The History Blog

The name of the Iranian city of Shiraz has been identified on a 7th century Sasanian clay seal discovered almost 100 years ago at Qasr-i Abu Nasr in southern Iran. The clay was impressed with four seals: a lion walking right, a monogram, an inscription in Pahlavi script (Middle Persian) and a horned animal. Iranian archaeologist Mohammadreza Nasab-Abdollahi has now deciphered the name “Mugh-e Shiraz” in the Pahlavi inscription.

Sasanian clay seals were lumps of clay of different shapes and sizes used as official administrative stamps. The wet clay was wrapped around the tie of a document or bundle of goods and then stamped with the relevant seal or, as in this case, seals. The dried clay seals would on some occasions be broken and removed and deliberately stored for administrative purposes. This seal was unearthed by Metropolitan Museum of Art archaeologists in excavations at the Late Sasanian fortress at Qasr-i Abu Nasr site between 1932 to 1935. It was one of more than 500 stored seals discovered in a building that had been burned down, firing the clay seals and preserving their impressions for centuries.

Located four miles east of Shiraz, Qasr-i Abu Nasr was occupied in stages starting in the Parthian period (247 B.C. – 224 A.D.). The Sasanian period of occupation (224-651 A.D.) was the major phase of construction of the fortress, but while it was strategically located with access to water along roads to the Shiraz plain, the population remained small.

According to Nasab-Abdollahi, archaeological investigations indicate that Qasr-e Abu Nasr in Shiraz exhibits a cultural sequence from the Achaemenid to the Abbasid period, with its primary settlement dating back to the Sassanid era.

“The archaeological findings from Qasr-e Abu Nasr reveal a wide spectrum of administrative systems, techniques, and defensive structures,” the archaeologist remarked.

Furthermore, he emphasized that archaeological evidence from the Sassanid period, including such clay sealings, as well as artifacts from the Achaemenid era such as inscribed bricks from Persepolis, corroborates that the city known today as Shiraz bore the same name in antiquity and was among the significant cities of ancient Iran.

An excavation at the site of a real estate development in Grove, Oxfordshire, has uncovered the remains of a richly-decorated Roman villa complex that contained a wealth of artifacts including coins, jewelry, lead curse tablets without curses and tiny votive axes. It had a long period of occupation, from construction in the 1st or 2nd century through abandonment in the late 4th or early 5th century.

During a year of excavation, archaeologists from the Red River Archaeology Group unearthed a monumental aisled building with internal colonnades typical of the late 1st century A.D. The building was likely multistorey and almost 11,000 square feet just on the ground floor. No columns have survived, but four column bases have and they are among the largest of their kind ever found in Roman Britain.

Adjacent to that building is a winged corridor villa characterized by a central group of rooms flanked on each side by wings of rooms accessed by a central corridor. It had walls painted with floral motifs and mosaic floors as well as an intricate brickwork floor. Hypocaust tiles have been found, the remnants of a hypocaust underfloor heating system for private bathhouses. A cereal drying oven was also discovered, part of the complex’s agricultural and food storage function.

Hundreds of coins, rings and brooches have been found in the villa complex. One particularly significant piece is a double horse-head brooch or buckle dating to between 350 and 450 A.D. It was likely worn by a member of the military elites. They also found several axes small enough to fit in a palm, and a number of tightly scrolled lead strips look just like curse tablets. The ones that have been unfurled so far are blank on the inside. If they were meant to curse, the curse itself was left unwritten. The mini axes coupled with the mysterious curse-like scrolls, suggest the villa or some part of the complex was a site of pilgrimage or ritual significance.

“The sheer size of the buildings that still survive and the richness of goods recovered suggest this was a dominant feature in the locality, if not the wider landscape,” Louis Stafford, Red River Archaeology senior project manager, said.

Her colleague Francesca Giarelli added the site was “far more complex than a regular rural site and clearly was an important centre of activities for a long time”.

Here is a drone video flyover of the site:

Excavations on the top of Mount Hellani, the tallest mountain on the Greek island of Aegina, have uncovered a Mycenaean building filled with vessels dating to the Mycenaean late palatial and post-palatial eras. This was the period of the Bronze Age collapse (1200-1050 B.C.), when the central administrations of the palace society disintegrated under pressure from environmental catastrophes, migrating populations and economic decline. Powerful states and urban centers were destroyed and survivors shifted to small villages. Mycenaean populations fled mainland Greece seeking refuge on Aegean islands, including Aegina, one of the islands in the Saronic Gulf less than 20 miles from Athens.

The building is approximately 15 by 10 feet with three stone walls and a large boulder as the fourth. Inside the structure were 30 vessels of different types, including cooking pots, storage vessels and drinking goblets. When the walls collapsed, the pottery was covered by the stones from the walls, and while the artifacts were damaged, the collapsed walls protected then from complete fragmentation and scattering. The style of the pottery dates them the period of the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces and right afterwards, a time of upheaval and constant danger that drove people to seek the shelter of the highest possible ground, in this case the peak of Mount Hellani.

The mountain was already known as a place of worship by that time, as Aegina had been an important center of commerce and maritime trade in the Middle Bronze Age (the first half of the 2nd millennium B.C.), and a fortified enclosure on the mountaintop indicates it was used for shelter going back 4,000 years. In the 4th century B.C. a temple of Zeus was built on the northern mountain slope, and the remains of thousands of burned animal bones attest to the site’s use for sacrifices. Ceramics going as far back as the Geometric period (900-700 B.C.) have been found at the temple site.