The mound of Yanik Tepe is situated about twenty miles south-west of Tabriz, in north-west Iran, in the central district of the administrative province of east Azerbaijan (see Fig. 1). It stands three miles west of the small town of Khosrowshah, close to the railway from Teheran. This mound is one of at least fifty round the shores of Lake Urmia (now Lake Rezaieh) which were found during a survey of sites carried out by the writer in 1958–9. Most of these sites are round Rezaieh, on the west side of the lake, but there is a number of mounds at intervals along the east side and two or three on the north. The Solduz plain, just south of the lake, where Hasanlu is situated, has been thoroughly surveyed by the American expedition. Yanik Tepe itself is quite a large mound, covering an area of about twenty acres, and with a maximum height of 16.50 metres. It has gently sloping sides, is virtually without vegetation and—a great practical advantage to the archaeologist—is entirely uncultivated, since only irrigated land in this district will grow crops. Presumably, however, there were springs or streams in the vicinity during the Bronze Age. The present village of Tazekand, close to Yanik Tepe, depends for its livelihood principally on fruit-growing rather than cereals.