Document Type : Original Article
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran.
Abstract
Village and agriculture in the Achaemenid Empire has not been a case of research, so some aspects of rural and agricultural economy in this period remain relatively unclear. Classical sources provide scattered but important information about Village and rural settlements in the Achaemenid Empire, but it is not possible to make a comprehensive analysis of structures and mechanisms of agricultural, husbandry, and ranch activities based on them. The archaeological studies do not provide much information about villages. While, tens of thousands documents belonging to the Achaemenid administrative archives provide valuable information about this topic directly and indirectly. The Persepolis Fortification Archive, dating the reign of Darius I (486-522 BC) is an important one. Archive texts are related to the management of production, storage, distribution, and redistribution of agricultural and commodities products in Persia. The present study will examine the status of villages and agricultural activities in the center of Achaemenid Empire in Fars based on the analysis of the Persepolis Fortification archive. The results of this study show that there was a systematic and interconnected organization in the management of agricultural affairs in Fars, which was controlled by the central administration in Persepolis. The approximately 5,000 inscriptions that have been read so far, on the one hand, shed light on the issue of ownership of villages, agricultural lands, and Paradises, which had been previously addressed by Greek historians. On the other hand, they show the complexity of the management cycle and circulation of agricultural products and their by-products.
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