| In the ancient Near East, the Achaemenid Empire is one of the few world empires with a poorly understood regional organization and sparsely populated core region. This archaeological fact is in sharp contrast with the historical narrative, primarily of Greek origin, that considered Persepolis as a prosperous, urban center. For this dissertation, I addressed this ambiguity in evidence and offered the results of my new archaeological surveys in the region in order to have a better understanding of the organization of the landscape in the homeland of the Persian Achaemenids. The study begins at the time of the Persian migration into Fars Province around the beginning of the first millennium BC and continued into the early centuries of Islam, so that I can contrast the built landscape of one important significant region of Persia, the Kur River Basin, during the Achaemenid period with pre-Achaemenid, post-Achaemenid, and Sasanian Fars.;To understand Persepolis' place in the archaeology of ancient Persia, the first major requirement was to study long-term changes to the political economy of the Kur River Basin through an analysis of the archaeological landscape. The dissertation used political economy as the central focus of analysis because political economy is largely concerned with the organizational aspects of power and authority. Specifically, this study investigated three common avenues to power---military, economic, and ideological---and what the built landscape reveals about how the political economy of ancient Persia changed through time.;The second major requirement was to study the relationship of the Persepolis Palace Complex to its wider, regional setting. Previous regional surveys failed to document an associated settlement pattern that one would expect to see in the core region of a world empire. It is tempting to refer to historical narratives of later secondary sources but the best evidence for determining the function of Persepolis is archaeological, and the new surveys provided direct evidence of how the region as a whole was organized. At the end of the dissertation, I integrated the evidence from archaeological survey into a new interpretation of Persepolis' relationship to its hinterland that specifically accounts for the potential role of nomads and the imperial dimensions of the archaeological record. |
