The Roman Empire, and its eastern and western successor states, controlled the majority of Europe's population for approximately half a millennium (first century bc to fifth century ad), holding dominant power status from the second century bc to the seventh century ad, longer than any other state in the western world in history, and it was also the only empire ever to rule over the entire Mediterranean. Its ability to integrate ethnic groups and its well-organised military apparatus were instrumental to this success. From the third century onwards, however, the balance increasingly shifted; the physical dimensions of fortresses and unit sizes tended to decrease markedly in the Roman world, and the tradition of constructing marching camps and training facilities seems to have been abandoned. By contrast, the Sasanian Empire increasingly became the motor of innovation. Already in the third century it matched Rome's abilities to launch offensive operations, conduct siege warfare and produce military hardware and armour. Jointly with the Iberians and Albanians, the empire also made skilful use of natural barriers to protect its frontiers, notably by blocking the few viable routes across the Caucasus. By the fifth/sixth century, it pioneered heavily fortified, large, rectangular campaign bases, of much greater size than any military compounds in the late Roman world. These military tent cities, filled with rectangular enclosures in neat rows, are suggestive of a strong and well-disciplined army. Like these campaign bases, the contemporary c. 200km-long Gorgan Wall, protected by a string of barracks forts and of distinctly independent design, is not copied from prototypes elsewhere. The evidence emerging from recent joint projects between the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handcraft and Tourism Organisation and the Universities of Edinburgh, Tbilisi and Durham suggests that in late antiquity the Sasanian army had gone into the lead in terms of organisational abilities, innovation and effective use of its resources.

EIGHT CENTURIES OF GREAT POWER STATUS – SEVEN CENTURIES OF RIVALRY

Some 1,400 years ago, in ad 614/615 and again in ad 626, Sasanian armies had reached the Bosporus. They stood opposite what was at the time by far the richest and most populous city in Europe: Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire.1 The Roman Empire had dominated Europe and the Mediterranean, militarily and economically, for almost 800 years, vastly longer than any other state in world history.

The effects of long-distance maritime trade on the economic and political development of the hinterlands of port-cities are as evident on either side of the Red Sea as in South-East Asia. Both great powers of the west profited from the India trade in the fifth century, but with the deterioration in their relations after the 502–5 war, the Persians imposed an embargo on Roman trade with India, which Justinian tried and failed to break. Hence it was mainly through Persia that the products of the south and the east, including garnets from south India and Sri Lanka, reached Europe. The gold received in tribute from the Romans was probably destined for India. Close attention should be paid to references to trade in contemporary writings by members of elites which were largely indifferent to economic matters. They reveal inter alia the existence of a powerful business lobby in the Sasanian Empire.

While the early Roman centuries marked the high point of Mediterranean economic activity before the early modern period, it was in late antiquity that the growth of commerce gathered way in the wider world. There was increased traffic across Eurasia, from the late fourth century, when the city-states of Sogdia took control of the overland routes between China and the west, as well as those running south across the mountains to the subcontinent. This development in the north was dwarfed by the growth of longdistance trade by sea and of a series of interconnected maritime markets, itself facilitated by the extension of the Indian cultural zone over South-East Asia, as nascent states on the mainland and islands adopted Indian modes of rule and Buddhist beliefs. To the west of the subcontinent, in the Indian Ocean, there was increasing activity. Manufactured goods and natural products were exchanged between the Roman Empire, south Arabia, East Africa, the Persian Gulf, India and Sri Lanka. Growth continued in late antiquity, boosted, in the fifth century, by the opening of a direct sea route, through the Straits of Malacca, between the southern and eastern oceans. This facilitated trade between the Indian Ocean world and south China, and opened up the Java Sea as an active zone of exchange.

This chapter is based on our recent investigations into the subsistence economy at a military fort in the northern Caucasus (in modern Georgia), in comparison with sites along the Gorgan Wall in the north-east of Iran. The latter include forts and settlements in the hinterland. These studies highlight the diversity of animal consumption during the Sasanian era, influenced by the environmental setting of the sites, general agro-pastoral practices in the study regions and different cultural traditions. In all cases, however, herded animals (sheep/goats and cattle) provided most of the animal protein, complemented by the exploitation of other resources such as poultry, fish and wild birds. The huge quantity of animal remains from Dariali Fort in Georgia and the other Sasanian-era sites presented here shed new light on animal exploitation at the frontiers of one of antiquity's largest empires and provide a solid foundation for future archaeozoological studies in this part of the ancient world.

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between humans and animals can be approached from various angles and is of major significance for our understanding of past societies. Archaeozoology provides crucial information in this regard, and the study of animal remains from historical sites sheds light on socio-economic interaction, the environment, food production, trade and exchange and beliefs. While bioarchaeological studies (archaeozoology and archaeobotany) of historical periods are well established in European and American archaeology, they still remain extremely deficient in South-West Asia. Bioarchaeological studies are applied unevenly across chronological periods, and for historical periods the main focus has been on the classical world. This tendency is, however, changing in the wake of growing integration of scientific disciplines into historical archaeology.

Recent excavations in Iran and in Georgia, within the framework of the European Research Council ‘Persia and its Neighbours’ project, have provided the opportunity to study faunal assemblages from two regions located at the frontiers of the Sasanian world1 (Fig. 4.1). In the north-east of Iran the excavation of several sites on the Gorgan Plain, along the 195km Gorgan Wall, has provided valuable information on animal exploitation in various social contexts.

This chapter investigates the archaeological landscapes of the frontiers of the Sasanian Empire. Drawing on evidence from current and archived archaeological surveys, in combination with high-resolution remote sensing datasets such as CORONA spy photography, we compare the organisation of settlements and defensive structures of the Sasanian frontier zones in response to a variety of external pressures. These varied from the Roman Empire in the west to less centralised entities, including nomadic groups, in the southwest and north-east. Following a general discussion of the multiple manifestations of Sasanian frontiers drawn from southern Mesopotamia (Iraq), northern Syria and north-eastern Iran, the main focus of the chapter is on the complex frontier landscape of the southern Caucasus, particularly the area of modern Azerbaijan, Georgia and Daghestan. We discuss the role of linear barriers, including the Gorgan Wall in north-eastern Iran and the Ghilghilchay and Derbent Walls in the Caucasus, irrigation systems, and alignments of fortifications and settlements in shaping their local landscapes. By placing the archaeological remains of the Sasanian Empire in a wider context we are able to examine the relationships between military installations, settlement patterns, infrastructure and geographical features such as mountain ranges and rivers. Comparing the different case studies allows us to conclude with some general statements on the nature of Sasanian power in the frontier territories of the empire.

As a large territorial entity, the Sasanian Empire encompassed a variety of geographical, environmental and socio-cultural zones. Even within the northern and western reaches discussed here, the empire included the high mountain ranges of the Taurus, Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, the fertile dry farming plains of much of northern Mesopotamia and Gorgan, heavily irrigated southern Mesopotamia and steppe and desert regions in various guises (Fig. 5.1). Threats to Sasanian power were similarly diverse, from the agrarian might of the Roman Empire in the west to smaller local ‘states’, client kingdoms and decentralised nomadic groups in the north and north-east. This diversity had a profound impact on the organisation and character of the frontier regions at the edges of imperial control. In this chapter we make use of data acquired as part of the recent upsurge in interest in Sasanian frontiers across the study region,1 as well as satellite imagery and textual information, to examine the structure and function of the frontier zones in different areas.

Recently, Touraj Daryaee and Khodadad Rezakhani observed astutely that no book on Sasanian history in English had been published between the nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries. There have, of course, been a small number of such books in other languages, such as French, German and Russian. Monographs on ancient Persia, covering the Sasanian as well as the Parthian and Achaemenid eras, have also appeared in print, and a series of specialist studies, on specific Sasanian sites or artefacts, such as coins, are worth noting too. Over the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in Sasanian studies, and a small number of volumes devoted to the Sasanian Empire have been produced in recent years.2 It is, however, still true that a person of medium income in Europe would easily be able to afford to buy all books dealing mainly or exclusively with matters Sasanian currently in print and would not require excessive shelving space to store them. By contrast, anybody seeking to acquire all that has been published on every aspect of Roman studies would have to be rich and require a small palace at least to house such a library. Not only have there been fairly few works on the Sasanian era, there is also a strong tendency to focus on major works of art and literary sources, sparse and mostly either written from an external perspective or centuries after the events.

It requires thus no apology for this edited work devoted to the much neglected Sasanian Empire, or for our focus being broader than textual sources and art. Neither, of course, is it our aim to go from one extreme to the other. Literary sources and works of art remain indispensable, but other strands of archaeological and environmental evidence now add much to the picture. As the title reveals, it is our aim to assess the global significance of the Sasanians, and several contributors deliberately venture even beyond the borders of the mega-empire, into the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, Arabia and the Roman world. The reach of Sasanian influence, the interrelation in peace and war between the empire and its neighbours and the comparative scale of infrastructure and construction projects cannot be appreciated from an isolationist perspective.

Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia focuses on the world of ancient Persia (pre-Islamic Iran) and its reception. Academic interest in and fascination with ancient Persia have burgeoned in recent decades and research on Persian history and culture is now routinely filtered into studies of the Greek and Roman worlds; biblical scholarship too is now more keenly aware of Persian-period history than ever before; while, most importantly, the study of the history, cultures, languages and societies of ancient Iran is now a well-established discipline in its own right.

Persia was, after all, at the centre of ancient world civilisations. This series explores that centrality throughout several successive ‘Persian empires’: the Achaemenid dynasty (founded c. 550 bce) saw Persia rise to its highest level of political and cultural influence, as the Great Kings of Iran fought for, and maintained, an empire which stretched from India to Libya and from Macedonia to Ethiopia. The art and architecture of the period both reflect the diversity of the empire and proclaim a single centrally constructed theme: a harmonious world-order brought about by a benevolent and beneficent king. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Persian Empire fragmented but maintained some of its infrastructures and ideologies in the new kingdoms established by Alexander's successors, in particular the Seleucid dynasts who occupied the territories of western Iran, Mesopotamia, the Levant and Asia Minor. But even as Greek influence extended into the former territories of the Achaemenid realm, at the heart of Iran a family of nobles, the Parthian dynasty, rose to threaten the growing imperial power of Rome. Finally, the mighty Sasanian dynasty ruled Iran and much of the Middle East from the third century CE onwards, proving to be a powerful foe to Late Imperial Rome and Byzantium. The rise of Islam, a new religion in Arabia, brought a sudden end to the Sasanian dynasty in the mid-600s CE.

These successive Persian dynasties left their record in the historical, linguistic and archaeological materials of the ancient world, and Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia has been conceived to give scholars working in these fields the opportunity to publish original research and explore new methodologies in interpreting the antique past of Iran.

The Sasanian Empire had many large, multicultural and typically heavily defended cities. Literary sources are filled with direct or indirect references to the deportation or internal transfer of populations from one region to another, and boosting the urban population was clearly an important part of imperial economic planning, but there has been relatively little study of Sasanian urbanism. This chapter provides a timely overview by re-examining the archaeological evidence for the physical appearance and distribution of some of these urban centres, discusses their forms, and uses Google imagery to locate two previously archaeologically unrecorded cities which feature in the Arab conquest and Heraclius’ campaign shortly before. It goes on to use the excavated evidence from three city sites in Iraq, Iran and Turkmenistan to illustrate the physical appearance of residential and/or commercial quarters, and concludes with some observations on the importance of the Sasanian urban economy.

INTRODUCTION

The term ‘Sasanian’ conjures a popular image of armoured knights, fire worshippers, courtly arts and conspicuous consumption, but a 400-year empire which stretched from Syria to Pakistan, recovered from the capture and death of one emperor on an eastern battlefield, and was one of Rome's biggest rivals and threats was not just built on exceptional kingship, feudalism and faith. Its success lay instead in effective bureaucracy and good management. Integrated planning for economic, military and civilian needs was fundamental, and without it the massive capital projects and military capabilities of the Sasanian state could not have been sustained. The huge number of mints known from marks on silver drachms implies a monetarised economy despite the fact that many of the mints are still physically unlocated. Moreover, many seals give the names of cities with which their owners were associated. The rapid movement of the Arab-led armies during the Islamic conquest was regularly punctuated by lengthy sieges and protracted negotiations with local commanders, which can be explained by the sheer number of cities and the scale of their defences.