Cheshmeh-Ali (Persian: چشمهعلی; "Spring of Ali") is an ancient recreational place, located in the south of Tehran and north of Rey or Ray in the country of Iran. The spring is spot in the neighborhood of Ebn-e Babooyeh, Tughrul Tower, and below the Rashkan castle and next to Rey Castle and Fath Ali shah inscription.
Cheshmeh Ali is a small Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement located within the suburbs of modern-day Tehran, south of the Elburz mountains. It was excavated by Erich Schmidt in 1934-1936 for the University Museum in Philadelphia, also sponsored by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. At that time, the site was far from Tehran. When Schmidt died in 1964, his work remained mostly unpublished.[1]
Originally, Donald E. McCown offered three successive painted pottery traditions for northern Iran: the Sialk horizon, the Cheshmeh Ali horizon, and the Hissar horizon.[2] The ceramic sequence at Cheshmeh Ali shows two millennia of occupation from the Late Neolithic through the Late Chalcolithic.[3]
The Cheshmeh Ali cultural complex generally defines a Transitional Chalcolithic on the Iranian Central Plateau dating between 5500 and 4800 BC.[4] Cheshmeh Ali ware is dated ca. 5500 BC. This painted pottery, also known as "Ismailabad ware", is found across northern Persia as far west as the area around Kashan, near Isfahan, and Qazvin to the north of there.[5]
Yet recent reexcavation of Cheshmeh Ali has also documented an earlier occupational phase. Chaff-tempered Neolithic soft-ware ceramics are also found here. These are usually decorated with painted geometric designs, and also have parallels to the early Sialk I material.[6]
Two examples of the so-called Cheshmeh Ali ware, dating to the 6th-5th millennium BCE.[7]
