This paper investigates the ways in which the nationalist narrative of the statist archaeology in Iran has contributed to the dominant nationalist discourse in systematic attempts to erase any evidence of the existence of a “non-Aryan” past in the Iranian plateau. Sponsored by the state, ethnoracial archaeological studies in Iran have functioned as a powerful instrument for constructing a desired past, one that is informed by Persianist primordial nationalism. To justify the state’s concurrent homogenization policies, Iranian archaeology has ascribed a sole historical agency to the Persian ethnie. Iranian archaeological studies have been employed by the Persianist intelligentsia and the state for propagating the idea of the singularity of “the nation”—one in which nonsovereign communities have no history, identity, or culture. Building on emergent decolonized literature on archaeology, this paper aims to interrogate some of the fundamental premises of nationalist archaeological studies in Iran.

中文翻译：

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沉默过去

本文研究了伊朗国家主义考古学的民族主义叙事如何促成了占主导地位的民族主义话语，系统地试图抹去伊朗高原存在“非雅利安人”过去的任何证据。在国家的资助下，伊朗的民族考古研究已成为构建理想过去的有力工具，这种过去受到波斯原始民族主义的影响。为了证明国家同时实行的同质化政策是合理的，伊朗考古学将唯一的历史机构归于波斯民族. 伊朗的考古研究被波斯知识分子和国家用来宣传“民族”的奇点——在这个奇点中，非主权社区没有历史、身份或文化。本文以新兴的非殖民化考古文献为基础，旨在探讨伊朗民族主义考古研究的一些基本前提。