Tepe Hissar

Located along the southern margin of Damghan, Tepe Hissar was first excavated by Erich Schmidt, the professor of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1312 AH. The result of these excavations showed that this ancient site includes three cultural layers, from the end of Neolithic era to the end of the bronze age. The area has been recognized as one of the referential archaeological sites since ever, for study on the other concurrent cultures in the Iran central plateau. 

In 1355 AH, a team consisted of archaeologists from Pennsylvania University, University of Turin in Italy and the Iran Archaeology Center, carried out some excavations in Tepe Hissar under the supervision of Robert Dyson and Maurizio Tosi. The main objective of this project was the revision on the materials discovered by Erich Schmidt. The excavations showed that Tepe Hissar had been one of the main manufacturing centers during the third and the fourth millennium BC, with a variety of products like stone and metal objects exported from this area.  

In 1373 AH, Tepe Hissar was excavated for the third time; It was in the same year that the second line of Tehran-Mashhad railway, which had been created during the reign of Pahlavi I, was going to be established. Under the supervision of Ehsan Yaghmai, these excavations brought significant results, like the discovery of some inscriptions on clay, in the old Babylonian cuneiform script which has not been yet read. Backing to about 2200-2000 BC, these inscriptions are apparent evidence on the cultural interchange between Mesopotamian civilizations and Iran plateau, the details of which are not still clear.   

According to the findings and the absolute age measurement using the carbon-14 method, the oldest layers in Tepe Hissar have determined as related to the middle of the fifth millennium BC. The settlement in this area was continued uninterruptedly to 1700 BC, and it wasn’t settled any more since ever. However, a large building decorated in picturesque stuccos was built during Sassanid period, in an area placed almost 200 meters away from Tepe Hissar. According to the speculations in 1385 AH, aiming at the determination of the real span of the area, the discovery of a cemetery belonging to the iron age (1500 – 550 BC) in the west of Tepe Hissar showed that, unlike the assumptions, the area had also been settled by some tribes after the bronze age.