Tash-k'irman-tepe

Tash-k'irman-tepe is a large temple complex with a central platform over 100 metres long, surrounded by pakhsa walls and filled with sterile sand and mud bricks, the top level of which forms a pavement. Structures on the pavement include an intricate system of corridors and rooms, some of which contain altars. Many of these corridors and rooms contain ashes. Most of the chambers were open to the sky, but at the centre of the temple is a chamber with an arched roof. This was deliberately deconsecrated and sealed up in antiquity. Inside the room were found traces of the original sacred fire. The room was very plain without even mud plaster on the walls and the fire was placed directly on the floor surface. The altar was sited in the centre of the east wall facing a niche in the west wall. After this main room was closed, the corridors surrounding the chamber were used as storage areas for ash.
To the south of the main chamber is a much more elaborate set of rooms with a formal altar. The rooms have seen several phases of remodelling. In the original plan there was a single large room with recessed blind windows set about a central niche on the north wall. The altar was set into the south wall opposite the niche. Then the north facade was re-worked with two blind windows and a niche. Later again, the room was was divided by a narrow mud wall. The wall has a doorway in the centre, flanked by two engaged pakhsa columns set on stone bases. The wall itself is pierced by circular ventilation holes. The altar consists of a rectangular mud platform set on a low plinth. There is a decorative niche behind the altar with a series of recesses. A second recessed chamber lies to the east of the altar.
On the southern part of the platform are a series of open courts and rooms with a variety of storage areas. Some also contain ashes. To the north is another area of rooms with subsidiary altars and ash-filled corridors. To the north east, the platform ends and soundings in this area have uncovered traces of an earlier structure beneath. This is substantial with large pakhsa walls and may represent an earlier temple complex. Beyond the platform to the south lay a second area of structures, now heavily disturbed by agriculture. A series of large storage jars sunk into the ground were uncovered here, together with traces of another platform.

The excavated complex is the latest of two superimposed monumental structures at the site. Much of the lower one is buried below the platform, but it has been exposed in areas just outside the upper temple. The latest temple dates to the 1^st to 2^nd centuries AD, but the lower one may have been founded several centuries earlier.