It is located in Sistan and Baluchistan Province, the southeastern part of Iran, on the bank of the Helmand River, near the Zahedan-Zabol road.

[4][5] Beginning in 1967, the site was excavated by the Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO) team led by Maurizio Tosi.

The climate was far more welcoming in ancient times when the Hamun Lake, near which the city was located, was much greater in size, and there was a lot of marshland in the area.

This abandonment was thought previously to have taken place around 1800 BC by the Italian archaeological mission there, but research based on calibrated radiocarbon samples in nearby site Tappeh Graziani, by a mission of Italian and Iranian archaeologists led by Barbara Helwing and Hassan Fazeli Nashli, showed that the site was abandoned around 2350 BC.

[18] This abandonment is now considered to be around 2300 BC, and new chronological and stratigraphical sequence in the later excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta (2018–2019), published in 2022, based on areas 26, 33, 35, and 36 are as follows:[19] During Period I, (ca.

[21] Recent excavations by Enrico Ascalone, in Area 33 of Shahr-i Sokhta, show that the so-called "House of the Architect" and the Eastern Building belong to a layer radiocarbon-dated from 3000 to 2850 BC.

Processing workshops were discovered in 1972 in the western quarters of the city with large concentrations of flint, lapis lazuli and turquoise, these sites are considered unique in the region.

[21] On the other hand, Enrico Ascalone, in his recent excavations, discovered a phase of abandonment in Area 33 of Shahr-i Sokhta, radiocarbon-dated to 2450–2350 BC.

[23] This phase, however, was considered recently by archaeologist Massimo Vidale as the last period of profusely developed urban occupation for the whole settlement of Shahr-i Sokhta.

Sajjadi and Hossein Moradi, during excavation season (2014–15), found a system of semi-columns in a long passage between two buildings in area 26 of Shahr-i Sokhta's Period IV, and Massimo Vidale considers it is part of a "fully palatial" compound with very similar semi-columns to those in Mehrgarh found years ago by the French mission that dated them around 2500 BC.

[18]: min.12:10 On the other hand, Ascalone, in his lecture admits in a chronological graphic, that after abandonment between 2350 and 2200 BC the "Burnt Building" in Shahr-i Sokhta was inhabited in Period V, (ca.

The Monumental Area, located east of the Craftsman Quarters with several high hills representing different architectural buildings.

Some pottery kilns were found in the north- western part of the site near and around he Monumental Area, but most vessels were produced out of the town.

The Graveyard Area, also called the Cemetery of Shahr-i Sokhta, which occupies the southwestern part of the site covering almost 25 ha (62 acres).

[15]: 75 Paleoparasitological studies suggest that ancient inhabitants living in the excavated areas were infected by nematodes of the genus Physaloptera, a rare parasite incidence.