TEHRAN -- An exhibition displaying photos of pottery artworks discovered over the years at the 7500-year-old Sialk Tepe opened at the site in Kashan on Thursday.

“The Sialk Tepe has been neglected in our country, and this great ancient site is still unknown among our people. However, this tepe is well-known in international organizations,” Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization official Seifollah Aminian told the Persian service of IRNA at the opening ceremony.

The week-long exhibition is displaying 70 photos of pottery artifacts, including cups, plates, and jars which were unearthed by French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman and his team in 1933, 1934, and 1937.

“Many of Sialk’s pottery works, some bearing various motifs, indicate that the people living at the site had been making earthenware by hand before the potter’s wheel was invented,” Aminian explained.

“Archaeologists have also found metal artifacts, the most ancient of which is a copper awl made by a hammer-like tool. The world’s oldest equipment for smelting metals has been discovered at the site,” he added.

Located in the suburbs of the city of Kashan, central Iran, Sialk Tepe contains a 6000-year-old structure which is believed to be the world's oldest ziggurat.

Tepe Sialk consists of two mounds known as northern and southern Sialk, located about 600 meters apart.

The artifacts unearthed in the northern mound are more ancient than those of the southern. The inhabitants of Sialk used a type of script known as proto-Elamite, whose signs combined pictograms and numerals (3200 BC). Sialk was eventually abandoned at the end of the Iron Age, before the advent of the Medes.

Recent studies by Iranian archaeologists indicate that the first houses were built at the Sialk site about 7500 years ago.