TEHRAN – A team of archaeologists has recently discovered traces of a Chalcolithicera-era settlement in a previously-found site in Lorestan province, western Iran.

“The three-week archaeological work on [parts of] Keyvan neighborhood [of Azna county] has come to an end, and its scientific results would be announced soon…. However, it is believed that the site was occupied by Chalcolithicera-era rural settlements based on relics and evidence so far been came to light,” provincial tourism chief Seyyed Amin Qasemi announced on Tuesday, CHTN reported.

“An underground troglodyte structure, which dates back to early Islamic eras, exists in the vicinity of the archaeological hill of Keyvan in a way that the entanglement of two has caused overlapping for their demarcation operations,” the official added.

Last year scraps of cultural evidence including stone tools and earthen figurines dating from the 5th and 4th millennium BC were accidentally discovered during a construction project in the ancient neighborhood.

The province was once a cultural crossroad for Paleolithic and Neanderthal residents. In May, an official unveiling ceremony showcased stone tools and a fragment of a fossilized skull, attributed to Homo sapiens, excavated from the Kaldar Cave in Lorestan. The cave has also yielded weapon fragments crafted by Neanderthals.

Lorestan was inhabited by Iranian Indo-European peoples, including the Medes, c. 1000 BC. Cimmerians and Scythians intermittently ruled the region from about 700 to 625 BC. Under Cyrus the Great, Lorestan was incorporated into the growing Achaemenid Empire in about 540 BCE and successively was part of the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanid dynasties.

In the Chalcolithic period, copper predominated in metalworking technology. Hence it was the period before it was discovered that by adding tin to a copper one could create bronze, a metal alloy harder and stronger than either component.

AFM/MG