The Material Culture of the Medes: Limits and Perspectives in the Archaeological Research

The author in this article included in the volume dedicated to the memory of A. Bausani entitled Un ricordo che non si spegne, goes back to the Median questions emphasizing some particular aspects of the archaeological research to them related. The author is particularly dealing with the relationships between the concepts of state, artistic and architectonic production, and epigraphic evidence. Two of these grounds are completely absent in the documentation related to the Medes and a third, the artistic evidence, is still uncertain and full of difficult attribution.