Excavations in the ancient graveyard of Lafourak of the northern province of Mazandaran have revealed some unique pottery buried alongside the dead. The pottery is further proof of the unique burial rituals of the area some 2800 years ago.

Artifacts so far discovered of the ancient dwellers of the area have made Lafourak and its Iron Age graveyard an attractive site for archaeologists.

Some of the tombs are decorated and consolidated with clay covers all around which make them unique among all other historical graveyards throughout Iran. Moreover, the skeletons found there are of an ethnic group not seen anywhere else in the region.

The potteries recently discovered in these tombs are all hand-made, and according to head of the archaeology team of Lafourak, Mehdi Abedini, are in this regard completely different from the other ones found elsewhere in the site which were used in kitchens and households and were made with potters’ wheels.

“The new discovery shows that the residents of the area had specific burial rituals which led them to create handmade potteries to offer to their dead,” explained Moradi.

The artifacts are well baked and despite fingerprints seen on them, they are well glazed. They also include horizontal and vertical designs.

To find out more on the burial rituals of the area, more excavations should be carried out and the discovered pottery are to be compared with the ones found in other northern areas of Iran. So far, similarities have been identified between the Lafourak pottery and the ones found in Kharand graveyard of the central province of Semnan.