Maras, Sabrina. 2026. David Stronach and British Archaeology in the Middle East. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Drawn from interviews conducted between 2007 and 2020, this account of the life of renowned archaeologist and former director of the British Institute of Persian Studies, David Brian Stronach, reveals a lost period in international archaeology within Iran, when BIPS was founded and acted as a unique intellectual hub for archaeologists, expats, scholars and foreigners…

The new volume of Ancient West & East (2025) is out and it contains several relevant studies pertaining to ancient Iran: Julian DEGEN: Argead Macedonia in the Western Borderland of the Achaemenid Empire Roberto DAN: The Hişet Fortress in (V)ostan/Gevaş An Urartian, Orontid, Arsacid and Mediaeval Site on the Southern Shore of Lake Van Arvin MAGHSOUDLOU: A Palace Built into a Mountain Exploring the Modes of Audience Interaction and Reception at the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan in Late Antiquity

Kelley, Kathryn. 2026. Proto-Elamite. Writing and Society in Early Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Proto-Elamite is one of the world's earliest scripts and it remains only very partly deciphered. Excavations have uncovered c. 1,700 clay tablets from Iran, dating c. 3300–2900 BCE. The tablets use a complex system involving hundreds of symbols to count commodities, people, and institutions. Despite holding a privileged place in the history of writing, the study of proto-Elamite falls outside modern disciplinary boundaries and has received very limited scholarly attention since its discovery over a century ago.

Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan (AMIT): Vol. 50, 2018 , ed. by German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Tehran Branch of the Eurasia Department, is now pubished. Table of Contents: Articles: Morteza Zamani Dadaneh, Sirvan Mohammadi Ghasrian and Steve Renette: Late Neolithic to Early Chalcolithic Settlements on the Marivan Plain of western Iran Elena Rova, Davit Kvavadze, Flavia Amato, Elisabetta Boaretto, Giovanni Boschian, Giovanni Siracusano and Laura Tonetto: Tsiteli Gorebi 5, a New Early Chalcolithic Site in Eastern Georgia, Results of the 2018-2019 Excavations by the “Georgian-Italian Lagodekhi Archaeological Project”

Bayani, Mohamad. 2025. Creating is cutting: A conceptual metaphor in Avestan and Pahlavi texts. Bulletin of SOAS 88(2). 243–265. This paper investigates the development of the creation theme in Zoroastrian sources through the lens of the conceptual metaphor “creation is cutting”. It analyses three terms: Avestan taš- and ϑβǝrǝs-, and Middle Persian brēhēnīdan. Each term is examined in non-metaphorical, non-creational metaphorical, and creational metaphorical contexts.

Taasob, Razieh. 2026. Reassessing the Lifespan of the Heraios Coinage: Insights into the First Kushan Ruler’s Enigmatic Tetradrachms. In: Merle Eisenberg, Lee Mordechai & David Yoon (eds.), Coins and Money in the Middle Ages Studies in Honor of Alan Stahl (Numismatic Studies 50), 123-141. New York: The American Numismatic Society. The attribution and chronology of Heraios coinage, often linked to the early Kushan ruler Kujula Kadphises, have long been points of scholarly debate.

Ruffing, Kai. 2026. Griechische Perser, Persische Griechen, oder: Wenn ein König träumt. In: R. Breitwieser, A. Hofeneder, R. Matuszewski (eds.), Im Garten der Klio. Festschrift für Monika Frass (Philippika 193), 240-255. Wiesbaden :Harrassowitz.

Repanšek, Luka. 2026. Another Look at the Word-Final Syllable in Old Persian. Indo-Iranian Journal 69: 257-287. The article offers a long-overdue reconciliatory reassessment of the much-discussed Old Persian cuneiform sequences ⟨‑Ca-a⟩, ⟨‑Ca/i-i-ya⟩, and ⟨‑Ca/u-u-va⟩ in word-final position, and of their phonetic and phonographic interpretation. It argues that the view according to which ⟨‑Ca-a⟩ cannot represent final vowel lengthening rests on assumptions that cannot be independently substantiated from the orthographic evidence.

Amar, Itzhak. 2026. Psalm 45 and the Achaemenid View of the Ideal King. Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 38: 1-18.

Baumer, Christoph, Mirko Novák & Susanne Rutishauser (eds.). 2026. Mobility and Archaeogenetics in Central Asia. People – Goods – Ideas. 3rd International Conference on Central Asian Archaeology in Bern, 11th–13th January 2024 (Schriften zur vorderasiatischen Archäologie 24). Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz. Central Asia is a huge region characterized by a rich variety of ecologies, climates, geographical environments, social systems, languages and cultures. Within this region multiple cultural exchanges took place.

Baumer, Christoph, Mirko Novák & Susanne Rutishauser (eds.). 2026. Cultures in Contact: Central Asia as Focus of Trade, Cultural Exchange and Knowledge Transmission (Schriften zur vorderasiatischen Archäologie 19). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Central Asia is a vast region separating and at the same time connecting the civilizations of the Near East, East Asia and the Indian subcontinent with each other and with the neighboring nomadic cultures.

Huseynov, Rustam N. & Akif A. Guliyev. 2026. Sasanian Silver Coins from Atbatan Necropolis Near Demirchi (Shamakhi District, Azerbaijan). Azerbaijan Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology 2 (1): 99-105. This article presents a small group of Sasanian silver drachms discovered during archaeological excavations at Atbatan necropolis near the village of Demirchi in the Shamakhi region of Azerbaijan. The coins were recovered from burial contexts in association with human skeletal remains and accompanying grave goods, providing important archaeological evidence for the circulation of late Sasanian silver coinage in the Shirvan area.

Paul, Ludwig. Pfeffer, Pfirsich, Paradies: Kleines Lexikon deutscher Wörter persischer Herkunft. München: C.H.Beck. Wie ist der Algorithmus aus dem Persischen ins Deutsche gelangt? Warum bezeichnet Diwan sowohl ein Sofa als auch eine Gedichtsammlung? Und was hat unser Schal mit einem indischen Sari zu tun oder die Tulpe mit dem Turban? Ludwig Paul erklärt in rund 140 kurzweiligen Artikeln, wie Wörter aus dem Persischen ins Deutsche gewandert sind.

Zubani, Alessia. 2026. Recovering a Sasanian Royal Book in Early Islam: The Kitāb Ṣuwar mulūk Banī Sāsān and Its Arabic Transmission. Essays in Long Late Antiquity 1 (1): 73-95. This paper explores the recovery and translation of a Sasanian royal book during the early Islamic period, focusing on the Umayyad and early Abbasid eras. It examines the missing Kitāb Ṣuwar mulūk Banī Sāsān (“Book of the Portraits of the Sasanian Kings”), a work that depicted portraits of all Sasanian rulers, their reigns, and deeds.

Abbas Alizadeh, with contributions by Hossein Davoudi, Kevin Lidour, Marjan Mashkour, Valentin Radu, Mohammad Reza Rokni, Noshad Rokni, and Shiva Sheikhi. 2026. Lowland Susiana in the Fourth Millennium BCE: Excavations at KS-04, KS-59, and KS-108 (ISACP 2). Chicago: Chicago University Press. During two seasons in 2004–2006, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures excavated three major prehistoric population centers in northern Susiana, in the modern-day province of Khuzestan, Iran: KS-04 (Chogha Do Sar), KS-59 (Abu Fanduweh), and KS-108 (Beladieh).

Catanzariti, Antonietta & Touraj Daryaee (eds.). 2026. The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology. Washington, D.C.: SmithsonianScholarly Press. Between the third and seventh centuries CE, the Sasanian Empire became one of the most dominant powers in the ancient world—extending geographically from West to Central Asia—and was the last major power in the region before the Arab conquest in the seventh century.

Gardner, Iain. 2026. The Letters of Mani. A Lost Scripture of the Late Antique World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Includes new English translations of all the available texts concerning Mani's Letters Utilizes the latest research to recover all that can be known about one of the scriptures of Manichaeism A holistic and interdisciplinary approach Features much new or little-known material

Maghsoudlou, Arvin. 2025. A Palace Built into a Mountain: Exploring the Modes of Audience Interaction and Reception at the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan in Late Antiquity. Ancient West & East 24: 43-67. This study revisits the structure, imagery and scale of the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan, employing a phenomenological approach to explore how it interacted with its potential Late Antique audiences.

Holliday, Shabnam J. (ed.). 2026. Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Heindio Uesugi has done it again. Under the supervisory editorship of Adam Alvah Catt, Uesugi has now published an addendum to the second part of his Old Avestan dictionary: a translation and glossed version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Uesugi, Heindio (ed.). 2026. Old Avestan dictionary. Addendum to Part II: Text and translation: Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.

Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2026. Two unpublished Bactrian documents in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait. Bulletin of SOAS FirstView. 1–8. Bactrian, the principal written language of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, was little known until the early 1990s, when more than 150 contracts, economic documents and letters, together with a few Buddhist texts, were acquired by collectors. Most of these were published by Nicholas Sims-Williams between 2001 and 2012 in three volumes entitled Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan.

The latest volume of East and West contains several interesting articles, some of which deal with aspects of (ancient) Iran. F. Grenet, F. Ory, A Preliminary Note on a Painting from Kuh-e Khwāja in the New Delhi National Museum E. Matin, Reaching the Persian Gulf from the Kur River Basin: Patterns of an Intermittent Connectivity S. Belelli, Contact Change and Dialect Convergence in the Kurdish of Khanaqin…

Pashootanizadeh, Azadeh. 2026. The Sasanian Silk Road: Socioeconomic structures of the Zoroastrian silk trade. TEXTILE. 1–14. This study examines the cultural economy of silk during the Sasanian period and its influence on the cultural landscape of fire temples. The prosperity of the Silk Road expanded professions and social groups associated with the silk trade, allowing the Sasanian period to be divided into two phases.

The first issue of Studia Iranica 53 is out. Here is the table of contents: BELELLI, Sara: Laki Nominal Morphology in Historical and Comparative Perspective BORJIAN, Habib: Southern Kurdish in the Anti-Alborz: A Case of Language Isolation PREUD'HOMME, Nicolas: The Fall of Safavid Power According to an Anonymous Manuscript from Post-Revolutionary France

Stolper, Matthew W. 2025. The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. In Petra Goedegebuure & Joost Hazenbos (eds.), Ḫattannaš: A Festschrift in Honor of Theo van den Hout, 387-415. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. The Festschrift offered to Theo van den Hout contains several important and stimulating studies. The entire volume is available in open access via the hyperlink above.

King, Rhyne & Alice Collett. 2026. The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources. Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia 146 (2): 241-262. Hinduš, the Old Persian name for a region of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE), ultimately underlies the English word India. The history of the word Hinduš and its cognates has attracted considerable research, yet the precise referent of Hinduš in its Achaemenid context remains imperfectly understood.

Volume 27 of the journal Parthica (2025) contains several contributions of relevance to Iranian Studies and beyond: R. DAN: An Urartian or Orontid foundation? A reassessment of the archaeological data related to the establishment of the fortified complex at Yervandashat, Armenia D. ANDREUCCI: Automated segmentation of historical archaeological photographs: A CNN-based approach applied to the Tachara palace of Persepolis G. LINDSTRÖM: The Denavar Vase: Parthian patronage, Greek aesthetics, and Roman luxury…

Ghobrial, John-Paul, Michael Reynolds, Christian C. Sahner & Jack Tannous (eds.). 2026. Christians in Middle Eastern history: Strangers no more (Edinburgh Studies in Middle Eastern Christianity). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. The dazzling array of languages and religions in the Middle East, from Late Antiquity to the present, has long made the region a source of fascination. But the specific features of pluralism in the Middle East have also made writing its history a difficult enterprise, as scholarly specialisation has often meant that this or that religious group becomes invisible.

Zehbari, Zohreh. 2025. The men who wrought the metals: On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets. Iran, 1–18. While varied attempts have been made to study Achaemenid metal artefacts, we still know little about the craftsmen who wrought the metals. Metalworkers manufactured various products for different social classes and for different contexts, and must have played a notable role in the society of the Achaemenid period.

Mairs, Rachel. 2026. Language and script in Achaemenid and Hellenistic Central Asia (Elements in Writing in the Ancient World). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This Element examines – for the first time in a single volume – the written evidence from the 'Far East' of the Hellenistic world (Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia, Gandhara). It examines how successive invaders of this region, from Persia, Greece and India, left their linguistic and textual mark. It reviews the surviving Hellenistic-period written material from archaeological sites in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan in Aramaic, Greek and Prakrit. Summary

Ehrenberg, Erica (ed.). 2025. The American Institute of Iranian Studies: Half a century of foundational research. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. The American Institute of Iranian Studies is devoted to fostering research in the field of Iranian studies and promoting scholarly exchange between the United States and Iran. This collection of essays addresses the history and development of Iranian studies in the United States and the pivotal role of the Institute in furthering research in the field.

Treuk, Matheus. Another clay tag with Achaemenid Seal Impressions in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil (MAE/USP). Arta 2026.001. Presented here is a clay tag bearing Achaemenid seal impressions, preserved at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and identified by registration number 0816 4-00235. The tag originally formed part of the so-called ‘Banco Santos’ or ‘CidCollection’.

Harding, Phillip (ed.). 2026. Diodoros of Sicily: Bibliotheke Historike: Translation, with Introduction and Notes. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diodoros of Sicily (c.90–c.30 BC) spent thirty years producing an encyclopedic compendium of world history from its mythical beginnings to his own day. His is the only surviving, connected account of Greek affairs from 480/79 to 302/1. The books translated in this volume offer the best account of the career of Philip II of Macedon, his conquest of Greece and his assassination, as well as the earliest extant history of the career of Alexander the Great.

Bahari Career Development Fellow in Sasanian Studies A postdoctoral opportunity at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES): The Bahari Career Development Fellow will carry out original research in the field of Sasanian studies broadly defined.  The Fellowship offers early career researchers the opportunity to develop their research within one of the world’s leading universities and to strengthen their future position in the academic job market.

Rutter, Keith. 2026. Coinages in the Achaemenid Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Brings together the evidence for coin production and use over the whole Achaemenid Empire Demonstrates how the actual production of coins was a phenomenon mostly confined to the western satrapies of the empire Unlike other studies of ancient coinage which focus on its spread westward into Greek lands after its invention in Asia Minor, this book looks east, to communities and kingdoms where the dominant culture was often not Greek…

Holm, Tawny L. 2026. Aramaic literature from Egypt and the Levant (Writings from the Ancient World 30). Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. In this volume, Tawny L. Holm provides bilingual editions of the majority of Aramaic literary compositions written between the fifth century BCE and first century CE. Each text is presented in transliteration and accompanied by an introduction, notes, and an English translation.

Bremer-McCollum, Adam. 2025. The Pearlsong (Texts & Translations of Transcendence and Transformation). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The Pearlsong is an ancient poem that recounts the story of a Parthian prince sent by his parents on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent. Along the way, the prince falls asleep and forgets his identity and mission.

Shahryari, Mitchka L.M.J. 2026. Land Tenure and Fiscal Practices in the Aramaic Corpus of Idumea: Bow-Fields and Horse Estates. BASOR 395: 179-194. The Idumean corpus of Aramaic ostraca sheds light on the structured administrative and fiscal system in the region. This publication raised the possibility of the presence of the terms qaštu (“bow-fields”) and, albeit conjecturally, “horse-estates,” which would offer the first concrete evidence of these land-management practices within the fiscal framework of the Idumean region.

Colditz, Iris. 2026. Two priest-brothers: Theological argumentation, linguistic expressions and style in the second Epistle of Manuščihr. Bulletin of SOAS, FirstView. 1–14. The Middle Persian Nāmagīhā ī Manuščihr “Epistles of Manuščihr”, the Zoroastrian high priest of Pārs and Kermān, written in 881 ce, are an important testimony of an inner-Zoroastrian dispute on orthopraxy in early Islamic Iran. They reflect Manuščihr’s efforts to preserve the extensive purification ritual Baršnūm against being substituted with a simplified ritual by his brother, the teacher-priest (Hērbed) Zādspram.

Overtoom, Nikolaus Leo. 2025. The Parthians at War: Combat, Logistics, Reputation, and the First War with Rome. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Nikolaus Leo Overtoom provides a comprehensive study to evaluate and understand the military capabilities and accomplishments of the greatest enemy of the Seleucids and Romans, the Parthians. Overtoom draws on a wide variety of sources to reassess the militarism of the Parthians and origins and events of their first war with Rome.

van Bladel, Kevin. 2026. Ancient Persian: A linguistic history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. When ancient Persian conquerors created a vast empire from the Mediterranean to the Indus, encompassing many peoples speaking many different languages, they triggered demographic changes that caused their own language to be transformed. Persian grammar has ever since borne testimony to the social history of the ancient Persian Empire.

Rose, Jenny, Albert De Jong & Sarah Stewart. 2026. The Zoroastrian World. New York: Routledge. Although Zoroastrians in the contemporary world are numerically few – estimated recently at less than 150,000 across the globe – their ancient Iranian ancestors ruled vast areas of the Near East for over a millennium. From the mid‑sixth century BCE to the mid‑seventh century CE, the historical contribution of the ‘Mazda-worshipping’ religion to the intellectual, cultural, and political development of the region was momentous.

Safaee, Yazdan. 2026. Women of the empire: Life and labor in the Achaemenid Persepolis Archives (Ancient Iran Series 20). Leiden: Brill. This book offers a comprehensive examination of the status and roles of women within the socio-economic framework of the Achaemenid Empire. Drawing primarily on the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury Archives, it foregrounds the documentary evidence as a lens through which the lives, labor, and agency of women—both within royal institutions and beyond—can be critically assessed.

The volume 31 of the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia contains several contributions that engage directly with an Iranian context. Marco Ferrario: “There I Made Another Their Chief”. Kings, Ancestors, and Rebels: Anthropological Perspectives on Early Achaemenid Central Asia Tukhtash Annaev and Jaloliddin Annaev: Conquest of the Right Bank of Bactria–Tokharistan by Sasanian Iran and the Buddhist Centers of Termez…

Joachimsen, Kristin & Jason S. Mokhtarian (eds.). 2025. Ancient Jewish Memories of Achaemenid Persia (The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 25). Several contributions in the special issue of The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, titled Ancient Jewish Memories of Achaemenid Persia, engage directly with the Persian context. The volume is available in open access.

Wiechmann, Yannick A. 2025. Semographische Aspekte in der altpersischen Keilschrift: Lokale Schreibtraditionen und sakrale Sinnstiftung? Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 116: 217-241. This paper deals with aspects of semography in the Old Persian script. The so-called ideograms or logograms were quite neglected in former studies on Old Persian. From a graphematic perspective, this study opts to call these signs semograms for a broader view beyond mere logography.

Neda Mohtashami, Yusef Saadat & Kianoosh Rezania. 2025. Eschatologia Iranica III: WAY metaphors as CONDUCT OF LIFE in Selected Iranian Languages: A CMT-based Case Study. Metaphor Papers 19. This article explores the metaphorical usage of way-nouns in selected Iranian languages, emphasizing their role in conceptualizing conduct of life and shaping normative ideals through the lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT).

Alizadeh, Abbas. 2026. Ancient Iran in the ISAC Museum: From Prehistory to the Achaemenid Period (ISACMP 3). Chigago: University of Chigago Press. Discover the splendor of ancient Iran through a stunning selection of artifacts from the Robert and Deborah Aliber Persian Gallery at the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) Museum. Featuring a wide array of objects—from finely worked metal and ceramics to monumental stone carvings—this volume reveals the artistic achievements and cultural depth of a region that flourished for millennia.

Grigoriev, Stanislav. 2026. Indo-Aryans in the Bronze Age. Bicester: Archaeopress. This book challenges the steppe-origin theory of Indo-Aryans, arguing their homeland was in NW Iran. Using linguistic, genetic, and archaeological data, it traces migrations from Iran to Central Asia, India, and beyond during the 3rd millennium BC, shaping Indo-Aryan dialects. This volume is devoted to the origins and early history of the Indo-Aryans.

Álvarez-Mon, Javier. 2026. The Birth of Persian Art (c. 550–486 BC). London: Routledge. The Birth of Persian Art (c. 550–486 BC) offers a bold reappraisal of one of the most formative periods in ancient art history, revealing how artistic innovation helped forge one of antiquity’s most influential empires. This volume shows how Persian art evolved from local traditions into a sophisticated imperial visual language, highlighting the revolutionary developments at Pasargadae, the influence of broader cultural landscapes, and the impact of Elamite heritage.