This book was planned to facilitate a new perspective, the Study of Archaeology of Iran in the Historical period. First of all, we must explain the term historical period. The term conventionally is used for the archaeology of literate societies. Thus, historical archaeology is a vehicle for exploring those communities that had access to writing and that leave conventional documentary record of their experiences. In the Near Eastern context, the historical period has traditionally taken the first appearance of the early writing system (ca. 3600 BC) as its starting point and the rise of Islam (mid-seventh century AD) as its terminus. The beginning of history is marked by the invention of writing by Sumerians in the southern Mesopotamia around fourth millennium BC though, in some later times, it has been extended to comprise many preliterate peoples of communities which were living after history began but they have never experienced writing. Such definition, however, differs from the now widely acknowledged definition of world historical archaeology as for the European and most Western archaeologists. Historical archaeology is the archaeology of those societies developing in the wake of the European Middle Ages (where the reformation, mercantile capitalism and industrialization all ruptured the previous order of things) and of those emerging in regions of the world that were colonized by Europeans and that developed along a new multiethnic trajectory.
