T. J. Wilkinson

The Structure and Dynamics of Dry-Farming States in Upper Mesopotamia [and Comments and Reply]

A model describing the layout of Early Bronze Age Mesopotamian states is synthesized using a range of off-site and on-site data from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. These allow the description of the basic settlement patterns, land use, and exchange systems of an early state system. The hypothesis is tested that Bronze Age settlements in this zone of rain-fed farming tended not to exceed IOO hectares, an area which was capable of accommodating between io,ooo and 2o,ooo people. Detailed off-site surveys and landscape archaeology suggest that these settlements were provisioned by intensively farmed zones of cultivation that surrounded the central settlement and by tributary secondary or satellite communities. This main production zone was just capable of supporting the population of the prime site, but the constraint of labour and the frictional effect of distance meant that food produced farther away than some io-is km made only a minor contribution to the main settlement. As a result, settlements tended not to expand beyond a certain size. Even then, the maximizing effect of intensive crop production in such areas of highly variable rainfall and episodic major droughts made these communities very vulnerable to collapse.

Linear hollows in the Jazira, Upper Mesopotamia

O.G.S. Crawford, founder of A NTIQUITY , flew in the 1920s over an English landscape where the grooves and lines cut into unploughed downlands showed the courses of roads and tracks since earliest times. Similar patterns of crop- and soil-marks in the rain-fed agricultural zone of the Middle East, when studied in the same spirit, also reveal the local and the long-distance routes of a proven great age.

Initial Social Complexity in Southwestern Asia: The Mesopotamian Advantage

The emergence of early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) civilization must be understood within the framework of the unique ecology and geography of the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during the late 5th and 4th millennia B.C. The former gave Mesopotamian societies important advantages in agricultural productivity and subsistence resource resilience not possessed by contemporary polities on their periphery, while the latter gave them enduring transportational advantages. This material imbalance created opportunities and incentives that made it both possible and probable that early Mesopotamian elites would use trade as one of their earliest and most important tools to legitimize and expand their unequal access to resources and power. Given this, a still hypothetical but testable) model is presented that accounts for the precocious socioeconomic differentiation and urban growth of southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium as social multiplier effects inadvertently set in motion by evolving trade patterns. This trade was first largely internal, between individual southern polities exploiting rich but localized ecological niches within the Mesopotamian alluvium during the Late Ubaid and Early Uruk periods. By the Middle and Late Uruk periods, however, inherently asymmetrical external trade between growing southern cities and societies at their periphery in control of coveted resources gained more prominence. In due course, import-substitution processes further amplified the one-sided socio-evolutionary impact on southern societies of these shifting trade patterns. Unequal developmental rates resulting from the operation of these processes over time explain why the earliest complex societies of southwestern Asia appeared in southern Mesopotamia and not elsewhere.

Southwest Arabia during the Holocene : Recent archaeological developments

Recent fieldwork has considerably increased our knowledge of early Holocene settlement in Southwest Arabia. Neolithic settlement occurred within an environmental context of increased monsoonal moisture that continued during the mid-Holocene. A now well-attested Bronze Age exemplified by village- and town-scale settlements occupied by sedentary farmers developed toward the end of the mid-Holocene moist interval. The high plateau of Yemen was an early focus for the development of Bronze Age complex society, the economy of which relied upon terraced rain-fed and runoff agriculture. On the fringes of the Arabian desert, the precursors of the Sabaean literate civilization have been traced back to between 3600 and 2800 B.P., and even earlier, so that a virtually continuous archaeological record can now be described for parts of Yemen. In contrast to the highlands these societies relied upon food production from large-scale irrigation systems dependent upon capricious wadi floods. Bronze Age settlement, while showing some links with the southern Levant, now shows equal or stronger linkages with the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea. Although some regions of Yemen show breaks in occupation, others show continuity into the Sabaean period when a series of major towns grew up in response to the incense trade with the north. It is now clear that these civilizations grew up on the foundations of earlier Bronze Age complex societies.

The Tell al-Hawa Project: Archaeological Investigations in the North Jazira 1986–87

Members of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq first visited Tell al-Hawa in January 1986 from the Saddam Dam. The site appears as a massive, solitary giant, dominating the landscape and dwarfing all other sites in the region (Plate I a ). From the summit, 30 m high, there is an impressive view over a vast plain covered with mounds in all directions. A walk over the main mound revealed a particularly wide range of pottery types representing most known periods. The size, scope and archaeological potential of Tell al-Hawa and the surrounding plain led us to decide on further investigation. A first season of survey and excavations was conducted from October 1986 to April 1987 inclusive. The aim of the project was to carry out a single, integrated study of a major site in its context. We would like to thank specially Dr Muayyad Said Damerji, the Director-General of Antiquities and Heritage, and Dr Abd as-Sittar Azzawi, then Director of the Antiquities Office in the North, without whose help the Hawa Project would not have been possible. For the duration of the 1987 season we were allowed use of Antiquities Office housing and working facilities in the citadel at Telafar, for which we are very grateful. Mr Salem Yunis, then Inspector at Telafar, was of considerable assistance to us at all times, as were our representatives in the field, Mr Mohammed Zaki Abdul Kerim and Mr Meti Barbar al-Tumm.

An Imperial Frontier of the Sasanian Empire: further fieldwork at the Great Wall of Gorgan

Abstract The 2006 season has yielded significant new insights into the Great Wall of Gorgans relation to landscape features and settlement, notably the division of the associated complex water supply system into sectors. The westernmost part of the wall is buried deeply beneath sediments from a past transgression of the Caspian Sea. An unexpectedly high number of brick kilns, of standardised design, shed light on the manner of the walls construction. Geophysical survey, satellite images and excavations have established that some or all of the associated forts were densely occupied with buildings, thought to be barracks, suggesting a strong military garrison.

From human niche construction to imperial power: long-term trends in ancient Iranian water systems

This article summarizes the outcome of a workshop sponsored by the Durham University Centre for Iranian Cultural Studies, where papers were presented on the entire chronological range of water management systems in Iran from around 8000xa0years bc until around 1000 ad. The primary aim was to recognize major research questions that could be used to create an agenda for future studies of ancient water use in the country. In the Durham meeting, it appeared that although the small-scale prehistoric systems probably constituted an example of ‘human niche construction’, the later imperial systems did not. Despite the recognition of occasional irrigation systems of third millennium bc date in the Deh Luran plain by Neely and Wright, as well as perhaps in Khuzestan, there appears to be a general dearth of evidence of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age systems in Iran. However, by the first millennium bc there was a considerable increase in the construction of major water management systems, some of which were, at least as far as the associated evidence suggests, constructed by imperial authorities. All agreed, however, that just because a system appeared large in scale, it was not necessarily a result of imperial management. For the subject of qanats it was argued that not only were they usually built by small-scale societies, but also that there may have been multiple centres of origin; one primary centre being a broad zone of south-east Iran, Pakistan and south-east Arabia.

Linear barriers of northern Iran : The great wall of gorgan and the wall of tammishe

Le grand mur de Gorgan, appele aussi mur d’Alexandre ou mur de Feroz, est une vaste structure defensive de pres de 200 km de long, entre la Mer caspienne et la chaine de l’Elbrouz. La date de sa construction est controversee, et elle varie selon les auteurs sur une plage chronologique allant de la conquete macedonienne a la conquete islamique. Le projet porte par l’universite d’Edimbourg, l’Iranian Cultural Heritage et l’organisation du tourisme du Golestan consistait a trancher la question de la datation du Grand mur de Gorgan et du mur de Tammishe en utilisant les methodes modernes de prospection archeologique et de datation absolue. Ces recherches ont revelees l’existence de structure hydrauliques mais surtout, les methodes de datation au radiocarbone et par luminescence stimulee optiquement (OSL) ont permis de cerner avec une grande precision la date de ces monuments. Ils ont ete eriges autour du Ve siecle de notre ere, donc vraisemblablement par l’empereur Sassanide Feroz, pour proteger l’empire des Huns Hephtaliques.

Hubs and Upstarts: Pathways to Urbanism in the Northern Fertile Crescent

Abstract The origins of urbanism are a controversial subject, with neo-evolutionary progress through graduated stages of ‘civilisation’ still having significant influence despite criticism, while others in the field prefer more diverse, regionally based trajectories. Using data collected over 30 years and applying the full range of archaeological and historical sources, the authors offer an alternative reading of the evidence, identifying multiple pathways to urbanism within a single region—northern Mesopotamia. Here, early urbanism was a phased and pulsating phenomenon that could be sustained only within particular geographic parameters and for limited periods. Older urban hubs, growing slowly, were accompanied by rapidly expanding new sites, with the combination of the different forms demonstrating the complexities of urban growth.

Hydraulic landscapes in Mesopotamia: the role of human niche construction

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.