Agricultural Production and Stability of Settlement Systems In Upper Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age (Third Millennium BCE)

This study investigates the relationship between rainfall variation and rain-fed agricultural production in Upper Mesopotamia with a specific focus on Early Bronze Age urban settlements. In return, the variation in production is used to explore stability of urban settlement systems. The organization of the flow of agricultural goods is the key to sustaining the total settlement system. The vulnerability of a settlement system increases due to the increased demand for more output from agricultural lands. This demand is the key for the success of urbanization project. However, without estimating how many foodstuffs were available at the end of a production cycle, further discussions on the forces that shaped and sustained urban settlement systems will be lacking. While large scale fluctuations in the flow of agricultural products between settlements are not the only determinants of hierarchical structures, the total available agricultural yield for each urban settlement in a hierarchy must have influenced settlement relations. As for the methodology, first, Early Bronze Age precipitation levels are estimated by using modern day associations between the eastern Mediterranean coastal areas and the inner regions of Upper Mesopotamia. Next, these levels are integrated into a remote-sensing based biological growth model. Also, a CORONA satellite imagery based archaeological survey is conducted in order to map the Early Bronze Age settlement system in its entirety as well as the ancient markers of agricultural intensification. Finally, ancient agricultural production landscapes are modeled in a GIS. The study takes a critical position towards the traditionally held assumption that large urban settlements (cities) in Upper Mesopotamia were in a state of constant demand for food. The results from this study also suggest that when variations in ancient precipitation levels are translated into the variations in production levels, the impact of climatic aridification on ancient settlement systems becomes less visible in the archaeological record

Big Earth Data for Cultural Heritage in the Copernicus Era

Digital data is stepping in its golden age characterized by an increasing growth of both classical and emerging big earth data along with trans- and multidisciplinary methodological approaches and services addressed to the study, preservation and sustainable exploitation of cultural heritage (CH). The availability of new digital technologies has opened new possibilities, unthinkable only a few years ago for cultural heritage. The currently available digital data, tools and services with particular reference to Copernicus initiatives make possible to characterize and understand the state of conservation of CH for preventive restoration and opened up a frontier of possibilities for the discovery of archaeological sites from above and also for supporting their excavation, monitoring and preservation. The different areas of intervention require the availability and integration of rigorous information from different sources for improving knowledge and interpretation, risk assessment and management in order to make more successful all the actions oriented to the preservation of cultural properties. One of the biggest challenges is to fully involve the citizen also from an emotional point of view connecting “pixels with people” and “bridging” remote sensing and social sensing

A Manifold Approach for the Investigation of Early and Middle Neolithic Settlements in Thessaly, Greece

The IGEAN (Innovative Geophysical Approaches for the study of Early Agricultural villages of Neolithic) Thessaly project focused on Early and Neolithic settlements in Thessaly, Central Greece. The aim of the project was to highlight in an extensive way differences in settlement layouts while investigating commonalities as a way to understand Neolithic use of space. To accomplish this, a suite of geophysical prospection techniques (geomagnetic, electromagnetic induction, and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)), aerial platforms (historic aerial imagery and Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS)) as well as very high resolution spaceborne sensors were integrated to acquire comprehensive pictures of settlements. Results of the IGEAN project provide archaeological information on the dynamic character of enclosures, the structure of architectural features and open spaces within sites as an indication of economic or communal spaces. At the same time, they demonstrated the importance of employing a suite of different geophysical techniques to reveal different aspects of the hindered prehistoric settlements that could not be highlighted with a single geophysical approach

Remote Sensing of Ancient Paths: A Case Study from the Middle East

<pre>This study focuses on Early Bronze Age movement network in Upper Mesopotamia and in particular aims to investigate differential movement practices which lasted half a millennium. The main hypothesis of the study is that variations in the movement levels must have differentially changed soil physical characteristics (e.g. soil compaction/moisture) so that differences in traffic is potentially detectable on satellite data. As for the methodology, publicly available satellite sensor data (panchromatic and multispectral) are exploited to generate proxy variables of ancient movement, mainly in the form of soil and vegetation indices. Index values from ancient paths are cross-compared with areas which must have faced no traffic so that a relative traffic metric can be estimated. The model, in return, differentiates between high and low traffic carrying roads. As for the secondary aim, the study investigates sensor data in time-series form and intends to understand the spectral response of linear archaeological features under differential climatic conditions.</pre

Swords into Ploughshares: Archaeological Applications of CORONA Satellite Imagery in the Near East

Since their declassification in 1995, CORONA satellite images collected by the United States military from 1960-1972 have proved to be an invaluable resource in the archaeology of the Near East. Because CORONA images pre-date the widespread construction of reservoirs, urban expansion, and agricultural intensification the region has undergone in recent decades, these high-resolution, stereo images preserve a picture of archaeological sites and landscapes that have often been destroyed or obscured by modern development. Despite its widely recognised value, the application of CORONA imagery in archaeological research has remained limited to a small group of specialists, largely because of the challenges involved in correcting spatial distortions produced by the satellites' unusual panoramic cameras. This article presents results of an effort to develop new methods of efficiently orthorectifying CORONA imagery and to use these methods to produce geographically corrected images across the Near East, now freely available through an online database. Following an overview of our methods, we present examples of how recent development has affected the archaeological record, new discoveries that analysis of our CORONA imagery database has already made possible, and emerging applications of CORONA including stereo analysis and DEM extraction

A Manifold Approach for the Investigation of Early and Middle Neolithic Settlements in Thessaly, Greece

The IGEAN (Innovative Geophysical Approaches for the study of Early Agricultural villages of Neolithic) Thessaly project focused on Early and Neolithic settlements in Thessaly, Central Greece. The aim of the project was to highlight in an extensive way differences in settlement layouts while investigating commonalities as a way to understand Neolithic use of space. To accomplish this, a suite of geophysical prospection techniques (geomagnetic, electromagnetic induction, and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)), aerial platforms (historic aerial imagery and Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS)) as well as very high resolution spaceborne sensors were integrated to acquire comprehensive pictures of settlements. Results of the IGEAN project provide archaeological information on the dynamic character of enclosures, the structure of architectural features and open spaces within sites as an indication of economic or communal spaces. At the same time, they demonstrated the importance of employing a suite of different geophysical techniques to reveal different aspects of the hindered prehistoric settlements that could not be highlighted with a single geophysical approach

Nouvelles données sur la diversité des formes de l’habitat au Néolithique en Thessalie Orientale : le projet IGEAN

La Thessalie est une région charnière dans les voies de néolithisation européennes. Plus de 300 tells, appelés localement magoules, se répartissent sur l’ensemble de ce territoire délimité par la Mer Égée à l’Est et au Nord, les Monts du Pélion à l’Est, Antichisia et Olympe au Nord et Othrys au Sud. La plaine est divisée en plusieurs entités : la plaine de Larissa au Nord, séparée de la plaine de Karditsa au Sud par les monts de Thessalie. À l’Est, la plaine côtière d’Almyros s’étend au Sud d..