The Gorgan Plain of northeast Iran: a diachronic analysis of settlement and land use patterns relating to urban, rural and mobile populations on a Sasanian frontier

The Gorgan Plain of northeast Iran was one of the northern frontiers of the Sasanian Empire (c. AD 225-640), and was marked by considerable investment in water management and defensive features such as canals, fortifications and the nearly 200 km long-wall known as the Gorgan Wall. However, in comparison we know very little about settlement and land use associated with urban, rural, and mobile pastoral communities in this period. What impact did Sasanian investment in this landscape have on settlement patterns, networks of movement, and subsistence economies of the communities inhabiting the plain, and how do these developments fit within the long-term settlement history of the region? This thesis reconstructs Late Iron Age through Islamic settlement and land use patterns utilising data obtained from historical (CORONA) satellite imagery, integrated with the available settlement data draw from field surveys conducted by the Gorgan Wall project, other published surveys, and historical and ethnographic information. At the local and regional scale, the observed trends are discussed in terms of changes in site type and location, subsistence strategies and agricultural investment. These trends are then compared to landscape developments associated with the later territorial empires in other regions of the Near East.