Rescue excavations reveal local identities and imperial influences in an Achaemenid-era cemetery, indicating social negotiations.
Rescue excavations at Mersin (Semnan, Iran) reveal a tightly patterned Achaemenid-period cemetery. Thirty-four graves, excavated between 2014 and 2024, combine local mortuary traditions with imperial-era objects, demonstrating how provincial communities selectively adopted imperial markers to negotiate identity and refining narratives for the empire’s north-eastern interior.
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Malekzadeh et al. (2026) studied this question.
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