Landscape Archaeology In The Near East

Many fundamental studies of the origins of states have built upon landscape data, but an overall study of the Near Eastern landscape itself has never been attempted. Spanning thousands of years of history, the ancient Near East presents a bewildering range of landscapes, the understanding of which can greatly enhance our ability to infer past political and social systems. Tony Wilkinson now shows that throughout the Holocene humans altered the Near Eastern environment so thoroughly that the land has become a human artifact, albeit one that retains the power to shape human societies. In this trailblazing bookÑthe first to describe and explain the development of the Near Eastern landscape using archaeological dataÑWilkinson identifies specific landscape signatures for various regions and periods, from the early stages of complex societies in the fifth to sixth millennium B.C. to the close of the Early Islamic period around the tenth century A.D. From Bronze Age city-states to colonized steppes, these signature landscapes of irrigation systems, tells, and other features changed through time along with changes in social, economic, political, and environmental conditions. By weaving together the record of the human landscape with evidence of settlement, the environment, and social and economic conditions, Wilkinson provides a holistic view of the ancient Near East that complements archaeological excavations, cuneiform texts, and other conventional sources. Through this overview, culled from thirty years' research, Wilkinson establishes a new framework for understanding the economic and physical infrastructure of the region. By describing the basic attributes of the ancient cultural landscape and placing their development within the context of a dynamic environment, he breaks new ground in landscape archaeology and offers a new context for understanding the ancient Near East.

Collected papers from the 3rd symposium of the the Society for Near Eastern Landscape Archaeology. Ranging from the Palaeolithic to the classical Near East, papers consider settlement and movement for trade with an overarching theme around the conservation of important archaeological landscapes and developing technology for the study of landscapes.

This volume presents papers in honour of Tony James Wilkinson, who was Professor of Archaeology at Durham University from 2006 until his death in 2014. Though commemorative in concept, the volume is an assemblage of new research representing emerging agendas and innovative methods in remote sensing and their application in Near Eastern archaeology.

This volume honors McGuire Gibson and his years of service to archaeology of Mesopotamia, Yemen, and neighboring regions. Professor Gibson spent most of his career at the University of Chicago's Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department and the Oriental Institute. Many of his students, colleagues, and friends have contributed to this volume, reflecting Gibson's diverse interests. The volume presents new results in areas such as landscape archaeology, urbanism, the ancient languages of Mesopotamia, history of Mesopotamia, the archaeology of Iran and Yemen, prehistory, material culture, and wider archaeological topics.

Over the past three decades, 'landscape' has become an umbrella term to describe many different strands of archaeology. Here, archaeologists attempt a comprehensive definition of the ideas & practices of landscape archaeology, covering the theoretical & the practical, the research & conservation, encasing the term in a global framework.

This book examines the poorly understood transformations in rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires.

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of research projects in Southern Caucasia that apply the methodologies and approaches of landscape archaeology. Focused on understanding the interaction between humans and their environments at multiple temporal and geographic scales, these projects have made use of intensive and extensive surveys, remote sensing and GIS-based analysis, very often taking a diachronic view. Landscape Archaeology in Southern Caucasia presents and reflects on projects currently employing these fresh perspectives and techniques in the lands between the Black and Caspian Seas, including and adjacent to the Greater and Lesser Caucasus mountain ranges; this takes in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. Through the centuries, this region has been a vital zone of contact between the Near East, Anatolia and Central Asia, but has also - in large part due to its remarkable and often difficult terrain of mountains, river valleys and plains - maintained a unique and fascinating local trajectory of development.0'Landscape Archaeology in Southern Caucasia' is the product of a workshop held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna in April 2016, which brought together scholars from around the world engaged in archaeological survey and landscape analysis in Southern Caucasia. The contributions in the volume cover a broad timescale, from the Neolithic through the medieval period and into the modern day, and deal with such themes as the relationship between past and present landscapes, heritage management, the use of remote sensing, the value of integrating historical texts and legacy data into new projects, survey methodologies, and patterns of movement.

The common feature of landscape archaeology is its diversity – of method, field location, disciplinary influences and contemporary voices. The contributors to this volume take advantage of these many strands to investigate landscape archaeology in its multiple forms, focusing primarily on the link to heritage, the impact on our understanding of temporality, and the situated theory that arises out of landscape studies. Using examples from New York to Northern Ireland, Africa to the Argolid, these pieces capture the human significance of material objects in support of a more comprehensive, nuanced archaeology.