logo

Search published articles


Showing 1 results for Shirvani

Ghader Shirvani,
year 9, Issue 33 (12-2025)
Abstract

The archaeological site of Tell-e Geser has long suffered from the absence of a comprehensive final excavation report and the fragmented publication of its materials. This problem is particularly evident in the interpretation of five burials discovered in the Fort Mound, which have been inconsistently dated and stratigraphically positioned in successive publications. Previous studies have attributed these burials broadly to the Neo-Elamite period, often assigning a single burial assemblage to multiple and widely separated chronological phases. This paper presents a critical reassessment of the burial data from the Fort Mound through a systematic re-examination of published excavation plans, stratigraphic sections, elevation records, and associated grave goods. Using a historical-archaeological methodology that combines stratigraphic reasoning with comparative typological analysis, each burial is evaluated independently rather than as part of a presumed homogeneous group. The results demonstrate that several inconsistencies in earlier interpretations stem from errors in plan orientation, misreading of elevation data, and the cumulative misinterpretation of archival materials. When these issues are corrected, the burials can be placed within a coherent stratigraphic sequence, revealing that they do not belong to a single chronological horizon. Instead, the evidence indicates multiple phases of burial activity spanning from the Middle Elamite to the late Neo-Elamite period, allowing the identification of six separate burials in a relatively regular chronological sequence that were previously conflated and misidentified as five. This reassessment not only clarifies the burial sequence at Tell-e Geser but also highlights the broader methodological risks of relying uncritically on legacy excavation data.


Page 1 from 1