Dating
Dr. Kiani who led the archaeological team in 1971 believed that the wall was built during the Parthian Empire, simultaneously with the construction of the Great Wall of China and that it was restored during the Sassanid era (3-7th c. A.D.) In 2005 a team excavated samples of charcoal from the many brick kilns along the wall, and samples from the Gorgan Wall and the smaller Wall of Tammishe; OSL and radiocarbon dating indicated a date for both walls in the late 5th or 6th century CE.
"If we assumed that the forts were occupied as densely as those on Hadrian's Wall, then the garrison on the Gorgan Wall would have been in the order of 30,000 men. Models, taking into account the size and room number of the barrack blocks in the Gorgan Wall forts and likely occupation density, produce figures between 15,000 and 36,000 soldiers. Even the lowest estimate suggests a strong and powerful army, all the more remarkable as our investigations focused just on 200km of vulnerable frontier, a small fraction of the thousands of kilometres of borders of one of the ancient world's largest empires."
Read more about this topic: Great Wall Of Gorgan
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