Shahr-e Sukhteh (), c. 3550–2300 BC,Ascalone, E., and P. F. Fabbri, (2022). "Demographic considerations regarding the settlement and necropolis of Shahr i Sokhta", in: E. Ascalone and S.M.S. Sajjadi (eds.), Excavations and Researches at Shahr-i Sokhta 2 (= ERSS 2), Pishin Pajouh, Tehran, pp. 524, 525. also spelled Shahr-e Sūkhté and Shahr-i Sōkhta, is an archaeological site of a sizable Bronze Age urban settlement, associated with the Helmand culture. It is located in Sistan and Baluchistan Province, the southeastern part of Iran, on the bank of the Helmand River, near the Zahedan-Zabol road. It was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in June 2014.
The reasons for the unexpected rise and fall of the city are still wrapped in mystery. Artifacts recovered from the city demonstrate a peculiar incongruity with nearby civilizations of the time and it has been speculated that Shahr-e Sukhteh might ultimately provide concrete evidence of a civilization east of prehistoric Iran that was independent of ancient Mesopotamia.
Archaeology The site was discovered and investigated by Aurel Stein in the early 1900s.Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia. Detailed Report of explorations in Central Asia, Kansu and Eastern Iran, Clarendon Press, 1928Aurel Stein, An Archaeological Journey in Western Iran, The Geographical Journal, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 313–342, 1938
Beginning in 1967, the site was excavated by the Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO) team led by . That work continued until 1978.Maurizio Tosi, Excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta. Preliminary Report on the Second Campaign, September–December 1968, East and West, vol. 19/3–4, pp. 283–386, 1969Maurizio Tosi, Excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta, a Chalcolithic Settlement in the Iranian Sistan. Preliminary Report on the First Campaign, East and West, vol. 18, pp. 9–66, 1968P. Amiet and M. Tosi, "Phase 10 at Shahr-i Sokhta: Excavations in Square XDV and the Late 4th Millennium B.C. Assemblage of Sistan", East and West, vol. 28, pp. 9–31, 1978 After a gap, in 1997 work at the site was resumed by the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization team led by S.M.S. Sajjadi.S. M. S. Sajjadi et al., Excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta. First Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Graveyard, 1997–2000, Iran, vol. 41, pp. 21–97, 2003S.M.S. Sajjadi & Michèle Casanova, Sistan and Baluchistan Project: Short Reports on the Tenth Campaign of Excavations at Shahr-I Sokhta, Iran, vol. 46, iss. 1, pp. 307–334, 2008 New discoveries are reported from time to time.
The site was thought to cover an area of but now the size is established at .Ascalone, E., and P. F. Fabbri, (2022). "Demographic considerations regarding the settlement and necropolis of Shahr i Sokhta", in: E. Ascalone and S.M.S. Sajjadi (eds.), Excavations and Researches at Shahr-i Sokhta 2 (= ERSS 2), Pishin Pajouh, Tehran, p. 539: "The settlement of Shahr-i Sokhta was once believed to have occupied an area of about 151 hectares (Piperno – Tosi 1975), although this estimate has risen to 200 hectares on the basis of the ongoing research (Sajjadi 2014a)." The maximum built area was ca. 120 hectares.Ascalone, E., and P. F. Fabbri, (2022). "Demographic considerations regarding the settlement and necropolis of Shahr i Sokhta", in: E. Ascalone and S.M.S. Sajjadi (eds.), Excavations and Researches at Shahr-i Sokhta 2 (= ERSS 2), Pishin Pajouh, Tehran, p. 539: "Considering only the maximum built area, i.e. 120 hectares (Biscione et al. 1977)..." Shahr-e Sukhteh was one of the world's largest cities at the dawn of the urban era. It is located close to the eastern edge of what is now the Lut desert, one of the hottest places on Earth. The climate was far more welcoming in ancient times when the Hamun Lake, near which the city was located, was much greater in size, and there was a lot of marshland in the area. Also, Dahan-e Gholaman (550 BC–330 BC), a major Achaemenid center and archaeological site, is located only 50 km to the northeast.UNESCO, (2017). Management Plan of Shahr-i Sokhta: World Heritage Site, World Heritage Convention 2017, Tehran, p. 17, Table 4: "...Age: Achaemenid, Location: 50 kilometers northeast of Shahr-i Sokhta, Name: Dahane-e Gholaman..."
In the southwestern part of Shahr-e Sukhteh there is a vast graveyard, measuring . It contains between 25,000 and 40,000 ancient graves.
The settlement appeared around 3550 BC.Ascalone, E., and P. F. Fabbri, (2022). "Demographic considerations regarding the settlement and necropolis of Shahr i Sokhta", in: E. Ascalone and S.M.S. Sajjadi (eds.), Excavations and Researches at Shahr-i Sokhta 2 (= ERSS 2), Pishin Pajouh, Tehran, p. 525. As per Massimo Vidale's 2021 lecture, the city would have had four stages of civilization and would have been burnt down three times before being abandoned. This abandonment was thought previously to have taken place around 1800 BC by the Italian archaeological mission there, but research based on calibrated radiocarbon samples in nearby site Tappeh Graziani, by a mission of Italian and Iranian archaeologists led by Barbara Helwing and Hassan Fazeli Nashli, showed that the site was abandoned around 2350 BC.Vidale, Massimo, (15 March 2021). "A Warehouse in 3rd Millennium B.C. Sistan and Its Accounting Technology", in Seminar "Early Urbanization in Iran", Lecture minute 11:12 onward. This abandonment is now considered to be around 2300 BC, and new chronological and stratigraphical sequence in the later excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta (2018–2019), published in 2022, based on areas 26, 33, 35, and 36 are as follows:Ascalone, Enrico, (2022). "Preliminary Report on the 2018–2019 Excavations in Area 33 at Shahr-i Sokhta", in: Enrico Ascalone and Seyyed Mansur Seyyed Sajjadi (eds.), Excavations and Researches at Shahr-i Sokhta 3, Tehran, pp. 143–232, (See p. 152, Fig. 10).
PeriodDatingSettlement sizePhase IA 3550–3350 BC 10–9 IB 3350–3100 BC 10.5–15.5 haMutin, Benjamin, and Leah Minc, (2019). "The formative phase of the Helmand Civilization, Iran and Afghanistan: New data from compositional analysis of ceramics from Shahr-i Sokhta, Iran", in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Volume 23, February 2019, pp. 881–899. 8 IC 3100–3000 BC 7 IIA 3000–2850 BC 6A-B IIB 2850–2620 BC 80 ha 5A-B IIC 2620–2600 BC 4 IIIA 2600–2450 BC 80 ha 3 IIIB 2450–2400 BC 2 IV 2400–2300 BC 1 GAP 2300–2100 BC V 2100–2000 BC 0
Period I During Period I, (ca. 3550–3000 BC), Shahr-e Sukhteh already shows close connections with the sites in southern Turkmenistan, with the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, the Quetta valley, and the Bampur valley in Iran. Also, there are connections with the Proto-Elamite cities of Ḵuzestān and Fārs.Genito, Bruno, (5 April 2012), "Excavations in Sistān", in Callieri, Pierfrancesco, and Bruno Genito, Italian Excavations in Iran, Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Pottery during this period, in phases 10, 9, and 8, typically exhibits light paste colors for the body and rich decorations very similar to those found on ceramics from Mundigak III and eastern Baluchistan (particularly to Quetta valley),Eftekhari, Negar, et al., (2021). "To be or not to be local: a provenance study of archaeological ceramics from Shahr-i Sokhta, eastern Iran", in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences Volume 13, Article number: 68 (2021), Introduction. and decorative features similar to Namazga III ceramic. Also in this period, Grey Streak-Burnished Ware appeared, the same as in Tepe Yahya IVC, ( 3400–3000 BC), and in Tepe Yahya IVB6), and fragments of polychromatic Nal pottery were present.
Around 3000 BC, potters in Shahr-e Sokhteh reproduced ceramic styles from distant Turkmenistan, located 750 km to the north, and other ceramics were imported from the Pakistani Kech-Makran—Iranian Balochistan area, located around 400–500 km to the south, and ceramics from the Mundigak (Kandahar) region in Afghanistan, around 400 km to the east, were also imported.
At the end of phase 7, ca. 3000 BC, most of the city was destroyed by a fire; particularly the Eastern Residential Area and the Central Quarters showed "rooms with burnt plaster, filled with ash and burnt remains of roof beams."
Period II During Period II (ca. 3000–2600 BC), Shahr-e Sukhteh was also in contact with the pre-Harappan centers of the Indus valley, and the contacts with the Bampur valley continued. During Phase 6 of this Period, the settlement was reconstructed, although some houses which were destroyed were not rebuilt. Recent excavations by Enrico Ascalone, in Area 33 of Shahr-i Sokhta, show that the so-called "House of the Architect" and the Eastern Building belong to a layer radiocarbon-dated from 3000 to 2850 BC.Ascalone, Enrico, (12 December 2020). "Emergence of Complex Societies in Eastern and South-Eastern Iran: Shahr-i Sokhta in Bronze Age", Lecture minute 5:30.
The ruins of the building called "House of the Courts" were radiocarbon-dated by archaeologist Ascalone to 2850–2620 BC, and the next layer 2 was considered by him as a "squatter occupation" in Area 33, which he radiocarbon-dated to 2620–2600 BC. But, per archaeologist Sajjadi, the whole site of Shahr-i Sokhta reached in this period almost . It seems likely that contacts with Mundigak were close in this Period and that lapis lazuli arrived in Shahr-i Sokhta from mines of Badakshan moving through Mundigak, and the relations of both settlements made it possible for scholars to speak of a Helmand Civilization.
This Period, in phases 6 and 5, represented a time of significant development in both the size of the city and ceramic technology, as finer raw materials and advanced firing techniques used during this period resulted in ceramics with denser body-paste and pottery that were similar to those found in Bampur III-IV, but most of the ceramics that were produced and/or imported during this period were buff and gray wares with brown and black decorations. In phase 4 there was a change in the city with large buildings constructed with massive encircling walls, pottery lost the painted ornamentation and became standardized, and burials showed socio-economic differences among the population, but the goods previously imported from Mesopotamia and western Iran disappear at the end of this phase.
Period III
In phases 3 and 2 of Period III, (c. 2600–2400 BC), large buildings continued to be constructed with massive encircling walls, pottery lost the painted ornamentation of Period II and became standardized, and burials continued showing socio-economic differences among the population. The contacts and trade with Mundigak, Bampur and the cities of Indus civilization continue. The "Building 33" also belonging to Area 33 of Shahr-i Sokhta (located between the Central Quarters and the Monumental Area) was radiocarbon-dated by the team of Enrico Ascalone to 2600–2450 BC.
On the other hand, archaeologists Jarrige, Didier, and Quivron considered that Periods I, II, and III in Shahr-i Sokhta have archaeological links with Periods III and IV in Mundigak.Jarrige, J.-F., A. Didier, and G. Quivron, (2011). "Shahr-i Sokhta and the Chronology of the Indo-Iranian Borderlands", in Paléorient 37 (2), p. 17: "...We agree with the links, which we ourselves often observed, between Shahr-i Sokhta I, II and III and Mundigak III and IV and between the sites of Balochistan and the Indus valley at the end of the 4th millennium and in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC..."
Pottery production during Period III in phase 3, had forms and depicted motifs that differed significantly from those featured by ceramics of the former periods, and at the beginning of this period, simple decorative motifs originally found on ceramics became more elaborated and gray-paste pottery with black decoration, similar to those found during Bampur IV and Tepe Yahya IV, became more present, and small undecorated bowls with thin bodies also appeared at the end of this period.