TEHRAN -- A team of archaeologists working in Savadkuh believe that they have discovered an early Islamic era industrial site in the region in Iran’s northern Mazandaran Province.

The site is located at Shirkhanepei near Pahluj, where the team has recently found a late Sassanid and an early Islamic cemetery, team director Mehdi Abedini told the Persian service of CHN on Tuesday.
“The site is surmised to be an industrial area for making pottery works due to the discovery of a large amount of shards, the earth affected by fire, and the remains of kilns used for baking the pottery works,” he added.
Abedini believes that Shirkhanepei had properly been selected for pottery making.
“There would have been easy access to water from the nearby river and wood from the adjacent forest. In addition, Savadkuh is a windy region and thus it would have provided appropriate draft for firing kilns,” he argued.
The team has also found signs of habitation near the kilns.
Over the past 3000 years, the Savadkuh region has been used by immigrants from Central Asia.
The region, home to several sites dating from the Iron Age to the early Islamic era will be completely submerged by the newly constructed Alborz Dam, which is about to become operational.
In September, Abedini’s team discovered some graves with an unknown style of burial, in which nails had been placed upside down in the earth in order to hold a sheet of wood above each body.
The graves are located at the Pahluj site of the Savadkuh region.