Institutional Landscapes of Empire in Ancient Iran

Author Biography

Stefan R. Hauser is professor of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Konstanz. His publications cover the Neo-Assyrian to the Early Islamic period with a particular emphasis on the Arsacid Empire, and a strong interest in the history of research. He was PI of a project on resilience and transformation in the Bozpar Valley (SPP Iranian Highlands). He currently directs projects in Alexandria-on-theTigris/Charax Spasinou (Iraq) and on Sasanian manor houses and fire temples in Iran. Trained as a classical philologist and ancient historian at the universities of Leiden and Utrecht, Wouter Henkelman graduated from the former in 2006 with a dissertation entitled The other gods who are, which explores cases of Elamite-Iranian acculturation. He is currently associate professor of Elamite and Achaemenid studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (4e section; since 2012); he is also director of the Sarikhani Centre for Elamite Studies at the same institution (since 2024). Outside Paris, he is co-director (alongside Mark Garrison) of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project. Among his various research interests are Achaemenid administration, Elamite philology, Elamite and Achaemenid epigraphy, and Greek historiography on the Persian Empire. Born in Vittoria (Italy) in 1987, Giuseppe Labisi is an archaeologist who obtained his PhD in Islamic archaeology jointly at the Sapienza University of Rome and the Panthéon-Sorbonne University of Paris in 2017. He additionally obtained the professorship qualification in archaeology (in Italy) in 2023. Since 2020, he is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz (Germany) and since 2022 associate member of the Polen Research Centre (UR 4710), University of Orléans (France). His research focuses on the Sasanian-Islamic and Byzantine-Islamic transitions with an emphasis on architecture, although it also covers other topics such as landscape and ancient road systems, settlement dynamics and material culture. He has been the coordinator of the research project on the Bozpar Valley (Iran, directed by Stefan R. Hauser, University of Konstanz) from 2020 to 2024, he is member of the “Chartaq Research Project” (directed by Stefan R. Hauser) and co-director of the research project on Monte Altesina (Italy, directed with Anna Caiozzo). His publications include the monograph Dwelling Models of Umayyad Madāʾin and Quṣūr in Greater Syria (published for the British Archaeological Reports, International Series).