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Excavation, analysis, and interpretation of a site in central Armenia first occupied in the Bronze Age and rebuilt as a town of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca. 550-330 BC), exploring the role of conquered communities in maintaining empires. Read Imperial Matters: Ancient Persia and the Archaeology of Empires at http://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/detail/13/imperial-matter/

This proposal seeks support for archaeological investigations at a town of the Persian Empire, one of the world's earliest empires that ruled much of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean from 550 to 330BC. This research will take place in the Republic of Armenia, at a site called Tsaghkahovit. In partnership with Armenian archaeologists, our purpose is to study the everyday lives of the town's inhabitants and the workings of hegemonic power, as traced through architecture, pottery and other artifacts. We will examine the ways in which subjects adopted social conventions of the Persian Empire while also incorporating into their daily routines local traditions from their pre-conquest past. This research is important for the contribution it makes not only to the study of ancient Persia, but also to wider inquiries in the humanities into the nature of power within empires, ancient and modern. It also advances efforts to build collaborative ties between US and post-Soviet scholars.