TEHRAN -- Recent mining operations at the Achaemenid Gondashlu stone mine, which provided the stone for building Persepolis, have extensively destroyed its usefulness both as a source of historical information and as a resource for restoration work.

The Gondashlu stone mine is located at a distance of 60 kilometers southwest of Persepolis near Shiraz in Fars Province.
Seventy percent of the site containing interesting traces of the Achaemenids’ mining extraction has now been damaged, the Persian service of CHN reported on Sunday.
The mine is important for the information it provides about mining techniques used during the Achaemenid period.
The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) has so far shown no reaction to this affair.
“According to archaeological studies, the Achaemenids used two kinds of stones to build Persepolis some were black in color and others grey.” archaeologist Mohammad-Taqi Ataii told CHN.
“The black stones were brought exclusively from the Majdabad mine and the grey ones were extracted from ten other mines in the region, one of which was the Gondashlu stone mine,” he added.
He said that there are many stone mines near Persepolis, but for their first rate constructions, the Achaemenids preferred to use materials from the Gondashlu mine, which contains high quality stone.
Upcoming restoration work at Persepolis can only be properly carried out by using stones from the Gondashlu mine, but the opportunity will be lost if the new mining operations which are currently underway at Gondashlu continue, Ataii stated.
It was during the 1960s that U.S. professor of Iranian archaeology William M. Sumner of the University of Pennsylvania discovered that the Achaemenids used the Gondashlu stone mine as a source of material for the construction of Persepolis.