during the late Achaemenid period.
CHAPTER 24 The Empire's Southeast
Rémy Boucharlat
Today, the southeast of the empire covers the entire southeast of Iran (the provinces Kerman, Sistan‐Baluchistan, and Hormuzgan), the south of Afghanistan (the provinces of Kandahar and Nimruz), the western part of Pakistan until the river Indus (Baluchistan and Sind, and its northern region, ancient Gandhāra), and, very likely, part of the Arab shore of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea (the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman).
In the Achaemenid period these are the satrapies from west to east: Carmania, Drangiana, and south of the latter Makā, moreover Arachosia, India, Sattagydia, and to the north Gandhāra. But not even the borders between Fars and neighboring Carmania (Kerman) have been ascertained, due to the scarcity of information we have on the historical geography of this part of the empire. To define specific cultural horizons of each region is difficult due to the dearth of known archeological sites (Vogelsang 1992).
When looking for settlements of the Achaemenid period, the archeological research has to concentrate along ancient roads, known from Alexander's itinerary as reported by Classical authors, and in the rich valleys. Among the natural resources of that region, the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in Susa mention yakā wood from Gandhāra and ivory from India. A special green stone, chert, from Arachosia, was used for making series of mortars and pestles found in the Persepolis Treasury (Bowman 1970). The corresponding quarries have not been located yet.
Initial archeological exploration is sporadic; it begins seriously with the reconnaissances of intrepid Sir Aurel Stein in Gedrosia in 1927, then, in 1932, in Kerman down to Bandar Abbas (Stein 1931, 1937). Although he is mainly interested in prehistoric periods, he is careful to take down the late prehistoric sites that lie on his way (first millennium BCE) as well as later ones. From the great British explorations in the Indus valley and Gandhāra, information with regard to settlement in the Achaemenid epoch is sporadic. As a result, our information on the Achaemenid southeast derives from the exploration of just a few sites, barely one per region, in northern Pakistan (Akra, Charsadda, Taxila), Afghanistan (Kandahar), and Iran (Dahaneh‐i Ghulaman, Tepe Yahya, Bam, Qaleh Kutchek). This meager state of knowledge and difficulties in interpreting the results of the surveys have so far prevented a precise periodization. A map of the population and of human activities in those regions remains to be designed.
Deviant from most Near Eastern regions which were populated – almost without interruption – from the Bronze Age to the Achaemenid period, the eastern half of Iran and the south of Afghanistan seem to have been unoccupied in the second millennium BCE until the beginning of the first millennium (Azarnoush and Helwing 2005: Map 4); this gap is real, but it is also a reflection of the paucity of research. The situation is not much different in the southern Indus valley, where this period has been described as a “Dark Age” (Franke‐Vogt 2001). The resettlement is no by‐product of the Achaemenid Empire; actually, it begins before, starting in the first half of the first millennium BCE in Iron Age II or III.1 According to a hypothesis which gains more and more approval, this fresh start was set in motion by a new irrigation technique using subterranean galleries, instead of capturing episodic run‐off and tapping springs in use since millennia. This dramatic change of technique, a response to the increasing desiccation of the climate, is well attested on the Arab shore of the Persian Gulf at about the same time, and certainly before the Achaemenid epoch (Potts 1990: pp. 391–392, 2004: pp. 78–79; Magee 2005; Wilkinson et al. 2012: pp. 167–169). A gallery like this did not lie very deep, thereby in my opinion differing from the famous qanāt, which taps a deep‐lying aquifer, probably a later technique (Boucharlat 2001, 2017).
To the east of the imperial centers in Fars, three sites dated to the Achaemenid epoch are at present known in Carmania. At Qaleh Kutchek in the Halil valley, 18 km southwest of Jiroft, resettlement starts in the Iron Age and expands in the Achaemenid epoch, when it shows an urban organization with a citadel of more than 2 ha in its center, surrounded by an Inner and an Outer Town (Azadi et al. 2012). The site has been surveyed but not excavated yet. Southwest of Qaleh Kutchek, the high hill of Tepe Yahya, abandoned sometime in the second millennium BCE, was occupied again in the Iron Age (Level III, 800–600 BCE). A mudbrick platform that was rebuilt once follows. Its dimensions have not been ascertained as they surpass the limits of the sounding. Radiocarbon datings put both platforms between 650 and 500 BCE, that is, before and at the beginning of the Achaemenid epoch. They are seen as the work of a local authority which, according to the excavators, disappeared when Darius consolidated his power (Lamberg‐Karlovsky and Magee 1999). Contemporary and later structures of Level II dated from 500 to 250 BCE consist of modest multiroom mudbrick and stone buildings (Magee 2004: pp. 73–75). Further to the east, around Bam, following upon the terrible earthquake in 2003, an intensive exploration of the region under reconstruction by Iranian archeologists brought to light several pre‐Islamic settlements; an Achaemenid fort of about 400 m2 and habitations have been identified. Here, too, the use of subterranean galleries, some of which seem to belong to that period, may explain the reoccupation of the region after a long hiatus (Adle 2006: pp. 43–47).
Along the Arabian Sea, east of the Strait of Hormuz, in the inhospitable region of coastal Baluchistan, the first millennium BCE sites consist often of large fields of cairn‐burials, which were certainly used in the Parthian epoch, as is attested by the coins, but perhaps also earlier (Stein 1937). Not a single town of that period has been located (Franke‐Vogt 2001: p. 270). This coast poses the problem of Makā, which has long been associated with the modern name of Makran. Today the satrapy named Makā is thought to have extended mainly to the other side of the sea into the Oman Peninsula (Potts 1990: pp. 393–400). There is, admittedly, no indication, for instance in the shape of Achaemenid‐inspired objects and pottery, that the region belonged to the empire, but interestingly some pottery classes from the region are paralleled with Tepe Yahya (Magee 2004), one more argument for continuation of the traditional cultural relationships between the two sides of the Gulf also in that epoch.
The only candidate for the capital of Drangiana, Zarin according to Ctesias, is Dahaneh‐i Ghulaman, near Lake Hamun at the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This exceptional Achaemenid site was founded and occupied at that period, but soon abandoned, probably due to the change of the Hilmand river bed. Of about 30 buildings discovered in the 1960s (Scerrato 1966; Genito 2012) and a dozen more in the past decade, five are large square structures with an ample central court. In QN16, measuring 53 m each side, the courtyard is surrounded by a corridor divided into a series of long rooms on the four sides. QN15 with a series of parallel narrow rooms on the sides is very close to the “Winter Palace” of Altyn 10 in far distant Bactria, dating from the Achaemenid period but deriving from a Bronze Age tradition (Sarianidi 1977: figs. 46 and 48). Besides the ovens and platforms found in several rooms, this building contained remains of wall paintings depicting a camel, horses, and an archer driving a chariot (Sajjadi 2007). QN2 with the courtyard divided into two parts by a series of long rooms can be compared to the square “Summer Palace” of Altyn 10 (Sarianidi 1977: fig. 45). This architecture is clearly linked to Central Asian traditions, which are very different from the royal architecture in Achaemenid Fars. The most famous of those buildings, QN3, 53.20 × 54.30 m, consists of four porticoes with two rows of six mudbrick pillars, between four blocks in the corners. Due to numerous fireplaces in the porticoes and to its large courtyard with three rectangular platforms in the middle, the edifice has often been interpreted as a cultic monument, but there is no agreement as to the religion it served: whether Zoroastrian or pre‐Zoroastrian (Gnoli 1993). The functions of the buildings mentioned are still to be understood. All those buildings, as well as clusters of multiroom houses between them, are built on either side of an artificial main canal and along a secondary branch. Apart from this main part of the site, there is another building with a completely different plan: in the middle of
