Kurgan burial excavated in NW Iran

An emergency exploration operation is underway in the kurgan of Abellou site in the city of Ahar, East Azarbaijan Province, with an aim of establishing the chronology and identifying the architectural structure of the area.

Credit: Tabriz7

Mohammad Feizkhah, head of the emergency team at the kurgan site was quoted by the Public Relations Office of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT), as saying that specification of the kurgan of Abellou and the possibility of its full destruction led to a decision to ask for an emergency exploration by the Research Institute of Archaeology.

Referring to the presence of the experts of the Cultural Heritage Department of East Azarbaijan Province in the site, the archaeologist further remarked that the immense destruction of the space of the burial chamber by the traffickers would make it difficult to reach a conclusion on the chronological process and recognition of the architectural structure of the kurgan.

He added: “At present among findings which have remained safe from the robbery of the smugglers reference can be made to two stone arrowhead and pieces of pottery specific of the Bronze Age.”

Credit: Tabriz7

Expressing regret over the severe destruction of the kurgan along with other kurgans around it by unauthorized excavations in recent years, he said the kurgan of Abellou with a diameter of 40 meters is fully circular within the middle of which there is the burial room which has been built by using large pieces of stone.

Feizkhoh said that kurgans are structures created by heaping earth and stones over a burial chamber dating from the fourth to the first millennium BC. He added that the earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus and are associated with the Indo-Europeans.

Noting that so far no comprehensive study has been conducted on Iran’s kurgans, he said the kurgan of Abellou together with a number of kurgans around it is one of the specifications of migration culture in the middle of the second millennium BC in Azarbaijan region (northwest of Iran).

Credit: Tabriz7

Pointing to the permit issued by the head of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT) for the exploration, he expressed the hope that the emergency exploration in kurgan of Abellou would render help in the identification of parts of the Early Bronze Age, i.e. the middle of the second millennium BC and show the importance of archaeology to the inhabitants of the region as well as taking a step for culture building for the protection of historical monuments.

Source: Richt [January 17, 2018]