Archaeological survey of "GANZAG": Beautiful ancient village in Ardabil, Iran.

The GANZAG village an area of SAREYN district from Ardabil city, with geographical coordinates 48° and 8 min eastern longitude and 38° and 9 min northern latitude, is 3 km away from SAREYN present city. At present there are two types of old and new habitation models in rural areas. The old habitation model of this area includes historical cemetery and connected rock tombs and hills which the areas on – the ground evidence indicates the pre – Islam habitation. During Islamic periods, a brick – shaped and stratified house of the precedent period had been built on the old yards surface and it had been used as a living place which was destroyed by 1375 A.H earthquake and today this yard is obsolete and tombs have been buried a large number of debris. All data from Ethnographic studies and archeological conclusions and various factors indicate that the most natural interpretation about this ruin is that this is remaining from a house of worship (a Mitraian temple) which had been a response to the man's emotional, meaningful needs, native traditions and some religious belief and basically such a collections has been designed for this and they had worked in this direction. This hypothesis is also reasonable that at least a part of performances and different communications– religious, symbolic, political, army – of these structures had been remained when Islam was advanced. Probably it has been used in middle – Islam centuries for various applications such as taking great pains (چله نشینی). Although Islamic period the worship role of this place had been in priority, but it is likely that that these tombs could been used as hiding place or temporary habitation place, that they had stopped there a short while migrating from one region to the other, or they had also been applied by shepherds to use pastures during a special season of the year.

Ardabil, Village, GANZAG, SAREYN, Houses, Islamic era.