Publications

In Preparation
Jason A. Ur. In Preparation. “Central Planning and Urban Emergence in Early Bronze Age Cities of Northern Mesopotamia.” In .Abstract
The dominant interpretive frameworks for the origins of Early Bronze Age (ca. 2600-2000 BC) urbanism in northern Mesopotamia all revolve around goal-oriented actions of powerful elites: planned creation of cities, their palaces, temples and walls; and the creation and manipulation of intensified staple-based political economies based on centralized storage and redistribution.  In other words, EBA cities were largely planned by central decision-makers.  In proposing an alternative model, this study employs two approaches that Tony Wilkinson mastered in the course of his career.  Empirically, it draws on the full archaeological landscape, including settlement patterns but also off-site features surrounding and between them.  It interprets these data through a dynamic modeling lens based on Wilkinson’s “Modeling Ancient Settlement Systems” (MASS) project, which attempted to see social evolution as an emergent result of actions of individuals and households, rather than only decisions of kings and other elites.  It concludes that urban form in the EBA was a product of social forces outside the concerns (or control) of elite households, and that unambiguous royal interventions in urban structure were reactions to these processes, rather than causative of them.
Jason A. Ur. In Preparation. The Evolution of Mesopotamian Cities.
2022
Hellenistic Landscapes and Seleucid Control in Mesopotamia: the View from the Erbil Plain in Northern Iraq
Rocco Palermo, Lidewijde de Jong, and Jason A. Ur. 2022. “Hellenistic Landscapes and Seleucid Control in Mesopotamia: the View from the Erbil Plain in Northern Iraq.” American Journal of Archaeology, 126, 3, Pp. 425-442. Publisher's VersionAbstract
In this article we discuss the archaeological landscapes of the Erbil plain during the Hellenistic period (late fourth century BCE–mid second century BCE) based on the data collected during the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) between 2012 and 2019. We use a landscape archaeology approach to trace patterns of habitation, migration, land exploitation, and water management from the Iron Age to the early first millennium CE. Over the course of the first millennium BCE, the Erbil plain was transformed from an urbanized core region to a rural area of the vast Seleucid world through a moment of depopulation in the post-Assyrian period. These transformation processes continued after the end of the Hellenistic period, but with a different pattern. Urbanization resumed, peaking during the Parthian (Arsacid) era, when the region was part of the kingdom of Adiabene. Ultimately, our analysis shows how the planned landscape of Assyria was transformed in the centuries that followed the collapse of the empire and how the proximity of political power was the critical variable in the settlement patterns of this part of northern Mesopotamia under the empires of the first millennium BCE.
Remote Sensing of Ancient Canal and Irrigation Systems
Jason A. Ur. 2022. “Remote Sensing of Ancient Canal and Irrigation Systems.” In Irrigation in Early States: New Directions, edited by Stephanie Rost, Pp. 65-81. Chicago: University of Chicago Oriental Institute. Publisher's VersionAbstract

One of the attractions of historical archaeology is the possibility to combine textual data with the archaeological record. In the world of Near Eastern archaeology, however, often the evidence of texts is taken to be the more reliable source, and elaborate historical reconstructions are occasionally made with little or no archaeological input. Such an imbalanced scenario is particularly dangerous with regard to ancient water systems, but the most successful attempts for Mesopotamia have been multidisciplinary collaborations, often incorporating ethnographic or ethnohistoric data.

Despite the perceived limitations of archaeological data, the most successful irrigation studies have involved them, for several reasons. The written sources on irrigation derive mostly from royal inscriptions. These texts reflect the priorities of the royal households that commissioned them, priorities that emphasize the legitimization of existing power structures. They describe not an objective reality (if such a thing is ever possible), but rather an idealized situation that supports the political agendas of the text-producing elite. Rarely do the political interests of the text producers correspond to the academic interests of modern scholars. For instance, royal inscriptions will emphasize the agency of the king in creating water systems (often acting with the blessing of the gods), but will fail to mention the preexisting systems that the king expanded, or the local systems of water sharing that brought water to individual fields.

Very often, the empirical elements of water systems were not considered significant enough to be mentioned. Yet for archaeologists, the physical dimensions of those systems are important for conclusions about economy and society. Elements of system scale (e.g., width and depth of canals, length of system, volume of water, irrigated area) are rarely described. Yet these elements are critical for assessing the extent of political authority, whether through control of land, or through the ability to mobilize the labor necessary for system construction. The absolute scale of an irrigation system could help archaeologists determine whether it was a critical element of the subsistence economy or a vanity project. When done on a regional scale, archaeological evidence can overturn major theories of social evolution; for example, the once-influential hydraulic hypothesis of Karl Wittfogel (1957) is largely out of favor, since Robert McCormick Adams demonstrated that urban settlement patterns preceded major irrigation systems by a millennium.

ur_2022_remote_sensing_of_irrig.pdf
Jason Ur and Karim Alizadeh. 2022. “The Sasanian Colonisation of the Mughan Steppe, Ardebil Province, North-West Iran.” In Sasanian Archaeology: Settlements, Environment and Material Culture, edited by St. John Simpson. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Succeeding CORONA: Declassified HEXAGON Intelligence Imagery for Archaeological and Historical Research
Emily Hammer, Mackinley FitzPatrick, and Jason Ur. 2022. “Succeeding CORONA: Declassified HEXAGON Intelligence Imagery for Archaeological and Historical Research.” Antiquity, 96, 387, Pp. 679-695. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Click here for an Open Access version of this article.

Over the past 25 years, CORONA satellite imagery has become an integral part of archaeological research, especially for arid, sparsely vegetated regions such as the Middle East. Since 2020, a new archive of satellite imagery gathered by the US spy satellite programme that succeeded CORONA—HEXAGON—has become widely available for download via the United States Geological Survey. This photographic archive has enormous potential for archaeological research. Here, the authors seek to lower the barriers to accessing and using this imagery by detailing the background, technical specifications and history of the HEXAGON archive. Four case studies illustrate the benefits and limitations of HEXAGON imagery for archaeological and historical research in the Middle East and beyond.

 

2021
The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey: Preliminary Results, 2012-2020
Jason Ur, Nader Babakr, Rocco Palermo, Petra Creamer, Mehrnoush Soroush, Shilan Ramand, and Karel Nováček. 2021. “The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey: Preliminary Results, 2012-2020.” Iraq, 83. Link to Publisher's VersionAbstract

The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) investigates settlement and land use from the Neolithic to the present in the Erbil Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which includes a large portion of the core of the Assyrian Empire. In seven field seasons, it has documented a broad settlement landscape in a region of great social and political importance, especially in the Bronze and Iron Ages, including 728 archaeological sites. Its field methodology combines traditional surface collection with the use of historical aerial and satellite photographs, mobile GIS, and UAV (drone) photogrammetry. Preliminary results show some unexpected patterns: a high density of culturally Uruk settlements in the fourth millennium B.C., variable urban morphologies in the Early Bronze Age; and large but low-density settlements at the end of the Sasanian period or the early Islamic period. The project is explicitly testing several hypotheses about centralized Neo-Assyrian landscape planning in the imperial core. These hypotheses appear to be confirmed, although the situation was more complex than in surrounding provinces, probably due to the longer history of continuous settlement.

Click here to download the PDF of this article.

ur_et_al_2021_epas_iraq.pdf
Kish and the Spatial Organization of Cities in Third-Millennium BC Southern Iraq
Jason Ur. 2021. “Kish and the Spatial Organization of Cities in Third-Millennium BC Southern Iraq.” In From Sherds to Landscapes: Studies on the Ancient Near East in Honor of McGuire Gibson, edited by Mark Altaweel and Carrie Hritz, Pp. 227-239. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Link to Full Volume (Open Access)Abstract
Despite its social, geopolitical, and historiographical significance, the city of Kish has been largely left out of archaeological discussions of early Mesopotamian urbanism. This study will combine the results of McGuire Gibson’s 1966–67 surface collection with various geospatial datasets that did not exist or were unavailable to him at the time of his fieldwork (declassified intelligence satellite photographs, digital terrain data, and recent commercial satellite imagery) to reassess Kish’s urban development and compare it to contemporary cities elsewhere in Mesopotamia.
ur_2021_saoc_71_sherds_to_landscapes_kish.pdf
2020
Jason Ur. 2020. “Drones Over Kurdistan.” In Situ, Spring 2020. Full Text PDF
Space and Structure in Early Mesopotamian Cities
Jason A. Ur. 2020. “Space and Structure in Early Mesopotamian Cities.” In Landscapes of Pre-Industrial Cities, edited by Georges Farhat, Pp. 37-59. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks.Abstract

The study of preindustrial cities is in a phase of great dynamism. For a long time, early cities were viewed narrowly through the lenses of Classical and ancient Near Eastern urbanism. In archaeology, this situation emerged largely as a result of the great influence of V. Gordon Childe. His books and articles established a broad model of what an early city was supposed to look like; his seminal article on “The Urban Revolution” is the most heavily cited article in the history of the Town Planning Review. His vision of cities emphasized the “revolutionary” appearance of relatively (for their time) large and dense settlements that housed a ruling class (and its monuments) that extracted the production of the rural hinterland. These new urban places were further characterized by writing systems, art and science, long-distance trade, and the abandonment of kinship as a source of social cohesion.At this point, the critiques of Childe have largely been accepted. First and foremost, his characterization in “The Urban Revolution” is one of an early centralized polity— that is, a political form rather than a settlement form. More importantly, recent scholarship has convincingly demonstrated the remarkable diversity of early urban form, and it has argued, also convincingly, for a definition of “urbanism” that can accommodate such diversity. Indeed, for many current scholars, Childe’s “classic” formulation of the early city only really applies to the ancient Near East and the Mesopotamian examples that inspired him.In fact, Childe’s model does not even apply to Mesopotamian urbanism, at least not in its early stages. The diversity of urban form now recognized globally can also be found in the earliest cities of the Tigris and Euphrates region. “The Urban Revolution” model is not, however, useless, as it describes mature Mesopotamian cities of the third millennium Bce, and many subsequent urban places, quite well. But these cities came about with at least a millennium of previous urban development already behind them. They represent the end of a developmental process, not the start.

Map of middle east
This study will illustrate three early Mesopotamian urban structures. They appeared sequentially, but not necessarily in an evolutionary sequence, from the late fifth to the middle of the third millennium Bce. The first, which appears to be unique in Mesopotamian history, seems to be a Near Eastern manifestation of a “megasite,” very large and low-density anomalies in the archaeological record, which in many parts of the world appeared prior to the appearance of less ambiguous urban forms. The second is a candidate for a Mesopotamian “low-density” city, a structure increasingly recognized globally but not yet in the Near East. Finally, at the time of the great Mesopotamian city-states, this study will argue that even the most geometric of settlement forms can be explained through the concept of emergence, as opposed to top-down planning.

In all of these cases, large settlements in early Mesopotamia were largely self-organized. Childe’s model may have emphasized new forms of centralized government in early cities, but a critical look at the archaeological data set of sites and landscapes suggests that bottom-up processes were dominant. It would be incorrect to call them “unplanned,” since all urban phenomena are planned at some scale; rather the issue is the locus of decision-making about planning. Traditional scholarship on Mesopotamian cities assigns most agency to kings and other elites, who often claim such influence in propagandistic royal inscriptions. In the case studies presented here, emphasis has been placed on households and neighborhoods, and the ways in which decision-making at those lower levels might result in the emergent forms of the earliest Mesopotamian cities.

ur_2020_space_and_structure_in_early_mesopotamian_cities.pdf
Vers une histoire du peuplement de la plaine d'Erbil
Jason A. Ur and Jessica Giraud. 2020. “Vers une histoire du peuplement de la plaine d'Erbil.” In Arbela Antiqua, edited by Frédéric Alpi, Zidan Bradosty, Jessica Giraud, John MacGinnis, and Raija Mattila, Pp. 59-75. Beirut: Institut Français du Proche-Orient. Ur and Giraud 2020 Arbela Antiqua
Deep Learning in Archaeological Remote Sensing: Automated Qanat Detection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Mehrnoush Soroush, Alireza Mehrtash, Emad Khazraee, and Jason A. Ur. 2020. “Deep Learning in Archaeological Remote Sensing: Automated Qanat Detection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.” Remote Sensing, 12, 3. Publisher's VersionAbstract
In this paper, we report the results of our work on automated detection of qanat shafts on the Cold War-era CORONA Satellite Imagery. The increasing quantity of air and space-borne imagery available to archaeologists and the advances in computational science have created an emerging interest in automated archaeological detection. Traditional pattern recognition methods proved to have limited applicability for archaeological prospection, for a variety of reasons, including a high rate of false positives. Since 2012, however, a breakthrough has been made in the field of image recognition through deep learning. We have tested the application of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for automated remote sensing detection of archaeological features. Our case study is the qanat systems of the Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The signature of the underground qanat systems on the remote sensing data are the semi-circular openings of their vertical shafts. We choose to focus on qanat shafts because they are promising targets for pattern recognition and because the richness and the extent of the qanat landscapes cannot be properly captured across vast territories without automated techniques. Our project is the first effort to use automated techniques on historic satellite imagery that takes advantage of neither the spectral imagery resolution nor very high (sub-meter) spatial resolution.
Deep Learning in Archaeological Remote Sensing: Automated Qanat Detection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Mehrnoush Soroush, A. Mehrtash, E. Khazraee, and J. Ur. 2020. “Deep Learning in Archaeological Remote Sensing: Automated Qanat Detection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.” Journal of Remote Sensing , 12, 3, Pp. 500. Open Access Publisher's VersionAbstract
In this paper, we report the results of our work on automated detection of qanat shafts on the Cold War-era CORONA Satellite Imagery. The increasing quantity of air and space-borne imagery available to archaeologists and the advances in computational science have created an emerging interest in automated archaeological detection. Traditional pattern recognition methods proved to have limited applicability for archaeological prospection, for a variety of reasons, including a high rate of false positives. Since 2012, however, a breakthrough has been made in the field of image recognition through deep learning. We have tested the application of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for automated remote sensing detection of archaeological features. Our case study is the qanat systems of the Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The signature of the underground qanat systems on the remote sensing data are the semi-circular openings of their vertical shafts. We choose to focus on qanat shafts because they are promising targets for pattern recognition and because the richness and the extent of the qanat landscapes cannot be properly captured across vast territories without automated techniques. Our project is the first effort to use automated techniques on historic satellite imagery that takes advantage of neither the spectral imagery resolution nor very high (sub-meter) spatial resolution.
2019
Mapping Ancient Landscapes
Jason Ur, Jeffrey Blossom, and Christian Harder. 2019. “Mapping Ancient Landscapes.” In GIS for Science: Applying Mapping and Spatial Analytics, edited by Dawn Wright, Pp. 142-165. Redlands CA: Esri Press. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Racing against the clock as development encroaches on important Kurdish heritage sites, a team of landscape archaeologists deploys drones and comparative image analysis to capture previously undetected ancient settlements.

The chapter is accompanied by various online resources, including interactive maps, which can be viewed at the GISforScience website.

ur_and_blossom_2019_mappingancientlandscapes.pdf
Near Eastern Landscapes and Declassified U2 Aerial Imagery
Emily L. Hammer and Jason A. Ur. 2019. “Near Eastern Landscapes and Declassified U2 Aerial Imagery.” Advances in Archaeological Practice. Open Access Publisher's VersionAbstract
Recently declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology. Like other sources of historical imagery, U2 photos provide a window into the past, before modern agriculture and development destroyed many archaeological sites. U2 imagery is older and in many cases higher resolution than CORONA spy satellite imagery, the other major source of historical imagery for Eurasia, and thus can expand the range of archaeological sites and features that can be studied from an aerial perspective. However, there are significant barriers to finding and retrieving U2 imagery of particular locales, and archaeologists have thus not yet widely used it. In this article, we aim to reduce these barriers by describing the U2 photo dataset and how to access it. We also provide the first spatial index of U2 photos for the Middle East. A brief discussion of archaeological case studies drawn from U2 imagery illustrates its merits and limitations. These case studies include investigations of prehistoric mass-kill hunting traps in eastern Jordan, irrigation systems of the first millennium BC Neo-Assyrian empire in northern Iraq, and twentieth-century marsh communities in southern Iraq.
2018
Olivier Rouault, Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, Ilaria Calini, John MacGinnis, Jason Ur, and Quentin Vitale. 2018. “Qasr Shemamok-Kilizu (Kurdistan d’Irak), les campagnes de 2011 (9 avril-15 mai et 16 octobre-5 novembre).” In Études Mésopotamiennes – Mesopotamian Studies No. 1, edited by Vincent Déroche, Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, and Christophe Nicolle, Pp. 212-253. Oxford: Archaeopress.Abstract
Notre première mission au Kurdistan d'Irak, en avril-mai 2010, sur le site de Kilik Mishik dans la banlieue sud d’Erbil, – la première opération étrangère à obtenir un permis de fouille officiel du Ministère kurde responsable des fouilles – nous avait donné l’occasion de prendre un contact direct avec la réalité archéologique de la culture antique de la région d’Erbil. Elle nous avait aussi permis de nous familiariser avec les méthodes de travail et le fonctionnement des institutions locales et en particulier de l’Université et du Service des Antiquités. Pendant cette période nous avions également pu effectuer quelques rapides prospections et visiter plusieurs sites dans la région, nous forgeant ainsi une idée plus claire des possibilités et des opportunités offertes par l’ouverture de ce territoire à la recherche scientifique et archéologique...
rouault_et_al_2018_qs_2011.pdf
Water for Arbail and Nimrud
Jason A. Ur. 2018. “Water for Arbail and Nimrud.” In Water for Assyria, edited by Hartmut Kühne, Pp. 57-75. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Abstract

The imperial and provincial capitals of the Neo-Assyrian empire held populations far beyond the limits of the Bronze Age cities that preceded them.  This accomplishment came in part from intensifying agricultural production on the lands adjacent to the cities.  The irrigation systems of Nimrud and Nineveh have over a century of exploration, but there are still many details to be revealed, especially through remote sensing and field exploration.  This paper analyses the irrigation systems between Nimrud and Arbail (modern Erbil) using two sources.  The first are remote sensing datasets from a variety of declassified American intelligence missions: aerial photographs from the U2 spy plane, and satellite photographs from the CORONA (1960-1972) and HEXAGON (1971-1984) programs, many of which have not been used for non-intelligence research before.  The second source are field observations of the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) in the regions of Gwer, Shemamok, Erbil, Kawr Gosk, and Qala Mortka, between the Upper Zab and the Chai Bastora.  These observations have revealed a complex palimpsest of both massive irrigation systems and small scale karez/qanat systems that can be difficult to untangle.  It is certain, however, that the river terraces and plains surrounding Nimrud and Arbail were abundantly irrigated.  It is possible that some of these canal features were also being used for downstream shipment of bulky agricultural products, which would further extend the sustaining areas of these great cities.

Ur 2018 Water for Arbail and Nimrud [PDF]
2017
The Archaeological Renaissance in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Jason Ur. 2017. “The Archaeological Renaissance in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.” Near Eastern Archaeology, 80, 3, Pp. 176-187. Open Access Publisher's VersionAbstract
After an absence of over two decades, foreign archaeology has returned in earnest to one of the “cradles of civilization” in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Two wars, international sanctions, and internal unrest had together brought archaeological research nearly to a standstill; only a few under-funded Iraqi teams and a handful of intrepid Europeans attempted fieldwork following the first Gulf War of 1991. Following a decline in political violence that began in 2008, archaeologists have returned to the Republic of Iraq. The resumption of fieldwork in the southern “heartland of cities” has been significant but slow, and hampered by internal politics. In the autonomous Kurdistan Region, however, foreign research has expanded rapidly and continuously, in partnership with local archaeologists and institutes. This essay reviews these new developments, discusses how the new discoveries are challenging long-held ideas and filling blank spaces on the archaeological map, and suggests some new directions for the future of Mesopotamian studies.
Jason A. Ur. 2017. “The Birth of Cities in Ancient West Asia.” In Ancient West Asian Civilization: Geoenvironment and Society in the Pre-Islamic Middle East, edited by Akira Tsuneki, Shigeo Yamada, and Kenichiro Hisada, Pp. 133-147. Singapore: Springer.
The Topography of Nineveh
Jason A. Ur. 2017. “The Topography of Nineveh.” In Nineveh, the Great City: Symbol of Beauty and Power, edited by Lucas P. Petit and Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Pp. 58-62. Leiden: Sidestone. Publisher's Version

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