The spring at Cheshme-Ali is now part of an archaeological urban park. Such pleasant results are rare; dozens of sites around Tehran are threatened by the city's growth. Photo by Newsha Tavolakian.

The plain of Tehran stretches from the foothills of the Alborz mountains north of the city of Tehran to the fringe of the Great Salt Desert. It is not a huge area, but it is significant that there is a high concentration of prehistoric archaeological sites there. Dr. Hassan Fazeli Nashli, director of the Center for Archaeological Research in Tehran, has been conducting surveys of the area since 2003. He specializes in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, which occurred just before historic times. It is during these periods that people began to live together and form the foundations for what would, around 3000 B.C., become historic cultures. Fazeli suspects that the plain of Tehran was an important area for these developments, but systematic study of the area is in its infancy. He now finds himself in a rush to identify sites of importance before they are lost to the demands of Iran’s growing capital.

Fazeli accompanied me to Cheshmeh-Ali and Tepe Pardis. Cheshme-Ali is embedded within the neighborhoods of southern Tehran, and Tepe Pardis is less than 40 kilometers from downtown. Fazeli began studies with international teams at Cheshme-Ali in 1997 and at Tepe Pardis in 2003. Before Fazeli had these two sites radiocarbon dated, there were no absolute dates for any site on the plain of Tehran.

Dr. Hassan Fazeli Nashli, shown here at Cheshme-Ali, wants to focus world attention on Iran's important prehistoric sites. Photo by author.

Ten years after Fazeli’s excavations, Chesme-Ali is a now a charming urban park. The archaeological mound itself, the tell or tepe, is no higher than the surrounding apartments and stores, and it is of the same color. It blends in so well I wonder how many Tehranians even know it is there. Archaeologists such as Fazeli like to point to such parks as an ideal solution to the struggle between preserving cultural heritage and providing room for urban expansion.

Cheshme-Ali, meaning Ali Spring, has been flowing for thousands of years. It forms a large pool at the base of a stone cliff. Fazeli says a reliable water source might be the reason why people lived at this site for so long. On the cliff face above the pool is a frieze showing royalty from a much later period. These royals, the Qajars, were the same who established Tehran as a capital in 1795. They could not have known that the ancient inhabitants of this spring had paved the way for royalty when their differentiation of labor skills and long-distance trade networks set the stage for social stratification among humans.

Tepe Pardis is a very different story from Cheshme-Ali; there is no charming park here. The tepe stands in the middle of a dusty quasi-industrial, quasi-agricultural area. You can tell it was being used as a garbage dump. A road had been hacked into the tepe on one side and a brick clay quarry was literally scooping the past away on the other before Fazeli and his team started studying the site in 2003. They discovered that Tepe Pardis had been a major ceramic center thousands of years ago. The area is still a center for brick making; the tall smokestacks of kilns form the skyline looking north from atop Tepe Pardis.

“Most sites have 400 or 600 years of history,” Fazeli told me at Tepe Pardis. “Cheshme-Ali and Pardis had 3,000 years of constant occupation.” According to Fazeli, between about 5500 B.C. and 2500 B.C., people at Cheshmeh-Ali and Tepe Pardis farmed, traded over long distances, had trade tokens, made high quality pots fired in advanced kilns, and built large settlements. “These people prepared the context for civilization,” he said.

Civilization, in the form of modern Tehran’s 12 million people, is what now threatens ancient sites on the plain of Tehran. For Fazeli, prehistoric sites on the plain, indeed all over Iran, should be immediately identified and protected for study because of their importance to understanding human history. He sees international collaboration as one of the keys to this effort. But it is a race against time. Like many modern cities, Tehran’s need for urban and industrial expansion is insatiable. And when there is a choice between the present and the past, it is the past that most often loses.

When do you think cities should stop construction and preserve the past? When should they get out the bulldozers?

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