ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that archaeological excavation plays a more determining role in the politics of place surrounding heritage sites. Herzfeld's approach to the facts on the ground was shaped by an impulse to reappropriate the Achaemenid dynasty and its history, art and architecture. This was achieved partly by controlling access to archaeological sites, including photographic records, but also by resisting if only to a degree the orientalising of much Persian ancient history by nineteenth-century scholars. Archaeology and archaeological fieldwork at sites like Pasargadae were important to the development of Near-Eastern Studies, helping long ago to position such sites as real places' in historical narratives. The economic exploitation of Middle-Eastern landscapes in the nineteenth century, including the development of transport and communication systems by foreign and national domestic agents. Archaeological interventions and the territories on which they have occurred foreground controversies regarding the return of excavated artefacts to supposedly native lands.
