Matthew P. Canepa’s The Iranian Expanse, winner of the James R. Wiseman Book Award from the Archaeological Institute of America, deals with the Iranian expanse from the rise of the Achaemenids in the sixth century BCE to the fall of the Sasanians in the seventh century CE. It is articulated in four parts and divided into seventeen chapters. With the concept of “expanse,” the author wants to consider not only a geographical area (the Achaemenid Empire stretched from the Indus to the Nile), which was almost always acquired through military enterprises (think of those of Cyrus the Great or those of Shahpur), but also a cultural one related to royal identity, which includes transformations through architecture (palaces, bridges, gardens, religious buildings, and so on), landscape (mountains, river water), and environmental constructions (rock relief first and foremost).

Most of the concepts expressed in the volume, some of which serve as...

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