Tap Zaghe
| Tap Zaghe | |||
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| Basic data | |||
| Country: |
 Iran
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| Province : | Qazvin | ||
| Coordinates : | 35 ° 47 ' N , 49 ° 56' E | ||
| Height : | 1290 m | ||
| Time zone : | UTC +3: 30 | ||
Tappe Zaghe ( Persian تپه زاغه[ tæppɛ zɑɢɛ ]) is the oldest known village settlement in Iran . The site is located on a dry plain 60 km south of the provincial capital Qazvin at an altitude of almost 1300 m in central Iran. The area of the settlement is about 4 hectares with 210 m × 145 m .
The buildings date from the 8th millennium BC. BC, although there is still disagreement about the exact age. The houses in Zaghe were built of adobe bricks . Walls made of trampled clay were also used , which, due to their lower durability, were only drawn in to separate rooms or to fence gardens. 21 houses were discovered in Zaghe. With one exception due to the climatic conditions, the house entrance is never in a north-westerly or south-easterly direction, because the Raz wind, which brings a lot of dust, blows from the south-east and the Meh wind, a very cold wind, from the north-west. A mud-brick wall was built in front of the entrance to the house with the door to the west to keep the meh wind off.
There are four different types of houses in Zaghe:
- The houses with more than one uncovered room. These houses belonged to families who were economically dependent on cattle breeding .
- The houses with more than one covered room. These houses also belonged to the families who worked as ranchers.
- The houses that had living quarters and livestock rooms and a warehouse for agricultural products. These houses belonged to families who were economically dependent on livestock and agriculture.
- The small houses with a living room, a small warehouse and a yard. These houses belonged to the families who worked for the other groups.
The Zaghe masons used clay, which was the most easily available building material, to make adobe bricks. They also used shredded plants such as straw and foliage mixed with gravel as mortar . They made the adobe bricks without a mold. The surfaces of the walls and the ceiling were plastered with a mixture of straw and clay. The plasterwork of a house was decorated with paint. The decoration of the walls was geometric in red, white, black and yellow colors. The front part of the entrance to this house was paved with ceramic pieces. There is a large building in Zaghe. Ezzatollah Negahban believes this building was used as a temple because:
- it's a bigger building
- there are some places to sit in it,
- it was decorated in contrast to the other houses,
- it was decorated with goat horn , just like in Çatalhöyük in Turkey .
- there are figures of gods in it.
The village was abandoned 5000 years ago.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Mohammad Karim Pirnia: Gholamhosseyn Memarian (ed.): Sabkschenāssi ye Memāri e Irāni (The Stylistic Study of Iranian Architecture) ( Persian ). Sorush-e-Danesh, 2007, ISBN 964-96113-2-0 , p. 41.
Web links
- Counting objects: new evidence from Tepe Zagheh, Qazvin plain, Iran report on Antiquity.ac.uk (English)