TEHRAN -- Farmers destroyed many ancient kilns at the 3000-year-old site of Gohar-Tappeh in Iran’s northern province of Mazandaran while plowing their fields.

“Part of the ancient mound, which is known as the industrial center of the site, was plowed by farmers out of our sight, and many kilns used for baking pottery works were destroyed,” the director of the archaeological team working at the site told the Persian service of CHN on Saturday.

“The farmers plowed only 200 square meters of the site, but we found remains of the smashed kilns along with dozens of intact pottery works,” Ali Mahforuzi added.

The mound covers an area of 50 hectares and it is difficult to control the farmers, who regard themselves as the owners of the grounds. Thus, to save the site, the grounds should be purchased from the farmers, but no funding has been allocated.

“If the grounds are not liberated, the site will be destroyed day by day. The upper strata, which contain remnants of the Iron Age and date back to the first millennium BC, could be destroyed even through shallow plowing,” Mahforuzi warned.

The archaeological team recently unearthed a cobblestoned lane at Gohar-Tappeh during the fifth phase of excavations, which have been underway since September 2.

They had previously unearthed a skeleton of a warrior buried in an attacking pose with a dagger in his hand in one grave, a skeleton of a child and a bronze pendant with a bull-horn motif in another grave, and a number of bull statuettes at the site during previous phases of excavations in September and October 2005.

The archaeologists also discovered an unidentified artifact in a grave beside a skeleton, which some prominent musicians of Mazandaran believe looks like a clarinet.