The capitals of the Neo-Assyrian empire appear to be firm examples of cities created as acts of political will, via top-down centralized planning, and with little or no input from their more humble inhabitants. This presentation will argue for a more flexible model that recognizes variability in top-down and bottom-up processes among the Assyrian capitals. Two sources enable a critical assessment. Recent research on provincial capitals has adopted a holistic approach that includes geophysical prospection and the targeting of non-elite residential areas. Satellite-based remote sensing has also opened windows into urban structure. Assyrian cities were highly variable in their morphologies, and these differences can be used to investigate their divergent origins and developmental trajectories. This presentation will review the form and structure of imperial and provincial capitals, with particular emphasis on satellite remote sensing of Nimrud and new topographic data for Qasr Shemamok (the provincial capital Kilizu), now being excavated by the Mission Archéologique Française à Erbil under the direction of Oliver Rouault and Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault.
TJ Wilkinson, Jason A Ur, and Carrie Hritz. 2013. “Settlement Archaeology of Mesopotamia.” In Models of Mesopotamian Landscapes: How Small-Scale Processes Contributed to the Growth of Early Civilizations, edited by TJ Wilkinson, McGuire Gibson, and Magnus Widell, Pp. 34-55. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Jason A Ur. 2012. “Landscapes of Movement in the Ancient Near East.” In Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 12-16 April 2010, the British Museum and UCL, London, Volume 1, edited by Matthews, Roger and John Curtis, Pp. 521-538. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Abstract
The landscapes of the Near East show both the first settlements and the longest trajectories of settlement systems. Mounding is a characteristic property of these settlement sites, resulting from millennia of continuing settlement activity at distinguished places. So far, however, this defining feature of ancient settlements has not received much attention, or even been subject of systematic evaluation. We propose a remote sensing approach for comprehensively mapping the pattern of human settlement at large scale and establish the largest archaeological record for a landscape in Mesopotamia, mapping about 14,000 settlement sites – spanning eight millennia – at 15 m resolution in a 23,000 km2 area in north-eastern Syria. To map both low-and high-mounded places – the latter of which are often referred to as “tells” – we develop a strategy for detecting anthrosols in time series of multi-spectral satellite images and measure the volume of settlement sites in a digital elevation model. Using this volume as a proxy to continued occupation, we find a dependency of the long-term attractiveness of a site on local water availability, but also a strong relation to the relevance within a basin-wide exchange network that we can infer from our record and 3rd millennium BC inter-site routes visible on the ground until recent times. We believe it is possible to establish a nearly comprehensive map of human settlements in the fluvial plains of northern Mesopotamia and beyond, and site volume may be a key quantity to uncover long-term trends in human settlement activity from such a record.
Jason A. Ur. 2012. “Southern Mesopotamia.” In A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, edited by Daniel T. Potts, Pp. 533-555. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Publisher's Version
Jason A Ur. 2011. “Ancient Landscapes in Southeastern Anatolia.” In Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolian Studies, edited by Sharon R Steadman and Gregory McMahon, Pp. 836-857. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
Excavation and systematic surface collection since 1999 have revealed the outlines of a unique site in Northern Mesopotamia. Khirbat al-Fakhar is an extensive settlement of 300 ha, primarily occupied during the LC 1-2 periods (ca 4400-3800 cal . BC). Systematic surface collection , satellite imagery analysis , and targeted excavation allow a preliminary characterization of its settlement , in particular the abundance of evidence for intensive obsidian manufacture. This unexpectedly large and early settlement presents problems of demography , nature of sedentism, permanence of occupation, and obsidian manufacture and trade. In this article we discuss these issues in the light of current accounts of the development of societal complexity and urbanism in the region and argue that Khirbat al-Fakhar had characteristics of both villages and cities, qualifying it as proto-urban.
The 2003–2006 Suburban Survey at Tell Brak investigated the spatial dimensions of the city’s urban origins and evolution via intensive systematic surface survey. This report places this research in the broader context of research on Near Eastern urban origins and development, describes the survey and remote sensing methods and summarises the results, which challenge several long-held models for the timing and geographical origins of urbanism in the Near East. Urbanism at Brak coalesced over the course of several centuries in the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC, when it evolved from a series of spatially discrete settlement zones into a 130-hectare city, without the benefit of irrigated agriculture. Other urban phases occurred in the late third millennium (70 hectare) and in the Late Bronze Age (45 hectare), all with different urban morphologies. Brak’s final settlement occurred in the Abbasid period, when a 14-hectare town grew around the Castellum. In addition to the timing, growth and variability of urban form at the site, the Suburban Survey also documented well preserved off-site ancient landscapes of tracks, field systems and irrigation canals.