Geophysical investigations in the vicinity of the Persepolis Royal Terrace (Fars province, Iran)

International audienceThe work presented here was conducted within the research program of the Iranian-French joint expedition in the Marvdasht Plain launched in 2005 with the support of the Iranian Centre of Archaeological Research, the Parsa Pasargadae Research Foundation and the French Foreign Office. This project aims to understand better the functioning of the Achaemenid capital, the so-called Parsa, of which only the Royal Quarter is actually known (the terrace and adjacent buildings to the south). The location, shape and extension of the city itself are still unknown (Boucharlat, 2003). The surrounding territory (the actual Marvdasht Plain) which fed the Royal residence has yet to be studied, keeping in mind information provided by textual sources, namely the Persepolis Fortification tablets, that the city was supplied by farms or towns located in the vicinity. This was the situation despite the various surveys carried out in the last 70 years. Our surveys focused more widely on remains from the first millennium BC, although they also recorded any kind of human activity from any period. The field walking archaeological survey paid particular attention to the piedmont areas which had been poorly surveyed in the past. Other implemented methods included topographic surveys with special attention to hydraulic works, geophysical surveys in the immediate surroundings of the terrace (GPR and electrostatic) and on the plain (magnetic), and finally aerial photographic remote sensing research for a better reading of the shape of sites and their integration into the environment (off-sites)