Integrating satellite, UAV, and ground-based remote sensing in archaeology: An exploration of pre-modern land use in northeastern Iraq

Satellite remote sensing is well demonstrated to be a powerful tool for investigating ancient land use in Southwest Asia. However, few regional studies have systematically integrated satellite-based observations with more intensive remote sensing technologies, such as drone-deployed multispectral sensors and ground-based geophysics, to explore off-site areas. Here, we integrate remote sensing data from a variety of sources and scales including historic aerial photographs, modern satellite imagery, drone-deployed sensors, and ground-based geophysics to explore pre-modern land use along the Upper Diyala/Sirwan River in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Our analysis reveals an incredible diversity of land use features, including canals, qanats, trackways, and field systems, most of which likely date to the first millennium CE, and demonstrate the potential of more intensive remote sensing methods to resolve land use features. Our results align with broader trends across ancient Southwest Asia that document the most intensive land use in the first millennium BCE through the first millennium CE. Land use features dating to the earlier Bronze Age (fourth through second millennium BCE) remain elusive and will likely require other investigative approaches

Phytolith evidence for the pastoral origins of multi-cropping in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq)

Multi-cropping was vital for provisioning large population centers across ancient Eurasia. In Southwest Asia, multi-cropping, in which grain, fodder, or forage could be reliably cultivated during dry summer months, only became possible with the translocation of summer grains, like millet, from Africa and East Asia. Despite some textual sources suggesting millet cultivation as early as the third millennium BCE, the absence of robust archaeobotanical evidence for millet in semi-arid Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) has led most archaeologists to conclude that millet was only grown in the region after the mid-first millennium BCE introduction of massive, state-sponsored irrigation systems. Here, we present the earliest micro-botanical evidence of the summer grain broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) in Mesopotamia, identified using phytoliths in dung-rich sediments from Khani Masi, a mid-second millennium BCE site located in northern Iraq. Taphonomic factors associated with the region’s agro-pastoral systems have likely made millet challenging to recognize using conventional macrobotanical analyses, and millet may therefore have been more widespread and cultivated much earlier in Mesopotamia than is currently recognized. The evidence for pastoral-related multi-cropping in Bronze Age Mesopotamia provides an antecedent to first millennium BCE agricultural intensification and ties Mesopotamia into our rapidly evolving understanding of early Eurasian food globalization

Babylonian encounters in the Upper Diyala River Valley:Contextualizing the results of regional survey and the 2016–2017 excavations at Khani Masi

Kassite Babylonia counts among the great powers of the Late Bronze Age Near East. Its kings exchanged diplomatic letters with the pharaohs of Egypt and held their own against their Assyrian and Elamite neighbors. Babylonia's internal workings, however, remain understood in their outlines only, as do its elite's expansionary ambitions, the degrees to which they may have been realized, and the nature of ensuing imperial encounters. This is especially the case for the region to the northeast, where the Mesopotamian lowlands meet the Zagros piedmonts in the Diyala River valley and where a series of corridors of movement intersect to form a strategic highland-lowland borderland. In this paper, we present critical new results of regional survey in the Upper Diyala plains of northeast Iraq and excavations at the Late Bronze Age site of Khani Masi. Not only do our data and analyses expand considerably the known extent of Babylonia's cultural sphere, but also the monumental character of Khani Masi and its wider settlement context prompt a fundamental rethinking of the nature and chronology of Babylonian presence in this transitional landscape. As such, this paper contributes an important new case study to the field of archaeological empire and borderland studies

Integrating Satellite, UAV, and Ground-Based Remote Sensing in Archaeology: An Exploration of Pre-Modern Land Use in Northeastern Iraq

Satellite remote sensing is well demonstrated to be a powerful tool for investigating ancient land use in Southwest Asia. However, few regional studies have systematically integrated satellite-based observations with more intensive remote sensing technologies, such as drone-deployed multispectral sensors and ground-based geophysics, to explore off-site areas. Here, we integrate remote sensing data from a variety of sources and scales including historic aerial photographs, modern satellite imagery, drone-deployed sensors, and ground-based geophysics to explore pre-modern land use along the Upper Diyala/Sirwan River in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Our analysis reveals an incredible diversity of land use features, including canals, qanats, trackways, and field systems, most of which likely date to the first millennium CE, and demonstrate the potential of more intensive remote sensing methods to resolve land use features. Our results align with broader trends across ancient Southwest Asia that document the most intensive land use in the first millennium BCE through the first millennium CE. Land use features dating to the earlier Bronze Age (fourth through second millennium BCE) remain elusive and will likely require other investigative approaches

Embedding the remote sensing monitoring of archaeological site damage at the local level: Results from the “ Archaeological practice and heritage protection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq ” project

Today, the satellite-based monitoring of archaeological sites and site damage is a widespread practice, especially in conflict-affected regions. However, the vast majority of these remote sensing cultural heritage monitoring efforts have been led and conducted by remote researchers, and there remains an urgent need to embed this work within existing, in-country institutions at local and regional levels. Here, we present the archaeological site monitoring approach and results from the project Archaeological Practice and Heritage Protection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a collaborative project between the Sirwan Regional Project and Kurdish Iraqi archaeologists aimed at generating a fully functional and sustainable programme of archaeological site management co-created with, and managed by, Kurdish Iraqi archaeologists and antiquities officials. Between August 2018 and February 2020, 376 archaeological sites in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala River Valley region, located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, were assessed for damage by Kurdish Iraqi archaeologists in collaboration with the Sirwan Regional Project. This work represents the first large-scale, systematic dataset of archaeological site conditions and longer-term damage in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Our results show that 86.7% of the assessed archaeological sites and 38.6% of the site surface area in this region were affected by damage between 1951–2018, and demonstrate the great urgency with which action must be taken to develop appropriate safeguarding measures for the KRI’s archaeological heritage. On the basis of these results, we outline relevant recommendations for the immediate protection of archaeological sites in Garmian and the greater Kurdistan Region

Satellite imagery-based monitoring of archaeological site damage in the Syrian civil war - Fig 5

<p><b>Documented pre-war looting (A) and war-related looting (B).</b> Severity of documented looting predating (A) and post-dating (B) the beginning of the current Syrian war in March 2011. Background SRTM DEM courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.</p

Looting and earthmoving at Tell Bi’a, Raqqa, Syria.

<p>While the southeastern Roman and medieval component of the largely Bronze Age mound of Tell Bi’a has a long history of looting, there was little evident damage to the site during the early years of the war. However, imagery reveals renewed looting and wholescale removal of several hectares of the site in 2015. Satellite imagery printed under a CC BY license, with permission from DigitalGlobe 2017.</p

Military damage at Tell Qarqur, northwest Syria.

<p>An initial phase of relatively minor damage caused by military occupation of Tell Qarqur took place in summer 2011 (left, from [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0188589#pone.0188589.ref008" target="_blank">8</a>]), but the site was severely damaged by further militarization combined with some looting during reoccupation in 2016 (right). Satellite imagery printed under a CC BY license, with permission from DigitalGlobe 2017.</p

Tell Na’am in the Jabbul Plain of central Syria.

<p>Following a history of military trenching and looting dating back to 2013, in 2015 the site and adjacent village suffered heavy bombardment. Satellite imagery printed under a CC BY license, with permission from DigitalGlobe 2017.</p

Map of observed militarization of archaeological sites.

<p>Map includes sites with full military garrisons as well as those with earthmoving that is likely related to military activity. Background SRTM DEM courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.</p