Vanden Berghe returned to the site to make further fieldwork during the winter of 1954/55. Bruno Overlaet published Vanden Berghe's soundings on this site. According to Overlaet, Vanden Berghe distinguished four cultural phases at Tol-e Teymūrān, which he considered represented four per-Islamic cultures, based on the ceramics found in the graves and the relative depths of the graves from the surface. There is no plan of the site with the precise location of the different soundings. For easy reference, Overlaet named the soundings A to D. The soundings A to D each consist of several layers or strata that were identified by Vanden Berghe. In 1969, William Sumner visited the site in the course of his survey and registered it as ‘5991 3786’. Based on the surface material, he attributed the site to the Achaemenid, Taimurān, Shoghā, Qal’eh, and Kaftari periods. In the winter of 1976/77, Linda Jacobs surveyed the site and registered it as ‘11N5’. She made systematic random collections on the site.
Bibliography
Jacobs, L. K., Darvazeh Tepe and the Iranian Highlands in the Second Millennium B.C., Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1980.
Overlaet, B., “A report on the 1952 and 1954/55 soundings at Tall-i Taimurān (Fars), Iran”, Iranica Antiqua, vol. 32, 1997, pp. 1-51.
Sumner. M. W., Cultural Development in the Kur River Basin, Iran, and Archaeological Analysis of Settlement Patterns, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1972.
Vanden Berghe, L., “Archeologische opzoekingen in de Marv Dasht vlakte (Iran),” Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux, vol. 12, 1951-52, pp. 211-220.
Vanden Berghe, L., On the Track of the Civilizations of Ancient Iran, Memo from Belgium, No. 104-105, Brussels, 1968, pp. 12-13.
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