Qualla: Tepe Hissar

Tepe Hissar: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit V.Kavusi, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1877, a German-born telegraph engineer named Albert Houtum-Schindler noticed locals digging into a mound near Damghan. They were searching for artifacts, and finding them -- pottery, metal objects, beads -- in quantities that suggested something significant lay beneath the surface. Half a century passed before anyone excavated properly. When archaeologist Erich Schmidt arrived in 1931 on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, he uncovered evidence of continuous human occupation spanning from roughly 3900 BCE to 1900 BCE -- nearly two thousand years of unbroken habitation at a crossroads where Mesopotamia met Central Asia.

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Image: V.Kavusi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tepe Hissar: Crossroads of the Ancient World

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Navid1995, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tepe Hissar sits two kilometers southeast of Damghan in Semnan province, about 360 kilometers east of Tehran. Its position on the Great Khorasan Road -- the ancient highway connecting Mesopotamia to the far reaches of Central Asia -- made it a natural gathering point for trade, m...

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Image: Navid1995 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tepe Hissar: What the Dead Carried With Them

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Reza2226, CC BY-SA 4.0. The site's burials tell the story most vividly. More than 700 graves have been excavated across the site's three main occupation strata. One man from Strata II was buried wearing a copper stamp seal hung from his pelvis, a mace head at his side, copper jewelry and multi-coil brac...

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Image: Reza2226 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tepe Hissar: The Burned Building

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dorieo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most revealing structure at Tepe Hissar was destroyed by fire while still occupied. Archaeologists call it the Burned Building. Unlike other structures that were abandoned before destruction, this one burned with its contents intact, baking its mudbrick walls hard and preserv...

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Image: Dorieo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tepe Hissar: A Writing Tablet Before Writing

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mahdiubuntu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the more enigmatic finds is a single clay tablet bearing three symbols, discovered in a lapis lazuli workshop area dated by radiocarbon to approximately 3650 to 3370 BCE. This predates Proto-Elamite script, the earliest known writing system of the Iranian plateau. The table...

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Image: Mahdiubuntu | CC BY-SA 4.0