Socioeconomic Transformation in the Sasanian Empire: Late Antique Central Zagros

Hossein Habibi investigates social and economic change in the Central Zagros during the Sasanian period, using a regional case study to illuminate the wider transformations of Late Antiquity. The book asks how settlement, environment, economy and political structures interacted in a landscape that has received far less attention than neighbouring regions of the Roman world.

Combining archaeology, historical geography and environmental evidence, Habibi examines settlement patterns, pastoral nomadism, pottery traditions and the relationship between local communities and larger Sasanian systems. The emphasis on regional diversity challenges overly uniform accounts of imperial change and shows how long-term demographic and economic processes operated on the ground. This is a specialist archaeological study for readers interested in Sasanian Iran, landscape history and the socioeconomic structures of the late antique world.