Notes on Eastern Iran during Post-Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian Period: a Preliminary Reappraisal of the IsMEO Excavations at Qal’a-ye Tepe and Qal’a-ye Sam in Sistan

In the frame of the archaeological researches carried out between the 60’s and the 70’s of the last century in Iranian Sistan by an Italian team of the IsMEO (Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente) directed by Umberto Scerrato, some trial trenches were excavated at the fortified citadels of Qal‛a-ye Tepe and Qal‛a-ye Sam in order to obtain data to be compared with the information which, in those years, the same team was retrieving at the nearby Achaemenid site of Dahāne-ye Gholāmān. Since then, the results of those excavations were just hinted at in some preliminary reports. The present reappraisal of the results of the still unpublished archaeological activities at Qal‛a-ye Sam (to be meant as a part of the WebGIS project “Archaeo.Pro.Di.Mu.S: Archaeological Project Digital Multimedia Sistan”, based at UNO-CISA and directed by Prof. Bruno Genito) is centred not only on the reconstruction, digital re-organization and re-examination of the extant dataset but also on the study of the extant ceramic assemblage stored in Italy (previously in Rome at IsMEO/IsIAO and nowadays in Naples at UNO-CISA) on the basis of an agreement between IsMEO and the former Imperial Service for the Antiquities of Iran