four corner rooms; the general layout recalls the type of the Pasargadae palaces (Mohammadkhani 2012).
Dahaneh‐i Ghulaman is completely built of mudbricks of 33 cm side length, as known from Persepolis and Susa, or 50 × 50 cm; baked bricks appear rarely, stone is totally missing. The multiyear excavations and recent surveys have provided a valuable corpus of pottery which is a reference (Genito 1990). The time‐limited activity at this major but isolated site and the lack of regional settlements around it which have sustained the city (according to recent careful surveys) remain a challenge for understanding the functioning of this satrapical center set in a harsh environment.
In Old Kandahar, the capital of Arachosia, the British excavations of 1974–1978 were interrupted by the wars in Afghanistan but carefully published (McNicoll and Ball 1996; Helms 1997; summary Ball 2019: s.v. Kandahar). On this huge site, two of the soundings 600 m afar show that the rampart (“casemate curtain”) with a moat protected a vast surface in the Achaemenid period. Other trenches at different places inside the site brought to light thick pakhsa (pisé) walls and a platform belonging to a citadel testifying the extension of the Achaemenid occupation. The foundation of the city of Kandahar and its fortification are clearly dated to the Achaemenid period but follow earlier occupation periods. The discovery of fragments of two Elamite‐Persepolitan‐type tablets inside the fortification confirms the integration of the region into the empire (Fisher and Stolper 2015). The study of the pottery, which includes carinated bowls, has made it possible to assign to that same epoch some other sites in Pakistan (Franke‐Vogt 2001; Magee and Petrie 2010).2
In the regions on the western shore of the southern Indus valley, excavations or surveys have been more intense than in the arid regions of the southeast; occupation in the first millennium BCE is well attested, including the Achaemenid epoch, but while cultural changes toward 600–500 BCE can be shown up, it is difficult to distinguish the Achaemenid period from following periods because of the continued presence of the shapes of the hallmark artifacts of this vast region, such as the S‐carinated bowls and the deeper “tulip bowls” appearing c. 400 BCE here as well as in several Iranian regions, from where they originate (Franke‐Vogt 2001: pp. 258–260). That difficulty is also apparent by their presence further north, in Gandhāra, on Taxila and Charsadda (Marshall 1951; Wheeler 1962), major sites of the Hellenistic period and the centuries following. On these sites the Achaemenid occupation is still under discussion, but an Achaemenid settlement on the Bhir Mound of Charsadda is very likely (Magee and Petrie 2010: pp. 514–515), and it is not the first on that site. At both sites, tulip bowls probably date from the late Achaemenid or post‐Achaemenid period. The same can be said of the so‐called Graeco‐Persian seals; very few came from excavations (Bhir Mound). They might have been locally produced (Callieri 1997: pp. 235–237). The first evidence of coinage with (silver) bent bar “coins” at Charsadda is generally attributed to the very late fourth century BCE (Marshall 1951: Pl. 234). To the southwest the excavations at Akra in the Bannu Basin in 1995–2000 brought to light evidence of an Iron Age settlement extending over more than 30 ha. On Area B, a series of soundings evidences an Achaemenid occupation with pottery, including the distinctive tulip bowls, which can be compared to sixth to fourth century BCE assemblages from Iran and Afghanistan. Because of the size of the site and on the ground of epigraphic and historical data, the excavators suggest Akra was the capital of Thatagush (Magee et al. 2005; Magee and Petrie 2010).
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