A Geoarchaeological Approach to Identify Provenance of the Stones Used in the Construction of Sassanid Buildings in Bishapu City

The Sassanid kings, named after the Sassan, great of Pars and the priest of the Anahita Temple in the Estakhr ruled in Iran from the third to the seventh century AD. The most important buildings of Sassanians in Iran are the majestic palaces of the kings. Bisapur is one of the most important cities of the Sassanid era, which is located in Kazerun County. Following an archaeological study on the Sassanid pavement located in the mountainous region of the city of Kotal in the east of Kazerun city, the remains of some stone masses from the Sassanid era came to light on the basis of archaeological investigations and studies by the Cultural Heritage office of Kazerun. It was discovered that these two sites were used as a stone mines. Stone is one of the materials used to build bisapur buildings. Considering that in most cases archaeological investigations are based on material evidence, it is necessary to better understand these data and interpret them by using interdisciplinary sciences. Accordingly, in this research, a field survey and sampling of the stones used in the construction of Bisapur buildings have been carried out and after sampling of the Bishapur buildings, comparison of samples taken from other stone mines (based on laboratory methods) for understanding the source of stones extraction has been addressed. To achieve this, the experimental methods of studying the Thin Sections of the stones, as well as the XRD and XRF analysis were applied and it was determined by the experiments that the mines and buildings stones of the Sassanid era of Bishapur (Valerian Palace, Anahita Temple and Towers) were made of genus compounds with similar structures.