The National Museum of Iran, in collaboration with the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, has begun producing a series of short videos to introduce its artifacts to the public.
One of the featured artifacts, which traces the history of music in Iran back nearly 8,000 years, is a bone flute discovered during archaeological excavations at the Sang-e Chakhmaq mounds near Shahrud in northeastern Iran in the 1970s.
Talking to the Tehran Times, Fereidoun Biglari, deputy director of the National Museum of Iran, said the flute is made from the bone of a large migratory bird and features four main holes and one hole near its end.
Biglari, who introduced the artifact in the museum's video, noted that stone tools were used to craft the long bone into a flute, and the cutting marks are still visible on the instrument's surface. He added that efforts are underway to reconstruct a replica of this instrument from bone with the help of a musician, allowing the sound it produced to be recreated.
According to Biglari, bone flutes found in Neolithic sites across Asia and other continents likely served multiple cultural and social purposes among early communities. These flutes may have been used in rituals or ceremonies to communicate with the supernatural, mark important events, or accompany communal dances. Additionally, they could have played a role in hunting or herding by mimicking animal sounds or signaling across distances. The production and use of bone flutes also suggest the development of early musical traditions, reflecting the importance of sound and rhythm in Neolithic societies.
The Sang-e Chakhmaq mounds consist of two mounds, eastern and western, and the bone instrument was found in the eastern mound. Sang-e Chakhmaq (also Tepe Sang-i Chaxmaq, meaning "flint mound") is a Neolithic archaeological site offering an uninterrupted cultural sequence from the 7th to the early 5th millennium BCE. The site consists of two mounds—Western and Eastern—documenting the transition from pre-pottery Neolithic to early Chalcolithic periods. The Western mound revealed aceramic Neolithic settlements with mud-brick houses, fireplaces, and flint tools, while the Eastern mound showed later ceramic phases, including clay and stone figurines, and pottery resembling Turkmenistan's Djeitun Culture and Iran's Sialk I and II styles. The site's upper layers also yielded early copper objects and architectural shifts toward rectangular mud-brick construction, marking the transition to Chalcolithic lifeways.
As one of the few sites in northeastern Iran with a complete Neolithic sequence, Sang-e Chakhmaq provides critical evidence for understanding the spread of agriculture, pottery, and early metallurgy in the region. Its material culture shows connections to both Central Asia and north-central Iran, suggesting a cultural crossroads. Several objects found at the site are on display in the Neolithic gallery of the Iran Bastan Museum at the National Museum of Iran.
Over the past few months, some of the cited videos have been shared on the museum's Instagram and Aparat pages.
