Pasargadae and Persepolis Revisited: The Extended Achaemenid Cities beyond the Royal Palaces Online lecture Tuesday, June 8, 2021 at 12pm National Museum of Asian Art Washington, DC Register here: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9Zqr780mRaauqOCWQN_OeA 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. |
Persian art 