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.

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.

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.