CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study

Ur, Jason

doi:10.1017/s0003598x00061391

Cited by 220 publications

(140 citation statements)

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“…In parts of northern Syria and northwestern Iraq, tangible evidence of early routes is provided by networks of hollow ways etched into the landscape by the passage of humans and their livestock (Van Liere andLauffray 1954-1955;Wilkinson 1993;Wilkinson et al 2010;Ur 2003Ur , 2012Casana 2013). The relationship between settlement and connectivity is eloquently demonstrated by some 6,025 km of hollow ways mapped over much of the upper Khabur plains (Ur 2010b(Ur , 2012).…”

Section: Connectivity and Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

et al. 2014

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This paper employs data from selected sample survey areas in the northern Fertile Crescent to demonstrate how initial urbanization developed along several pathways. The first, during the Late Chalcolithic period, was within a dense pattern of rural settlement. There followed a profound shift in settlement pattern that resulted in the formation of large walled or ramparted sites ('citadel cities') associated with a more dynamic phase of urbanization exemplified by short cycles of growth and collapse. By the later third millennium BC, the distribution of larger centres had expanded to include the drier agropastoral zone of northern and central Syria, termed here the 'zone of uncertainty'. This configuration, in turn, formed the context for Middle Bronze Age settlement, and the pattern of political rivalries and alliances that typified the second millennium BC. Evidence is marshalled from archaeological surveys and landscape analyses to examine these multiple paths to urbanization from the perspectives of (a) staple production within major 123J World Prehist (2014) 27:43-109 DOI 10.1007/s10963-014-9072-2 agricultural lowlands; (b) the shift towards higher risk animal husbandry within climatically marginal regions; (c) changes in local and inter-regional networks (connectivity); and (d) ties and rights to the land. Textile production forms the core of the proposed model, which emphasizes how the demand for wool and associated pasture lands opened up new landscapes for agro-pastoral production and settlement. The resultant landscapes of settlement are then compared with the picture in the southern Levant where a more restricted zone of uncertainty may have limited the opportunities for agro-pastoral production.

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Section: Connectivity and Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

et al. 2014

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“…2). These grayscale panchromatic photographs were acquired in the visible range and provide spectacular views of northern Mesopotamian landscapes of the 1960s and 1970s prior to disturbance by modern development and agricultural expansion (18,19). Imagery from the CORONA program is extensive but still somewhat limited in spatial and temporal extent; for many areas of the Near East, scenes from only one or two missions are available, and many of them may have been acquired under conditions that are suboptimal for archaeological site visibility.…”

Section: Mapping Anthrosols At a Large Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sustaining settlements at these preferred locations over long time could only be accomplished with the efforts of a group of people that were significantly larger than the population of the settlement-i.e., in a settlement system. Fortunately, we have basic understanding about an extensive premodern intersite transportation network in the Khabur Basin (18). This "hollow way" network formed during 2600-2000 B.C., coinciding with a time of intensive settlement activity in the Khabur Basin, and remained visible until modern times.…”

Section: Patterns Of Long-term Settlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mapping patterns of long-term settlement in Northern Mesopotamia at a large scale

Menze

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

132

104

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The landscapes of the Near East show both the first settlements and the longest trajectories of settlement systems. Mounding is a characteristic property of these settlement sites, resulting from millennia of continuing settlement activity at distinguished places. So far, however, this defining feature of ancient settlements has not received much attention, or even been the subject of systematic evaluation. We propose a remote sensing approach for comprehensively mapping the pattern of human settlement at large scale and establish the largest archaeological record for a landscape in Mesopotamia, mapping about 14,000 settlement sites-spanning eight millennia-at 15-m resolution in a 23,000-km 2 area in northeastern Syria. To map both low-and high-mounded places-the latter of which are often referred to as "tells"-we develop a strategy for detecting anthrosols in time series of multispectral satellite images and measure the volume of settlement sites in a digital elevation model. Using this volume as a proxy to continued occupation, we find a dependency of the long-term attractiveness of a site on local water availability, but also a strong relation to the relevance within a basin-wide exchange network that we can infer from our record and third millennium B.C. intersite routes visible on the ground until recent times. We believe it is possible to establish a nearly comprehensive map of human settlements in the fluvial plains of northern Mesopotamia and beyond, and site volume may be a key quantity to uncover long-term trends in human settlement activity from such a record.A ssessment of the scale and spatial distribution of human communities in past societies has been a key objective for archaeological research over the last 50 y (1), especially in the Near East, where questions of the origins of urbanism, the state, and empires are almost always approached via a regional perspective (2), and most commonly using the methods of archaeological survey. The pioneering surveys of the 20th century focused on the top of the settlement hierarchy, in the form of the largest mounds (e.g., refs. 3 and 4), but it is now appreciated that by overlooking smaller sites such an approach can produce misleading portraits of settlement systems, particularly those of nonurbanized phases (5). The challenge for archaeologists is to maintain coverage extensive enough to discern significant spatial patterning while increasing survey intensity in order to locate these smaller sites. The first generation of survey archaeologists opted for the former half of this classic tradeoff; more recent generations have increasingly adopted the latter intensive approach.Many surveys have met this challenge by employing various remote sensing datasets. Of the three primary physical properties characterizing sedentary Near Eastern sites since the Neolithicdense surface artifact assemblage, moundedness, and anthropogenic sediments-the latter two can be detected in aerial or satellite imagery and can potentially be recorded at large scale. Indeed, nearly a...

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“…After their declassification in 1995, they found particularly good use in geoarchaeological studies of the Near East, as they provide a record of the landscape before modern, large-scale cultivation started [17,40,41]. Draw-back of the images are the large distortions due to the oblique and panoramic camera geometry.…”

Section: Data Acquisition and Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing human impact on alluvial fan development: a multidisciplinary case-study from Lower Khuzestan (SW Iran)

2010

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This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach for studying the evolution of an alluvial fan system in Lower Khuzestan (SW Iran). The study draws on previously collected data from geological and archaeological field campaigns and new data derived from the interpretation of satellite imagery and historical textual sources. Three alluvial fans were identified, successively deposited by the Jarrahi river in progressively downstream/westward direction. Judging from archaeological and historical evidence, the successive phases appear to coincide with a relocation of settlement and irrigation activities. The distributary system of the present-day fan developed over a period of less than four centuries. It is suggested that management of levee breaks by man played a key role in such rapid fan development and in maintaining extremely low gradients. Judging from the extensive patterns of ancient irrigation canals, human activity also played an important role in the formation of the earlier fans.

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CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study

Abstract: Middle-eastern archaeologists are winning new information from declassified military photographs taken 25 years ago. This study shows how pictures of north-eastern Syria are revealing the routeways, and by inference the agricultural systems of Mesopotamia in the early Bronze Age.

Cited by 220 publications

References 7 publications

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

Mapping patterns of long-term settlement in Northern Mesopotamia at a large scale

Assessing human impact on alluvial fan development: a multidisciplinary case-study from Lower Khuzestan (SW Iran)

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