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. The 2012 EPAS academic team consisted of project director Jason Ur (Harvard University); associate directors Lidewijde de Jong (Groningen University), Jessica Giraud (IFPO Iraq), and James Osborne (Johns Hopkins University); graduate student Max Price (Harvard University); and Erbil Directorate of Antiquities representatives Khalil Barzanji and Gareb Bawamurad. Our driver, translator, and unfailingly joyful companion was Bapir Rashid Bawel. Iraq LXXV (2013) ANCIENT CITIES AND LANDSCAPES IN THE KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ 91throughout the Jazira, on the western edges of the imperial core, but it has yet to be demonstrated in the Assyrian heartland. These three elements (planned cities, engineered hydrology, and rural colonization) combine to suggest a highly structured and planned landscape, and constitute the primary settlement model to be tested by EPAS. The survey will, however, investigate settlement and landscape for all periods of human sedentary occupation, from the Neolithic to the present. For example, the Early Bronze Age (third millennium B.C.) was a time of extensive urbanization in surrounding areas of northern Mesopotamia, stretching in an arc from the Sinjar plain, across the Khabur basin, the Harran plain, Sajur Valley, and into western Syria (Stein 2004, Ur 2010a, Matney 2012. In contrast to the hypothesized planned landscape of the Neo-Assyrian period, the highly structured EBA landscape was largely emergent from the actions of individual households, both large and small (Ur 2009, in press). The Erbil plain is a geographical extension of this urban arc, and also falls on the interface between the northern and southern Mesopotamian worlds; the question of whether it participated in this earlier urban phase is an important one.Another avenue of research, closely related to the Assyrian case, is the nature of the post-Assyrian landscape, and particularly how the Erbil plain fits into the larger Hellenistic and Parthian-Roman world. The establishment of colonies by Alexander and his Seleucid successors and the creation of two new capital centres, at Antioch on the Orontes and Seleucia on the Tigris, represent two major changes in the character of urbanization. Colonization was not restricted to the towns but also spread to the surrounding countryside, where newcomers tilled the land. A contingent of Greek-Macedonian colonists likely settled at Nineveh (Oates 1968), but little else is known ab...

The study of clay tokens in the Ancient Near East has focused, for the most part, on their role as antecedents to the cuneiform script. Starting with Pierre Amiet and Maurice Lambert in the 1960s the theory was put forward that tokens, or calculi, represent an early cognitive attempt at recording. This theory was taken up by Denise Schmandt-Besserat who studied a large diachronic corpus of Near Eastern tokens. Since then little has been written except in response to Schmandt-Besserat's writings. Most discussions of tokens have generally focused on the time period between the eighth and fourth millennium bc with the assumption that token use drops off as writing gains ground in administrative contexts. Now excavations in southeastern Turkey at the site of Ziyaret Tepe — the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital Tušhan — have uncovered a corpus of tokens dating to the first millennium bc. This is a significant new contribution to the documented material. These tokens are found in association with a range of other artefacts of administrative culture — tablets, dockets, sealings and weights — in a manner which indicates that they had cognitive value concurrent with the cuneiform writing system and suggests that tokens were an important tool in Neo-Assyrian imperial administration.

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