page_title: Tepe Sialk
section_title: Metallurgy
hierarchical_section_title: Tepe Sialk / Southern mound / Metallurgy
caption_attribution_description: English: Economic tablet with numeric signs and Proto-Elamite script. Clay accounting tokens, Uruk period. From the Tell of the Acropolis in Susa. Français&#160;: Tablette économique portant des signes numéraux et des signes d'écriture proto-élamite. Terre cuite, période d'Uruk. Provenance&#160;: tell de l'Acropole à Suse.
context_page_description: Tepe Sialk is a large ancient archeological site in a suburb of the city of Kashan, Isfahan Province, in central Iran, close to Fin Garden. The culture that inhabited this area has been linked to the Zayandeh River Culture.
context_section_description: Evidence demonstrates that Tepe Sialk was an important metal production center in central Iran during the Sialk III and Sialk IV periods. A significant amount of metallurgical remains were found during the excavations in the 1990s and later. This includes large amounts of slag pieces, litharge cakes, and crucibles and moulds.
  Sialk IV level begins in the second half of the fourth millennium, and ends with the abandonment of the site at the beginning of the third millennium. For the oldest sub-periods of the Sialk IV, there are links with the Mesopotamian civilizations of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr.
  Later on, the material is similar to that of Susa III (Proto-Elamite level), so this is where the Proto-Elamite horizon at Sialk is located, as is also evidenced by the discovery here of some Proto-Elamite clay tablets.
  The ruins of what would be the oldest Ziggurat in the world are found at this same Sialk IV level.
caption: Economic tablet with numeric signs. Proto-Elamite script in clay, Susa, Uruk period (3200 BC to 2700 BC). Department of Oriental Antiquities, Louvre.
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