Feeding the Sasanian army along the Gorgan Wall

During the 5th or early 6th century AD a gigantic project was undertaken, possibly by the Sasanian king Pirouz. A wall of over 195 km length was built, almost certainly against the Sasanian Empire’s northern neighbours, the White Huns. The wall protected the fertile Gorgan Plain and stretched from the Caspian Sea shores in the west to the Elburz Mountains in the east (well beyond modern Gonbad Qabus). This wall was part of a defensive system, which included a considerable number of forts and large campaign bases. Sections of the wall and some of these forts have been explored via survey and excavation in the 1970s and from 1999 to 2005 by Iranian archaeologists and since 2005 by a joint team.

The paper will summarise the analysis of the archaeozoological finds from these excavations, in comparison with other assemblages from the region. It will provide the first insights into the procurement strategies of military sites during the Sasanian period in North-Eastern Iran. So far, the assemblage is unique. There is no other published bone assemblage from any military site in the Sasanian Empire, one of the largest and most powerful empires of the ancient world, stretching, for over 400 years, from Mesopotamia to the western parts of the Indian Subcontinent and into Central Asia. It should be also noted that faunal assemblages from the Sasanian period are extremely rare, and thus the study will shed significant new light on the Sasanian subsistence economy in general.