Konar Sandal

Konar Sandal is a Bronze Age archaeological site, situated just south of Jiroft, Kermān Province, Iran.

For the modern-day village, see Konar Sandal, Iran.
Konar Sandal
Location in Iran
Coordinates: 28°26′57.74″N 57°46′42.32″E

It consists of two mounds a few kilometers apart, called Konar Sandal A and B with a height of 13 and 21 meters, respectively. At Konar Sandal B, a two-story, windowed citadel with a base of close to 13.5 hectares was found. Also found in Konar Sandal were tablets with scripts of unknown nature.[1]

Chlorite vessel from Kerman Province, Iran. 3rd millennium BC - National Museum of Iran

The site is associated with the hypothesized "Jiroft culture", a 3rd millennium BC culture postulated on the basis of a collection of artifacts confiscated in 2001,[2] criticized for conjecture about material not found in secure archaeological contexts and probably including forgeries.[3] So the excavation of Konar Sandal is important in discovering artefacts in context.

Yousef Majidzadeh, head of the archaeological excavation team in Konar Sandal which began work after the 2001 confiscation, has identified the site as an "independent Bronze Age civilization with its own architecture and language". Majidzadeh suggests they may be the remains of the lost Aratta Kingdom. Other conjectures (e.g. Daniel T. Potts, Piotr Steinkeller) have connected the site with the obscure city-state of Marhashi.

See also

References
  1. Andrew Lawler, Ancient Writing or Modern Fakery?, Science 3 August 2007: Vol. 317. no. 5838, pp. 588 – 589.
  2. Yousef Madjidzadeh, Jiroft: The Earliest Oriental Civilization (Tehran 2003),
  3. O. W. Muscarella, Jiroft and “Jiroft-Aratta” A Review Article of Yousef Madjidzadeh, Jiroft: The Earliest Oriental Civilization, Bulletin of the Asian Institute, 15 (2005) 173-198:


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