French Iranologist Michele Casanova dies from coronavirus

TEHRAN-French archeologist and Iranologist Michele Casanova, who was known for her excavations and researches on the Burnt City, a UNESCO-registered site in southeastern Iran, died due to coronavirus on Monday. She was 60.

Casanova’s death was announced by Nasir Eskandari, a faculty member of the archeology department of the University of Tehran, who was one of Casanova’s students.

Casanova made great efforts to promote Iranian culture during her life, while she taught mostly Iranian archeology at the Sorbonne University and the University of Lyon, ISNA quoted Eskandari as saying on Thursday.

She also spent two years exploring the Burnt City and published several articles on the UNESCO-registered site, the Jiroft civilization, and the production and trade of marble vessels and semi-precious stones in the Iranian Bronze Age as well as some books on Iranian archeology, he added.

Called “Shahr-e Sukhteh” in Persian, the Burnt City is associated with four rounds of civilization, all burnt down by catastrophic sets of fire. It is situated in Sistan-Baluchestan province, which was once a junction of Bronze-Age trade routes crossing the Iranian plateau.

Founded around 3200 BC, it was populated during four main periods up to 1800 BC, during which time there developed several distinct areas within the city: those where monuments were built, and separate quarters for housing, burial, and manufacture.

According to UNESCO, diversions in watercourses and climate change led to the eventual abandonment of the city in the early second millennium. The structures, burial grounds, and a large number of significant artifacts unearthed there, and their well-preserved state due to the desert climate, make this site a rich source of information regarding the emergence of complex societies and contacts between them in the third millennium BC.