2016: Medieval Urban Landscape in Northeastern Mesopotamia (original) (raw)
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Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie
This paper draws on the preliminary results of the QADIS survey project, conducted by the University of Bologna and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage since 2016 in the Qadisiyah province. The project addresses phenomena related to anthropogenic transformation of landscapes in a region that was at the core of the early Mesopotamian urbanization process. Building upon the seminal work conducted by R. McC. Adams in the 1960 s and 1970 s, we implemented an integrated documentation technique to reconstruct at regional levels the changes in the dense network of human settlements and artificial water infrastructures characterizing the evolution of this archaeological landscape over time. The aim of the article is that of providing a finer-grained regional picture of 4th and 3rd millennium BC urban developments which can be useful for better conceptualizing the scale and pace of early Mesopotamian urbanism.
Zeitschrift Für Assyriologie Und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 109, pp. 214 – 237., 2019
This paper draws on the preliminary results of the QADIS survey project, conducted by the University of Bologna and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage since 2016 in the Qadisiyah province. The project addresses phenomena related to anthropogenic transformation of landscapes in a region that was at the core of the early Mesopotamian urbanization process. Building upon the seminal work conducted by R. McC. Adams in the 1960 s and 1970 s, we implemented an integrated documentation technique to reconstruct at regional levels the changes in the dense network of human settlements and artificial water infrastructures characterizing the evolution of this archaeological landscape over time. The aim of the article is that of providing a finergrained regional picture of 4th and 3rd millennium BC urban developments which can be useful for better conceptualizing the scale and pace of early Mesopotamian urbanism.
Cities in the Sand: The Archaeology of Urbanism in Mesopotamia (syllabus, 2017)
In recent years, the deliberate destruction of archaeological remains and the industrial-scale looting of archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria have drawn the Mesopotamian past vividly into the spotlight. Images of legendary ancient cities, now wired with explosives or pockmarked with looters' pits, flit daily across our television and computer screens. For more than a century, archaeologists have been working to uncover and resurrect these early urban centers where the very idea of the city was first envisioned and put into practice. This graduate seminar offers both a general introduction to the archaeological study of urbanism and a detailed examination of the archaeological evidence for cities in Mesopotamia – from Uruk and Ur to Babylon and Baghdad. Chronologically, we will begin with the famous Urban Revolution of the fourth millennium BC and end with the founding of the first Islamic cities during the later part of the first millennium AD.
By jason Ur, lidewijde de jong, jessica giraud, james f. osborne and john macginnis In 2012, the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) conducted its first season of fieldwork. The project's goal is the complete mapping of the archaeological landscape of Erbil, with an emphasis on the Neo-Assyrian and Hellenistic periods. It will test the hypothesis that the Neo-Assyrian landscape was closely planned. This first report emphasizes the project's field methodology, especially the use of a variety of satellite remote sensing imagery. Our preliminary results suggest that the plain was part of the urbanized world of Mesopotamia, with new cities of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Sasanian era identified.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2022
Leveraging a suite of remote sensing technologies deployed over large areas, this paper presents results that challenge long-held ideas about the origin and development of the world's oldest urban centers, in southern Iraq. The standard model of third millennium BCE Mesopotamian cities presents them as nuclear, compact settlements set within an irrigated agricultural hinterland, expanding continuously from a monumental religious complex. This reconstruction holds enormous influence in the comparative global study of early urbanism. UAV photos and magnetic gradiometry data captured at Lagash (Tell al-Hiba) show dense architecture and related paleoenvironmental features over c. 300 ha, revealing a city that does not conform to the standard model. Early Dynastic Lagash (2900-2350 BCE) was composed of spatially discrete sectors bounded by multiple surrounding walls and/or watercourses and separated by open spaces. The evidence is suggestive of a marshy or watery local environment, and the city sectors may have originated as marsh islands. The discontinuous, walled nature of inhabited areas would have had social and logistical ramifications for city inhabitants. A number of contemporary sites are characterized by multiple archaeological mounds, suggesting that early southern Mesopotamian cities may have frequently been spatially multi-centric.