This volume is the output of a conference held in Rome in 2013, on ‘The Sasanian Empire and Rome’, which brought together a team of international experts. Sauer, the editor, has recently shown interest in Sasanian archaeology and carried out fieldwork on the remains of Sasanian military infrastructures around the Caspian Sea (E. Sauer, H.O. Rekavandi, T.J. Wilkinson and J. Nokandeh [edd.], Persia's Imperial Power in Late Antiquity: the Great Wall of Gorgan and the Frontier Landscapes of Sasanian Iran [2013]). In fact, roughly one third of the collection focuses on the results of the Caspian Sea archaeological projects, and interestingly some of the contributors accentuate the achievements of these fieldworks in their contributions.
The volume is divided into four sections and thirteen chapters. The first contribution is Sauer's long introduction to the Sasanian period, and he also evaluates the individual contributions and highlights their results. He makes a masterly comparison between the Sasanian Empire and its most powerful rival, Rome. His comparison focuses on subjects such as: the lack of experts, limited resources and studies in Sasanian studies; policies in city building; population growth; defence and military infrastructure; cultural and religious diversity; influence on other realms and neighbours; contacts with the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, Arabia and Roman territory.
In Chapter 2 St J. Simpson introduces two unknown and unrecorded city sites and summarises Sasanian urbanism. He concludes that the Sasanian Empire was built on an urban economy, and he also analyses and interprets commercial and residential quarters in Sasanian cities, using archaeological data from three city sites: Veh Ardašīr in Mesopotamia, Qasr-i Abu Nasr in Fars and Marv in Central Asia (p. 38). Simpson points to a fourth fortification on the western part of the Bišābuhr city that is being destroyed by the river (p. 25). It should be noted that, whatever the archaeological evidence suggests, the western side of the city lacks traces of fortifications and the Šāpūr river, with the lateral eroded sections standing at between 10–30m in the western part, was used as a natural defensive barrier, which D. Lawrence and T.J. Wilkinson (p. 100) and Sauer (p. 259) discuss in connection with the importance of natural defensive barriers.
In Chapter 3 L. Shumilovskikh and her colleagues evaluate available pollen, coprophilous fungal spores and insect records from ten sites, mostly the lakes of the Iranian plateau; these new methods of analysis in archaeology provide important information on plants and vegetation from the Achaemenid to the Islamic periods. Among their finds from the Parišān lake, presented in fig 3.10, some plants (Pistacia, Cerealia-t. etc.) date to the early Sasanian period, and there is no evidence from the mid to late Sasanian period. They conclude that ‘agriculture practices seem to have been more intensive in the Fars region under the Achaemenids than under the Sassanians’ (p. 69). Interestingly, during the recent archaeological excavation of the Sasanian site of Tal-e Qaleh Seyfābād (TQS), located about 400m west of Lake Parišan, date fruits were found in large quantity in all the excavated layers – evidence that the Sasanian economic policy based on wet agriculture was practised in this region on a large scale during the mid and late Sasanian period (P. Ghasemi, R. Noruzi, R. Gyselen, M. Mashkour and A. Rezaei, ‘Tol-e Qaleh Seyfābād, A Major Provincial Centre of the Sasanian Period in Bišābuhr Province, Iran’, JANES 57 [2020]). The discovery of date fruits at TQS on a large scale confirms the report of Ṭabarī, who noted Mehr-Narseh's vast arboriculture establishment (12,000 palm trees, 12,000 olive trees and 12,000 cypresses) at his birthplace Dašt-e Barin and Jereh (M.J. Ṭabarī, Tarikh-e-Ṭabarī / Tārīkh al-Rosol va al-Molūk, vol. 2, 6th edition, translated into Farsi by A. Payandeh [2004], p. 626). In contrast, no traces of palm in pollen analysis from Parišān lake were found by L. Shumilovskikh and her colleagues. This absence should make one consider that pollen analysis is one element of multi-disciplinary palaeo-environmental studies to understand the vegetations of a region in the past. But it has some limitations, as we see at this site, and authors should consider these limitations in their results and avoid hasty conclusions about agricultural practices in this region.
Although during past decades the animal remains of the excavated Sasanian sites were not collected or published, in Chapter 4 M. Mashkour and her colleagues, in a study of faunal assemblages of some newly excavated sites around the Caspian Sea, provide important information on livestock breeding and meat consumption. Among the identified animals, sheep, goats and cattle have the highest presence.
D. Lawrence and the late T.J. Wilkinson, in their survey of the archaeological landscapes of the frontiers of the Sasanian Empire, meticulously examine the relationships between military installations, urban and rural settlements, infrastructure and geographical features in the northern and western parts of the Sasanian Empire through archaeological evidence, remote sensing data sets and textual information. This study demonstrates the strategies of the Sasanian frontiers and the building of defensive military infrastructures (the Gorgan wall and other linear barriers around the Caspian Sea in the north, and the Khandaq Šāpūr in southern Mesopotamia) to prevent attacks by Nomadic groups.
K. Hopper, in Chapter 6, discusses route systems in the Gorgan plain. She examines direct evidence for international and local routes through aerial photographs and satellite imagery, particularly by Corona images of the 1960s and 1970s (p. 130). Hopper points out that there is often very little physical evidence for the routes themselves (p. 132). Certainly, more careful fieldwork is required to understand the function and dating of these tracks and features.
Chapter 7 focuses on the eastern part of the Sasanian world, which in comparison to the western part is unknown. W. Ball draws our attention to this gap, as a less studied and neglected half of the Sasanian Empire, and provides valuable information by overviewing the archaeological remains in eastern lands, mainly in Afghanistan.
In Chapter 8 L.E. Patterson discusses minority religions in the Sasanian Empire and provides important information on diverse religions and tolerant religious policies. In Chapter 9 T. Greenwood focuses on contested jurisdiction in Armenia and gives valuable information on the traces and influence of Sasanian and Roman laws in Armenia.
P. Callieri, in Chapter 10, re-examines the chronology of the five rock reliefs of Ardašīr I and their workshops, and argues that contact between Romans and Persians started early in the Sasanian period. He supposes that the technical and stylistic developments from Firuzabad I to Naqsh-e Rostam I bas-reliefs, during fewer than fifteen years, were not local changes but were the intervention of an experienced master from outside. He believes that the hands of Roman stonemasons were involved in these developments through imitation of Persepolitan sculpture (p. 233). He adds that the craftsmen of the Takht-Neshin fire-temple at Firozabad were from eastern provinces of the Roman Empire (p. 234).
While Callieri attempts to connect the early years of Sasanian art and architecture to non-local influences, Sauer and his colleagues in Chapter 11 note that ‘The Sasanian Empire should be considered a successor of the Parthian Empire on which a new dynasty had been imposed via internal revolt’ (p. 242). ‘It seems logical to see the Parthian and Sasanian eras as two phases in the history of one empire … the Sasanian era saw a series of major innovations, spread over centuries’ (p. 243). They emphasise that from the third century onwards the power of the Roman Empire in construction of military infrastructure decreased but, in the east, its rival, the Sasanian Empire, became the centre of innovation (p. 241). Interestingly, they compare the Sasanian and Roman empires in terms of their length and extent, different stages of the period, major innovations and military organisation. They argue that in the fifth and sixth centuries the Sasanian army erected and manned vast compounds, mostly in frontier zones, to reduce the risk of surprise attack (p. 255). This idea is supported by Lawrence and Wilkinson in Chapter 5 and also by C. Morley in Chapter 12, who states that the Arabian frontier during the reigns of Ardašīr I and Šāpūr I, Šāpūr II or Do'l-aktaf (who built Khandaq Šāpūr) and particularly during the sixth century was important. During their reigns defensive systems from Hit to Basra (large forts and fortified cities) and Khandaq Šāpūr were built to prevent any unexpected attack from within the Arabian Peninsula, and they also made alliances with local leaders, such as the Nasirids of Hira, to control the activity at the southern frontier (p. 273). He concludes that, after the killing of the last Nasirid leader by Khosrow II, the southern frontier was overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century (p. 276).
In the final chapter J. Howard-Johnston discusses the India trade in Late Antiquity, mostly using evidence from literary sources supported by archaeological finds.
The volume shows great scholarly cooperation between archaeologists, art historians, historians, palynologists, bioarchaeological specialists (archaeobotany and archaeozoology) and palaeoecologists for a better understanding of the Sasanian world. However, some minor errors and issues should be noted. The black-and-white illustrations are of medium quality, some are very small in size and even unreadable, for example, fig. 10.3 (p. 225). In fig. 2.12 (p. 36) some letters and site numbers are omitted or hidden under other graphical layers, which only Sasanian experts who are familiar with toponyms and archaeological site names might be able to deduce. Fig. 2.11 (p. 34) is slightly unreadable; additionally, as a result of the photo-merge to modify the figure, the overlap is not exactly in the right place.
Furthermore, there is no uniform transliteration system for toponyms or the names of archaeological sites (for instance: Istakhr and Estakhr, Samar-kand and Samarkand, Gundeshāpur and Gonde-shapur, Gorgan and Gurgan etc.). Some of the contributors use a similar basic Sasanian Empire map, but several different transliterations, some of them noted above, are presented, such as fig. 2.I, fig. 3.I and fig. II.I.
In the absence of published archaeological excavations of the Sasanian period in the Iranian plateau by mostly Iranian archaeologists, or neglected Sasanian occupation in neighbouring countries, this valuable volume with its latest archaeological fieldwork and rich contributions will help Sasanian archaeology find its place and could reach a wider, international audience.
