A
team of archeologists conducting excavations in Burnt City
(Shahr-e Sukhtah), Sistan-Baluchestan province, has
identified additional graves at the ancient site dating
back to 4,500 years ago.
Anthropologist Farzad Foruzanfar told CHN that during the
ninth round of excavations, his team managed to unearth 80
graves. “Of course, all of them are totally destroyed
and only one of them was in good shape. It belonged to a
young man who was buried 4,500 years ago.“
The Burnt City has a large cemetery with several thousand
graves. In earlier rounds of excavation, the graves which
were uncovered were in good shape, but, this series of
graves are badly damaged.
Foruzanfar said that the skeleton of hands and feet of the
young man were well preserved, which is unprecedented.
He said that the remains of bones of the young man are in
good shape to enable the anthropologists to conduct
examinations on them.
He said that surprisingly in the latest round of
excavations which were carried out in the central part of
the cemetery, the majority of the graves were those of
children. The exact number of graves of children is not
clear yet due to continued excavations in the area.
Meanwhile, head of excavation team in Burnt City, Mansour
Sajjadi said that the skeletons from 80 graves were
completed disintegrated except for that of a young man
whose hands and feet bones were unearthed in good shape.
He said the skeletons were totally crumbled, but, several
antiques were unearthed including two beautiful and
colorful casks, two baskets and leather pieces.
Sajjadi said that the graves uncovered in the ninth round
of excavations mainly belong to children placed in shallow
graves.
He said that the graves date back to the second and third
periods of the Burnt City or 2700-2300 BC.
He noted that only powders of the bones were found in the
4,500-year-old graves.
More than 400 graves have been uncovered in the past eight
years of excavations in the Burnt City.
“Out of the 80 graves uncovered recently, one grave
belonged to newborn twins which is also unprecedented.“
Archeologists are planning to embark on 10-year
excavations in the site.
Burnt City which dates back to 5,000 years ago came to the
attention of archeologists since 1979.
Excavations by both Iranian and Italian archeologists in
the 1980s have established that the city was once a center
of civilization and trade.
