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Besides their royal residences in old and populous cities such as Susa or Babylon, the first Achaemenid kings chose Pasargadae and Persepolis on the Iranian Plateau, sites with limited previous occupation. While the stone monuments that remain today are likely part of the royal palaces, the sites stretch beyond the Royal Quarter and central garden at Pasargadae, a pristine site of no earlier occupation. In Persepolis, the visible remains are just part of a larger site that stretches far beyond the terrace, north to the necropolis of Naqsh-i Rustam and west by six kilometers. Dr. Rémy Boucharlat and Sébastien Gondet describe this area as the Persepolis Settled Zone, which they have investigated using geophysical prospection as well as other archaeological methods that include fieldwalking prospection and mapping. These efforts were enriched by older cartographic documentation: maps and satellite photos from the 1970s and 1960s, respectively. In this lecture, Dr. Boucharlat will discuss the results of this research, which reveal an image of Persepolis very different from the traditional view of the celebrated terrace and its impressive stone remains. Instead, he describes the site as a diffused cityscape that includes areas beyond the terrace. Spaces occupied by royal or elite construction used stone and were separated from the clusters of ordinary constructions often made in mud brick. Large empty spaces were left for crops, orchards, and woods. Despite the limited visual remains, the Persepolis Settled Zone was a loosely built city that included residential, domestic, and artisanal areas distributed within large green spaces. These could be the agricultural estates known in Elamite as partetash, which are frequently mentioned in the tablets of Persepolis. Rémy Boucharlat is an archaeologist and emeritus senior researcher at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) at Lyons University. His research focuses mainly on the history and archaeology of the Great Empires in Iran, from the Achaemenids to the Sassanids. In the 1970s, he excavated in Iran, especially in Susa, and directed excavations in the United Arab Emirates in the 1980s and later in Central Asia. Between 1999 and 2009, he conducted surveys and rescue excavations in the Pasargadae and Persepolis areas. He has been the director of the French Institute of Research in Tehran, a center devoted to social sciences, and the director of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies within the University of Lyon. For twenty years, he has been the coeditor of two journals about the Iranian World, Studia Iranica and Abstracta Iranica. He has coauthored two books, coedited conferences, and has written over 140 excavation reports and studies on ancient sites and their landscapes, urbanism, and ancient irrigation techniques. This lecture is part of the series New Research on Ancient Iran, which highlights new scholarship in the field of the art and archaeology of ancient Iran. Leading scholars will discuss their recent research on Iran and its artistic and cultural significance within the larger context of the ancient world. New Research on Ancient Iran is generously supported by The Tina and Hamid Moghadam Fund. |
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