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Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 2019

The region of southern Mesopotamia, in modern southern Iraq, was home to perhaps the world's oldest cities and complex societies. Such cities and towns developed closely to irrigation works and other water features, with major settlements developed along levees and so-called 'turtle backs' made up of natural accumulation and human-made debris. While water was a critical component to the rise of cities, it was also the unique evolution of societies to their complex landscape, including the development of different social practices, that made the region develop early cities. By-products of these social developments included religious institutions and inequality but also the rise of governments, written language, laws, and other forms of social development we associate with our own societies. Recent work in southern Iraq demonstrates that the region was likely occupied much earlier than we thought; new climate data and other work will mean our picture on how the environment shaped the development of urban-based societies in southern Mesopotamia will evolve in the coming years. New fieldwork, including surveys and excavations, will also shape a new understanding of how urbanism arose in this complex landscape.

Ancient canals, marshes and proximity of the sea heavily characterised the landscape and environment of the ancient State of Lagash in southern Iraq, from the mid-fifth to the second millennium BC: indeed the diachronic changes that can be analysed thanks to geological and archaeological observation and investigation show how this waterscape definitely influenced the shapes of settlement and the organisation of ancient societies from a cultural, economic and biological point of view. Recent excavations at Tell Zurghul in southern Iraq are giving the possibility to test, in the field, the presence of water: ancient cuneiform sources, from the mid-third millennium BC, show the intense programme of the rulers of the State of Lagash in managing water through the construction of canals and the regulation of marshes characterised by marine water due to the proximity of the sea. In this respect, human actions (such as the digging of canals) and natural conditions (such as the reduction in the fifth millennium and the progressive growth in the fourth millennium BC of water level) are recognisable in the field, and they of course explain the morphology of the site in the past and the changes it suffered even in the present: water in fact is doubtless a fundamental resource for suitable conditions of formation and growth of a urban centre, but it also limits the possibility of extending occupation on the entire surface (as, e.g. the exploitation of lands for agricultural purposes).

2008

Iraq

Recent fieldwork and archival sedimentary materials from southern Iraq have revealed new insights into the environment that shaped southern Mesopotamia from the pre-Ubaid (early Holocene) until the early Islamic period. These data have been combined with northern Iraqi speleothem, or stalagmite, data that have revealed relevant palaeoclimate information. The new results are investigated in light of textual sources and satellite remote sensing work. It is evident that areas south of Baghdad, and to the region of Uruk, were already potentially habitable between the eleventh and early eighth millennia B.C., suggesting there were settlements in southern Iraq prior to the Ubaid. Date palms, the earliest recorded for Iraq, are evident before 10,000 B.C., and oak trees are evident south of Baghdad in the early Holocene but disappeared after the mid-sixth millennium B.C. New climate results suggest increased aridity after the end of the fourth millennium B.C. For the third millennium B.C. t...

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.

SUBARTU XLII, 2020

The urban history of Mesopotamia has the distinction of being the world's longest. At least from the fourth millennium onwards, the necessity to organize growing human communities compelled political authorities to intervene in the management of the space available, whether public or private. In some historical circumstances, this process took on spectacular forms, as in the Jezirah and later on in the arid margins of Syria, with the foundation of round cities. But it also occurred earlier and in a very different manner in the lowlands of Mesopotamia. This paper will briefly present some data from various sites (Abu Salabikh, Khafadjah, Tell Asmar), providing comparative evidence that illustrates the cultural diversity of 'Greater Mesopotamia' in the third millennium BC.

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.

Human niche construction emphasizes the capacity of organisms to modify their environment and thereby influence their own and other species’ evolution. For the hydraulic landscapes of southern Mesopotamia we employ geoarchaeological data, remote sensing and ancient texts to suggest that major irrigation systems in the central Mesopotamian plains were a form of herringbone system and that they developed through human niche construction as a result of the elaboration of crevasse splays along raised levees. The remarkable duration of these systems (some 4000 plus years) suggest that (a) they were sustainable over many millennia and (b) the short component canals could be managed by small lineages. However, equally they could be brought under the administration of the state.

The fluvial landscape of lower Mesopotamia: an overview of geomorphology and human impact, 2021

To understand the perception of wetlands by ancient Mesopotamians, it is crucial to have an understanding of the natural landscape "between the rivers". This paper provides an overview on the geomorphology of the region and the human-landscape interaction. In the course of time, starting in the early or mid-Holocene, the land “between the rivers” lost its natural character and was transformed into an increasingly cultural landscape with an intensive human impact. When and to what extent natural floodbasin marshes still existed is unknown, but they will have gradually decreased as a consequence of increasing population and expanding agriculture.

2017

This one-day workshop will enable cross-fertilization between cutting-edge approaches to reconstructing the critical issue of water management across the broad chronological and geographical sweep of the Ancient Near East. Speakers are drawn from across the UK, Europe and Middle East.

Geoarchaeology, 2024

The last two decades witnessed increasing scholarly interest in the history of water management in southern Mesopotamia. Thanks to many geoarchaeological research projects conducted throughout the central and southern Iraqi floodplains, a general understanding of the macrophases of anthropogenic manipulation of this vast hydraulic landscape has been achieved. However, current narratives mostly rely on studies at a regional scale and are based on excessively long chronological phases (often spanning a whole millennium). A finer‐tuned analysis at a submillennial scale is needed to better appreciate the dynamics that led to the development of artificial canals and irrigation systems and the creation of harbours in cities and other navigation‐related facilities. The Iraqi‐Italian QADIS project is addressing this issue through a systematic geoarchaeological investigation in the south‐eastern area of the Qadisiyah province. We aim to update the current narrative by analysing case studies involving specific periods of occupation. We performed 17 boreholes to propose a date on the functioning period of the hydraulic works in five selected archaeological sites of this region. This approach allowed us to understand changes in water management strategies in both the short and the medium term (i.e., on a scale of centuries). In this paper, we present the results for the fourth and third millennia B.C.E. This period witnessed a crucial passage from the basic exploitation of natural watercourses for irrigation and occasional navigation to the emergence of the first system of artificial canals and intraurban harbours.

Sustainability , 2022

The landscape of the Mesopotamian floodplain is mainly structured by channel processes, including the formation of levees, meanders, scrollbars, oxbow lakes, crevasse splays, distributary channels, inter-distributary bays, and marshes. Moreover, several human-made features also form and shape this landscape, such as canals, roads, trenches, farms, and settlement sites ranging in size from villages to cities. A significant part of the Mesopotamian floodplain is covered by marshes, especially the southern region. These marshlands have thrived for thousands of years and are well known for their sustainable biodiversity and ecosystem. However, after the deliberate draining of the marshes in the 1990s, the areas have become dry and only small areas of shallow water and narrow strips of vegetation remain. Several kinds of archaeological landscape features have appeared on the surface and can be clearly identified in both ground surveys and with the use of remote sensing tools. This paper aims to determine the type and nature of the preserved archaeological features that appear in the landscape of the dried marshes and whether they are different from other features elsewhere in the Mesopotamian floodplain. An intensive ground survey was carried out in a selected area of the dried marshland, resulting in the identification of six types of archaeological features: Settlement sites, rivers, canals, farms, grooves, and roads (hollow ways). These features used to be covered by bodies of deep water and dense zones of vegetation (reeds and papyrus).

Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 83, pp. 210-221., 2020

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2023

Remote-sensing techniques play an important role in the resumption of archaeological research in southern Iraq. These tools are especially powerful when ground-truthed through excavation and survey, and when informed by local environmental histories. This response engages with propositions put forward by Hammer (2022): "Multicentric, Marsh-based urbanism at the early Mesopotamian city of Lagash (Tell al-Hiba)." Using a mix of UAV photography and magnetic gradiometry data, Hammer argues that Lagash was a marsh-based city toward the end of the Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia (c. 2,900-2,292 BCE), and that on-site habitation had previously been restricted to points of high elevation because of excess water. Fundamental geoarchaeological and chronometric data, however, are absent. Based on evidence from previous excavations and general conditions of site preservation, we review Hammer's interpretations, including the validity and reliability of the data that the paper uses to advance its arguments. Ongoing work at that site has the potential substantially to enhance our understanding of ancient urbanism. Ultimately, this response seeks to rectify basic principles of chronology, taphonomy, and paleoenvironment at Lagash, and to highlight the importance of verifiable representation in the presentation of remotely-sensed datasets.

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2023

Reply to Pittman et al. 2023's critique of my article, “Multi-centric, Marsh-based Urbanism at the Early Mesopotamian City of Lagash (Tell al-Hiba, Iraq).” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 68 (2022): 101458.