Research Projects in the Department of Archaeology

The 10th-5th centuries BCE (the first centuries of the Iron Age) witnessed significant societal transformations across the Mediterranean. Populations grew in many regions, the first genuine economic integration of the basin occurred through maritime interaction and overseas settlement, and, for the first time, communities characterisable as urban and state-like are identifiable from the sea’s eastern littoral (where they had a deeper Bronze Age history) through to its Atlantic border.

PersianTRAIL is a research project using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and historical-archaeological data to reconstruct the Persian Royal Road (PRR), a key infrastructure of the Achaemenid Empire (6th–4th century BCE). The project examines factors like topography, resource distribution, economy, military logistics, and environmental constraints to understand the empire’s strategic planning.