TEHRAN -- A team of Iranian archaeologists confirmed that the Sassanids used the ancient site of Bakhe-Nam as a permanent habitation.

The team led by Bayan Pirani was assigned by the Ilam Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department (ICHTHD) to precisely demarcate the site, which is located in the southern city of Ilam in western Iran.
“In the course of their excavations, the team has unearthed the remains of slag, the ruins of kilns, and a number of shards dating back to the Sassanid period,” Pirani told the Persian service of CHN on Monday.
As a result of the studies carried out on the findings, the archaeologists believe that the Sassanids used the site as their permanent residential area and that they labored in workshops making pottery, he explained.
Covering an area of 15 hectares, the site has been divided into an eastern and a western section by the Sarab River, which by the way, has been polluted by urban wastewater. Because of the division, the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) had mistakenly considered it as two sites and registered it as such on the Iranian National Heritage List in two files in 2002.
According to the new demarcation, Pirani believes that Bakhe-Nam should be listed as a single site.
When the archaeologists came to Bakhe-Nam, they began demarcating the site in the south. When private landowners prevented them from working on this portion of the site, they had to continue their work in other areas and based it on maps and documents available to them in the public records.
The new studies have provided evidence suggesting that Bakhe-Nam had enjoyed a strategic location at the crossroads of ancient major routes.
The team also discovered some artifacts that indicate the site had been used as a permanent habitation during the early Islamic periods in Iran.