Neyshabour pottery discovered in Samshvilde, Georgia

The Public Relations Office of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT) quoted Davit Berikashvili, a faculty member and head of the Archeology Department and Director of International Center for Archaeology at the University of Georgia as making the remarks at a scientific-specialized meeting for introducing the ancient city of Samshvilde which was sponsored by the Research Institute of Archeology.

“Samshvilde is one of the most important throughways of the Silk Road and for this reason since ancient times different powers were interested in dominating over it,” he said.

Briefly referring to parts of the archeological activities taken in the ancient city, he said: “So far, during a number of exploration seasons archeologists have not managed to discover the Achaemenid layer, but in the higher layers they have found a number of pottery pieces which they guess might belong to that period and in the event of being assured and conducting relevant tests they would be introduced.”

“Due to the span of the city the archeology group could only focus on part of the main castle to the extent that inside the stronghold 99 trenches have been specified, but only 4 trenches have been explored which show scattered works of the Sassanid era,” he said referring to the broad span of the ancient city of Samshvilde.

“The archeology group is excavating the remains of the palace belonging to the 12th century which had been built over older layers in a way that with the progress of the operation it was found out that the palace is placed over the wall dating back to the 8th, 9th and even older centuries,” he added.

“Among the discovered pottery, there is a beautiful glazed dish that has no precedence in the Caucasus region,” Berikashvili said.

He further said that the second archaeological site in the city was the Cathedral with a span of 100 square meters for the identification of its graves the contemporary radiolocation method was used through which we found out that a number of burials were based on the Christian tradition and some others according to the Islamic tradition and the burial was made towards the Qibla.

Meanwhile, Konstantine Tuporia head of the University of Georgia said “unfortunately for a long time the two countries had been distanced from each other because of political issues and there was no possibility for their joint scientific and research activities'.

“As of the independence day of Georgia historical relations of Iran and Georgian have returned to the initial state and the relationship between the two countries in the scientific and research fields has increasingly taken momentum and developed,” he added.

In the Meantime, Alexander Chulukhadze, head of the Oriental Department, a faculty member and professor of Persian Language and Studies at the University of Georgia said that Samshvildeh is considered as the most ancient site in Georgia where humans lived from the Neolithic era up to the 19th century.

“So far and in the course of six years archeological explorations have been conducted in the ancient city and in fact due to its span and grandeur even 60 years is not enough for its exploration as the surrounding of the city has remained intact,” he said

9376**2050

Follow on Twitter @IrnaEnglish