to the empire, but interestingly some pottery classes from the region are paralleled with Tepe Yahya (Magee 2004), one more argument for continuation of the traditional cultural relationships between the two sides of the Gulf also in that epoch.
The only candidate for the capital of Drangiana, Zarin according to Ctesias, is Dahaneh‐i Ghulaman, near Lake Hamun at the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This exceptional Achaemenid site was founded and occupied at that period, but soon abandoned, probably due to the change of the Hilmand river bed. Of about 30 buildings discovered in the 1960s (Scerrato 1966; Genito 2012) and a dozen more in the past decade, five are large square structures with an ample central court. In QN16, measuring 53 m each side, the courtyard is surrounded by a corridor divided into a series of long rooms on the four sides. QN15 with a series of parallel narrow rooms on the sides is very close to the “Winter Palace” of Altyn 10 in far distant Bactria, dating from the Achaemenid period but deriving from a Bronze Age tradition (Sarianidi 1977: figs. 46 and 48). Besides the ovens and platforms found in several rooms, this building contained remains of wall paintings depicting a camel, horses, and an archer driving a chariot (Sajjadi 2007). QN2 with the courtyard divided into two parts by a series of long rooms can be compared to the square “Summer Palace” of Altyn 10 (Sarianidi 1977: fig. 45). This architecture is clearly linked to Central Asian traditions, which are very different from the royal architecture in Achaemenid Fars. The most famous of those buildings, QN3, 53.20 × 54.30 m, consists of four porticoes with two rows of six mudbrick pillars, between four blocks in the corners. Due to numerous fireplaces in the porticoes and to its large courtyard with three rectangular platforms in the middle, the edifice has often been interpreted as a cultic monument, but there is no agreement as to the religion it served: whether Zoroastrian or pre‐Zoroastrian (Gnoli 1993). The functions of the buildings mentioned are still to be understood. All those buildings, as well as clusters of multiroom houses between them, are built on either side of an artificial main canal and along a secondary branch. Apart from this main part of the site, there is another building with a completely different plan: in the middle of an enclosure of 190 m2, the building measuring 50 × 55 m consists of a rectangular central space (courtyard or large room?) flanked by four corner rooms; the general layout recalls the type of the Pasargadae palaces (Mohammadkhani 2012).
Dahaneh‐i Ghulaman is completely built of mudbricks of 33 cm side length, as known from Persepolis and Susa, or 50 × 50 cm; baked bricks appear rarely, stone is totally missing. The multiyear excavations and recent surveys have provided a valuable corpus of pottery which is a reference (Genito 1990). The time‐limited activity at this major but isolated site and the lack of regional settlements around it which have sustained the city (according to recent careful surveys) remain a challenge for understanding the functioning of this satrapical center set in a harsh environment.
In Old Kandahar, the capital of Arachosia, the British excavations of 1974–1978 were interrupted by the wars in Afghanistan but carefully published (McNicoll and Ball 1996; Helms 1997; summary Ball 2019: s.v. Kandahar). On this huge site, two of the soundings 600 m afar show that the rampart (“casemate curtain”) with a moat protected a vast surface in the Achaemenid period. Other trenches at different places inside the site brought to light thick pakhsa (pisé) walls and a platform belonging to a citadel testifying the extension of the Achaemenid occupation. The foundation of the city of Kandahar and its fortification are clearly dated to the Achaemenid period but follow earlier occupation periods. The discovery of fragments of two Elamite‐Persepolitan‐type tablets inside the fortification confirms the integration of the region into the empire (Fisher and Stolper 2015). The study of the pottery, which includes carinated bowls, has made it possible to assign to that same epoch some other sites in Pakistan (Franke‐Vogt 2001; Magee and Petrie 2010).2
In the regions on the western shore of the southern Indus valley, excavations or surveys have been more intense than in the arid regions of the southeast; occupation in the first millennium BCE is well attested, including the Achaemenid epoch, but while cultural changes toward 600–500 BCE can be shown up, it is difficult to distinguish the Achaemenid period from following periods because of the continued presence of the shapes of the hallmark artifacts of this vast region, such as the S‐carinated bowls and the deeper “tulip bowls” appearing c. 400 BCE here as well as in several Iranian regions, from where they originate (Franke‐Vogt 2001: pp. 258–260). That difficulty is also apparent by their presence further north, in Gandhāra, on Taxila and Charsadda (Marshall 1951; Wheeler 1962), major sites of the Hellenistic period and the centuries following. On these sites the Achaemenid occupation is still under discussion, but an Achaemenid settlement on the Bhir Mound of Charsadda is very likely (Magee and Petrie 2010: pp. 514–515), and it is not the first on that site. At both sites, tulip bowls probably date from the late Achaemenid or post‐Achaemenid period. The same can be said of the so‐called Graeco‐Persian seals; very few came from excavations (Bhir Mound). They might have been locally produced (Callieri 1997: pp. 235–237). The first evidence of coinage with (silver) bent bar “coins” at Charsadda is generally attributed to the very late fourth century BCE (Marshall 1951: Pl. 234). To the southwest the excavations at Akra in the Bannu Basin in 1995–2000 brought to light evidence of an Iron Age settlement extending over more than 30 ha. On Area B, a series of soundings evidences an Achaemenid occupation with pottery, including the distinctive tulip bowls, which can be compared to sixth to fourth century BCE assemblages from Iran and Afghanistan. Because of the size of the site and on the ground of epigraphic and historical data, the excavators suggest Akra was the capital of Thatagush (Magee et al. 2005; Magee and Petrie 2010).
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11 Genito,