The Medes A Reassessment of the Archaeological Evidence

The article reviews the history of the archaeological research in the recent years relative to the ancient Iranian people of the Medes. It submits the subject to the attention of the scholars, suggesting new possibilities of methodological approach, considering the great distance between the archaeological and the historical documentation on the subject. To sum up that people is much more known from the Greek, Neo-Babylonian and Jew sources, than from the archaeological evidence in itself. During the 60s and the 70s of the last century the only archaeological documentation in the median area (North-western Iran) reveals important fortified citadels, non compatible with the strong urban character described by the sources. The case of the Medes, looks like, thus, rather an historiographic exaggeration, on which have been based also the modern studies.