An imperial frontier and its landscape: the Gorgan and Tammisha Walls in northeast Iran
Dr Eberhard Sauer of the University of Edinburgh and Prof. Tony Wilkinson of Durham University, together with Mr Hammid Omrani and his team from the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organisation and Tehran University, led a successful second season of this project in August-September. Funded by BIPS for its first year as a pilot study, additional support has now been obtained from the AHRC. The season concentrated on a geophysical survey of historic settlements along the walls and the team utilised the Institute’s magnetometer, resistence meter and total station.
Additional geo-archaeological work was conducted in the vicinity of the wall, which is located on the southeast shore of the Caspian Sea. Artefactual evidence and chronometric dating has offered greater resolution for the dating of the wall and the project directors suggest that it was built between the fifth and sixth centuries AD.
Again, this collaborative project has the support of the ICHTO, which provided a vehicle for the season. The success of this collaborative venture has attracted much attention in the Iranian media and websites. As in the case of the Tehran Plain survey project, a substantial preliminary report on fieldwork has been submitted for publication in the Institute’s journal, Iran.