With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Lauren Ristvet will conduct a three-year archaeological investigation into the nature of imperialism in the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire and its effects on local communities in Naxçývan, Azerbaijan. The team will bring together experts in archaeology and physics from the US, Azerbaijan, Italy, and England to conduct surveys and excavations at the fortress of Oðlanqala, in the Sharur plain of Naxçývan. Oðlanqala probably served as the center of a local polity beginning about 800 B.C., and later became incorporated into the northern frontiers of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC). The area offers, therefore, an extraordinary opportunity to investigate the imperial and economic strategies of the Achaemenid Empire.
Scholars recognize the Achaemenid Empire as the apogee of Ancient Near Eastern imperialism and as a model for later Mediterranean and Middle Eastern empires, including Rome and Sassanian Persia. Yet so little is known about the archaeology of this empire outside its Western Iranian heartland that until recently some scholars questioned the empire's very existence. Excavations in Iran, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia during the last twenty years provided new data affirming the existence and extent of the empire, but its imperial nature and the reasons for its ephemeral impact still await analysis. How did imperial Achaemenid centers interact with local populations? How did imperialization change the production and consumption of wealth? How did local elites negotiate power in a new imperial framework?
To investigate the nature of Achaemenid imperialism at Oðlanqala, researchers will test four models of local and imperial interaction through excavation, multiple instrument geophysical survey, satellite imagery analysis, surface survey, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, soil micromorphology, ceramic analysis and 3D GIS construction. Research will examine how imperialism transformed the use of space at this provincial center and in the Sharur plains and will define the economic and cultural impact of imperialism by analyzing how it affected ceramic and agricultural production, consumption, and distribution at Oðlanqala.
The intellectual merit of the project lies in its ability to move theoretical understandings of imperialism beyond dichotomous definitions, by exploring the actual operation of an empire that combined "hegemonic" and "territorial" strategies. This investigation of interaction, acculturation, and identity-building provides a comparative perspective for similar debates in other modern and ancient empires. The project will also develop a three-dimensional GIS that incorporates data from surveys, excavations, and analyses to help investigators connect their research across disciplines, and to create a broad understanding of the relationship between space, political power, and economic production at a range of scales. The study will provide significant information about a region that has lacked any major investigative work during a little-known historical period. It will thus fill a major gap in Near Eastern and Eurasian archaeology and provide the basis for major revisions in the scholarly understanding of imperialism in this dynamic region.
U.S. and Azerbaijani undergraduate and graduate students from several institutions will participate in the fieldwork to gain interdisciplinary training in techniques appropriate to 21st century investigations and enhance their knowledge of the archaeology of Azerbaijan.
