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The Douzlakh salt mine at Chehr Abad, Zanjan Province, Iran has provided a rare organic preservation of human remains, and associated cloth and clothing. This textile evidence offers a window into a poorly known but pivotal era of textile history. Moreover, the context is of accidental burial of miners at work, rather than deliberate burial of elites. At least six bodies have been recovered, one of which was very well preserved, being fully clothed and carrying items of personal equipment. This paper is a summary of preliminary findings on the textile assemblage.

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Archaeological excavations on the western part of the Central Iranian Plateau, known as the Qazvin Plain provides invaluable information about the sedentary communities from early occupation to the later prehistoric era. Despite the past archeological data, chronological studies mostly rely on the relative use of the Bayesian modeling for stratigraphically-related radiocarbon dates. The current paper provides a new model for excavations and the chronological framework based on new radiocarbon dating of the six key archeological enclosures in the Qazvin plain. A Bayesian analysis of these data is presented on a site-by-site basis to give the best chronologies. Finally, all dates are combined into a single model of the chronology of the Qazvin Plain from the Late Neolithic to the Iron Age. The procedure aims to use the Bayesian model to predict the transition points between the archaeologically-defined periods with the highest possible precision, to redefine the existing chronology for the Qazvin Plain

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Salt-man No.4 is the 4^th natural mummy discovered in the archeological excavation in Chehr-Abad salt mine located in the western Iranian city of Zanjan in 2005. The mummy was a complete body, fully clothed and with leather boots, a silver earring and a few gadgets such as a metallic knife, ceramic pots and an oil lamp. Radiocarbon dating revealed that the mummy dates back to Achaemenid era 330-550 B.C. Total coverage and clothing as well as anatomy of the mummy including its forearm, delicate fingers and lack of beard and mustache raised some questions about its gender. In the light of the physical status of the mummy at its burial time, the other question was the cause of its death. It was necessary to get information about physical conditions and the severity of the damage incurred to the mummy in order to take conservation and preservation measures. X-Ray radiography and CT scan revealed the gender of the mummy as being a 15 to 16-year-old boy who had died as a result of crushing caused by the collapse of heavy stones at the mine that buried him underneath. The sudden death was caused by multiple bone fractures (trauma) and heart compression and rupture as a result of crushing falling stones.