Talk:Tepe Sialk

Major Mistakes means this requires a rewrite
This is an email I got from one of the current investigators on Sialk.

- Original Message - From: "DAI Eurasien-Abteilung, PD Dr. Barbara Helwing"  Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 3:46 AM Subject: Re: Dating of the Sialk ziggurat

Here is a brief answer to your question on the dating of the Sialk grande construction. Please know that it is not a ziqqurat but a mudbrick platform, possibly a support for some kind of building standing atop the platform but not necessarily a temple. It dates to the 8th century BC. Some archaeologists have claimed that it dates to the 3rd millennium BC, and it is listed as such in wikipedia, but this is wrong. The dating suggested in the 1930s to the later Iron Age by the excavator, R, Ghirshman, still holds; the Sialk Reconsideration Project run by Dr. Malek Shahmirzadi has dated it to the 3rd millennium BC on the basis of excavating through the backdirt left behind by Ghirshman, which contained som stamp impressions (again wrongly) compared to protoelamite seals. The stamps compare well to Iron Age pottery painting motifs, and the pottery assemblage from the backdirt is mixed. So, solid eviden for a date in the 8th century BC, and not a ziqqurat either.

I hope this helps. Best regards, Barbara Helwing —Preceding unsigned comment added by Salsassin (talk • contribs) 10:08, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

That has to be one of the most denyingly biased statements ever. Of course, the structure is compatible with the description of a ziggurat. The section refuting this was prudently removed. Please wait until verifiable information is presented, before making changes. As of now, it should be considered a ziggurat.

Yeah, I think 'Dr. Helwing' should keep her pet theories off of wiki. Despite her implied expertise, subsequent studies (including the joint study between France and Iran) support a date to the 3rd millenium. A 2010 Study of Tepe Sialk, supports an initial settlement at 6000bc, for the Northern Mound, with an abundance of artifacts from the southern mound, dating from 5000-3000BC (Fazeli, H., Beshkani A., Markosian A., Ilkani H., Young R. L. 2010 The Neolithic to Chalcolithic Transition in the Qazvin Plain, Iran: Chronology and Subsistence Strategies: in Archäologische Mitteilungen Aus Iran and Turan 41, pp. 1-17). And a more recent, 2013, study supports Dr. Shahmirzadi's dating as well, noting that Iron Age elements are, in fact, remnants of Sialk's destruction, much later. (Matthews, R. and Nashli, H. F., eds. 2013 The Neolithisation of Iran: the formation of new societies. British Association for Near Eastern Archaeology and Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp272. ISBN 9781782971900). Rejecting the structure as being, super-technically, a 'ziggurat', falls along the lines of tautological denial. But given the abundance of materials dated to the 5th and 6th milliem BC, assigning an 8th century date based on late artifacts, is entirely absurd, to the point of being unethical. 2601:882:100:D7B0:3504:7572:2397:D24 (talk) 13:08, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Mistakes
This article is plenty of mistakes about figures: 7,500 BC is not 6th millennium, but 8th millennium;; or 2,000 years of present Era + 1,350 years old of an ziggurat is not 5,000 years ago, and so... - Montes or IP 213 60 60 73, 1:45 local hour, 22 October 08

Exposition of information
The article could be improved considerable if an internal structure is given to its content (that is, subsections as in here), more noninline references, and a more technical archaeological description of the. Omnipaedista (talk) 15:16, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Article title
This should be either Tepe Sialk (the most common name) or just Sialk, but not 'Tappeh Sialk' which is rarely used. As 'Tepe Sialk' seems most useful when searching with Google Books or scholar, I plan to change it to that. Dougweller (talk) 11:46, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That sounds good to me (Tepe Sialk). I created Tureng Tepe yesterday and saw that the English spelling for hill (tepe) varies greatly in sources.--Milowent • talkblp-r  12:44, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion
A little more care should be placed in the wording of the article. Take for example the first paragraph under the heading 'History'. It reads as follows:

"The Sialk ziggurat was built around the 3000 BC. A joint study between Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization, the Louvre, and the Institut Francais de Recherche en Iran also verifies the oldest settlements in Sialk to date back from 6000-5500 BC"[2][3]

The two sentences above are about two entirely different things. The first sentence, presumably the topic sentence, is about the ziggurat itself, which was built thousands of years after the area was settled by ancient peoples. If you are going to discuss the ziggarat, then discuss it in a separate paragraph. If you are going to discuss the settlement, then discuss it in a separate paragraph. It may be helpful to discuss things chronologically, that is, first discuss the settlement and then notable structures, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.70.65.246 (talk) 17:49, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think I fixed that. Then I noticed we've got date problems over the oldest occupation. I can't do that today. Doug Weller  talk 20:21, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:29, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Dr. Sadegh Malek Shahmirzadi.jpg