Jiroft culture
28.557.8Koordinaten: 28 ° 30 '0 "N, 57 ° 48' 0" E
As Jiroft culture a Near Eastern archaeological culture of the Bronze Age of the late 3rd millennium BC has been postulated. The area of this culture lies in the Iranian provinces of Sistan and Kerman. The hypothesis is based on a collection of artifacts that were confiscated in Iran and comes in all probability from the Dschiroft region.
The proposed site is Konar Sandal Fund near Dschiroft in the territory of the Halil River. Other important sites that are connected to this culture, Shahr -e Investigated, Tepe Bampur, Espiedej, Shahdad, Iblis, and Tepe Yahya.
Yousef Majidzadeh, head of the archaeological team in Dschiroft, made the proposal to group the mentioned references to " independent Bronze Age civilization with its own architecture and language". Its distribution area he sees between the ancient Elam to the west and the Indus Valley Civilization to the east. He further speculated that it was a remnant of the lost Aratta kingdom. His conclusions met the skepticism of some critics. Other conjectures (eg those Daniel T. Potts and Piotr stone cellar ) see a connection from Konar Sandal with the obscure city-state Marhasi, which should be in the east of today's Elam.
Discovery and excavation
Many artifacts associated with Dschiroft were rediscovered by " robbers " who were described as " destitute villagers " and moved through the area, even before Majidzadeh Yousef and his team in 2001 began their excavations. The team examined an area of more than 2 km ² and put the remains of a city free, dating to the late 3rd millennium BC.
The stolen artefacts and some re-discovered by the excavators vessels are ceramics in the so-called " intercultural style ( intercultural style) ," which is known in Baft from Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau and since 1960 from around Tepe Yahya. The thesis of " Dschiroft civilization " implies that this "intercultural style " is really the distinctive style of a previously unknown, long-lived civilization.
This claim is not accepted by all scientists. The archaeologist Oscar Muscarella from the Metropolitan Museum of Art criticizes that the excavators themselves fleeing in sensational news because he let more and more time coming up with scientific publications, and apologize so that the stratigraphy of the Fund place a continuity to the 4th millennium BC show what Muscarella considers overly optimistic. But the importance of the site is also confirmed by Muscarella.
Earlier excavations in Kerman were carried out in 1930 by Sir Aurel Stein.
One of the most remarkable excavations in the Kerman province were carried out by one led by Professor Joseph Caldwell Group of the Illinois State Museum, 1966 in Tal- i Iblis and an even more noticeable in 1967, by Lamberg - Karlovsky of Harvard University at Tepe Yahya in Sogan Valley Dolatabad.
Archaeological excavations in Dschiroft also led to the discovery of different objects that belong BC to the 4th millennium.
Majidzadeh and geophysical investigations of French experts say, at least ten historical and archaeological periods that belong to different civilizations that are detected in the region. The traces of these civilizations were up to 11 m below the surface detectable, so the French.
The site Dschiroft
The main finding place is located about 2 km from Dschiroft and consists of two hills, called Konar Sandal A and B with heights of 13 and 21 m. In Sandal B a two-story citadel was with a base of nearly 13.5 ha found.
Alleged writing system
Madjidzadeh claims to have discovered inscriptions in an unknown manuscript, which are supposedly the Elamite linear font comparable and date to the 22nd century BC. The announcement of this discovery was received with skepticism. Andrew Lawler refers to Jacob Dahl, a specialist in ancient texts at the Free University of Berlin, who said: ". No specialist in the world would take this into consideration, it is nothing but a forgery "
Piotr stone cellar, a professor of Assyriology in the Department of Languages and Civilizations of the Middle East at Harvard University, said that " has no relation to the Elamite manuscripts discovered in Jiroft inscription and belongs to the Eastern civilizations. "