Review of Alireza Askari Chaverdi and Pierfrancesco Callieri, Report on the Field Work Carried out by the Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeological Mission in 2008–2009, Oxford: BAR Publishing 2017. Pp. 310. ISBN: 9781407316086

Abstract

This volume represents the final report on fieldwork carried out by the Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeological Mission in 2008-2009 at Persepolis West, an area in the surrounds of the World Heritage Site of Persepolis, an imperial centre of the Achaemenid Empire. The fieldwork was undertaken as part of a five-year project entitled "From Palace to Town", started in 2008 by the Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeological Mission, which included archaeology and conservation works. The project aimed to shift attention away from the 'palaces' of the imperial Terrace which had been almost exclusively the focus of archaeologists in the past, to the inhabited settlement known from written sources, the 'town'. The current volume is the second of four in the "From Palace to Town" series. "Persepolis West" is the name given to one of the Achaemenid settlements identified in the plain and specifically within the broad area named the "Persepolis settled zone". <br/> The great value of this volume is in presenting and making available to the academic community the results of this important fieldwork project. The geophysical survey and ground-truthing of this data are pivotal to our understanding of the settlement landscape of Persepolis. The pottery assemblage retrieved through controlled stratigraphic excavation fills the gaps in the Achaemenid and post-Achaemenid ceramic sequence, with radiometric dating supporting these results.