Archaeological and Chronological Investigation of the Middle Elamite Period at Haft Tappeh (Iran)

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The recent archaeological excavations which were funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft brought out new evidences regarding the settlement history of the ancient city and indicated that in contrast to the general opinion we have several periods of settlement at Haft Tappeh. During the first phase of the project from 2011 to 2014 it was possible to determine three building phases which belonged to the beginning of the Middle Elamite Period (15th and 14th century BC). This new knowledge led to establish a detailed chronology for the pottery assemblage and other findings. During the first two building phases of the Middle Elamite period monumental complexes like temples and palaces were created in Haft Tappeh and the city area increased to about 250 ha. However it diminished during the last building phase. In this period some of the monumental complexes were abandoned and consequently turned into ruins which were used from the people to build their housing. The pottery assemblage shows that this phase ended about 1300 BC. Most probably the city fell due to an invasion and the people were massacred, because we found several hundreds of skeletons in the street behind the wall of a house. They were disorderly placed there in a heap over each other. The excavations led to another very important result. We discovered a building phase which was older than the three mentioned above phases of the Middle Elamite period. Its pottery is similar to the assemblage in Susa, which is attributed to the Sukkalmah period in the 18th and 17th century BC. Subsequently this led to the question, if there was a hiatus in the settlement from the 17th to the 15th century BC in Haft Tappeh. If it was not the case and the life in Haft Tappeh continued without any interruption, than the chronology of Susa should be modified and the discovered pottery assemblage from Susa should be about one century younger.The objective of the second phase of the excavation project is to investigate this oldest building phase at Haft Tappeh and collect much more cultural material from it in order to point out the chronological relationship between it and the following Middle Elamite period.