These imprints were made by seals: engraved stone cylinders and stamps, used in ancient Western Asia to impress designs onto clay.
They served as an early form of written communication, used for administration in the early states that developed in the region.
They are best known from Mesopotamia, which corresponds roughly with modern Iraq. Examples are scarcer further afield, with only a few finds in modern Iran and Türkiye.
Now, formal excavation has uncovered 7048 seal impressions, more than 200 clay figurines, several clay tokens and two cylinder seals at Tapeh Tyalineh in western Iran, dating to approximately 5000 years ago.
This is an unprecedented number of artefacts related to exchange, accounting, administration and storage, indicating the site was a major administrative centre despite its supposedly peripheral location.
The seal impressions are diverse, sharing similarities with contemporary examples from western Iran, Mesopotamia and Arslantepe in Anatolia.
The site was likely involved in an extensive, organised network of commercial exchange and reflects cultural connections and inter-regional exchange with near and far regions of Western Asia in the early third millennium BC.