The interdisciplinary Project aims at shedding light on the historical, linguistic and cultural development of Iran from Late Antiquity up to early Islam. Defining the dynamics of change and continuity in long-term periods of transition is one of the main needs in Iranian Studies. The Project therefore addresses a variety of areas, including material data, written sources and archaeological evidence, joining specialists of different disciplines. From a geographical point of view, the project addresses a macro-region corresponding to the northern part of the Iranian world, with a special focus on those areas of Iranian Plateau that are located on the commercial route running south of the Alborz. In the long transition from pre-Islamic to Islamic Iran, communities on this road witnessed major political and cultural developments, greatly contributing to the formation of Iranian culture and identity. Comparing material culture and documentary sources will provide a highly innovative perspective that may improve our understanding of a major transition period. In Sasanian and Early Islamic periods a wide range of cultural processes flourished in those areas, involving e.g. religion, identity, language. The reshuffling of material and intellectual habits had an outstanding impact on the Iranian social fabric and still requires an in-depth and comprehensive study to be fully understood. In this respect, the Project aims to address the analysis of transitional phenomena operating both in micro-systems (specific language phenomena, single sites, limited areas, local communities) and in macro-systems (languages, regions and central institutions). In order to achieve reliable results, sources and data of different nature (literary texts, epigraphy, material culture, ceramics and other objects, landscape documentation) will be studied in a wider perspective apt to provide methodological patterns of investigation that may foster a better understanding of historical dynamics.
Expected results will cover different thematic areas while the broad multidisciplinary approach characterizing the Project represents an impact factor within the scenario of scientific researches devoted to the study of Late Antiquity and Middle Age. Due to the different linguistic skills required, many among the major researches on Iranian history focus either on the Islamic or on the Pre-Islamic period, thus dividing an historical continuum that lasted well into the first Islamic centuries. The Project aims indeed at changing this perspective overcoming a scholarly divide that hampered our understanding of a much-blurred phase of Iranian history, when transition processes did not follow linear or homogenous patterns. In this respect the involvement of specialists of both Sasanian and Islamic civilizations, as well as the interaction between archaeological methodologies and the study of written sources, both primary and secondary, certainly give a highly innovative profile to this Project. According to the Project objectives and its inner partition, the most innovative aspects can be summarized as follows:
1). The central aspect of this research project, being a comprehensive study on the evidence attesting the protracted use of Middle Persian language in public and administrative practices of Early Islamic Iran, focusing on northern Iran (Cereti, M. Mancini, Benvenuto +research grant), will substantially improve the knowledge of many aspects of that society. Moreover, during the period of the present project unpublished or poorly published materials (Lakh-Mazar, Qale-ye-Iraj, Valiran, etc.) will be studied and made available to a wider public. Given the nature of these documents, pertaining mainly to the field of daily life and thus interacting well with the data from archaeology, the publication of new collections of ostraka and papyri will provide new information on relevant subject-matters such as local administration, interaction between central and peripheral administrations, possibly cross-cultural phenomena between native and dominant communities, conservation of old scribal competencies within professional circles. Moreover, the presence in our team of a specialist of Semitic languages (Agostini) will make it possible to study unedited Aramaic inscribed objects which are present in Iranian museums and witness the dissemination of Aramaic throughout the Iranian plateau. These goals match well with current trends in the field of Iranian Studies (e.g. Gyselen in the most recent volumes of Res Orientales) and will provide original data as well as new perspectives. Furthermore, the collaboration with experts of the Islamic world will foster in-depth comparisons with post-Sasanian literary sources giving, therefore, the chance to elaborate theoretical models concerning continuity in administrative practices in northern Iran throughout Late-Sasanian and Early-Islamic periods. The results in this area may well foster a better knowledge on these subjects, reviving the academic debate and comparison with what is already known about regions that have been the subject of detailed study on these and similar aspects (e.g. Morony 1984, Iraq after the Muslim conquest).
2). Through the surveys of Qale-ye Iraj, Valiran, Baze Hur (Jaia) and the comparison of data from Estakhr (Fontana, S. Mancini), specific progresses beyond the state of the art are expected about the comprehension of urban settlement patterns and sub-urban landscape exploitation during the phase of transition from the Sasanian to the Islamic domination. In this framework the comparative analysis of the ceramic material offers an outstanding opportunity to detect change/innovation dynamics within techniques and material productions, improving substantially a yet understudied segment in which the dating often lacks of accurate definition. Likewise, the survey of written and descriptive sources of Early Islamic period (Di Cesare, Nayebossadrian) and related to these regions will allow us to set punctual data acquired through archaeological and topographic work within a wider framework aimed at rendering the acculturation/assimilation processes occurred at a macro-system level.
Lastly, given foreseen cooperation with the Iranian counterpart, the Project will possibly exert a long-lasting impact by training Iranian students involved both in the fieldwork carried out by joint Iranian-Italian teams and in the study of written material. Moreover through a new set of documentation, the Project will contribute actively to the safeguard of archaeological areas currently under the threat of uncontrolled urbanization (e.g Ray and Qale-ye Iraj).