Mesopotamia History

review of B. Faist, Alltagstexte aus neuassyrischen Archiven und Bibliotheken der Stadt Assur. StAT 3.

by Heather D Baker

JNES 71 (2012) 115-116.

Beyond Aššur: New Cities and the Assyrian Politics of Landscape

by Ömür Harmansah

Harmanşah, Ömür; 2012. "Beyond Aššur: New Cities and the Assyrian Politics of Landscape," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 365: 53-77.

This article investigates the making of Assyrian landscapes during the late second and early first millennia b.c.e.... more This article investigates the making of Assyrian landscapes during the late second and early first millennia b.c.e. From the late 14th century b.c.e. onward, the Assyrians designated the emergent core of their territorial state as the “Land of Aššur” in their royal inscriptions. However, over the course of the next several centuries, the cultural geography of the Land of Aššur was continuously redefined while gradually shifting northward from the arid environs of the city Aššur to the well-watered and resourceful landscapes around the confluence of the Tigris and the Upper and Lower Zab Rivers. Contemporaneously, the landscapes of the Upper Tigris basin (southeastern Turkey) and the Jazira witnessed extensive settlement and cultivation as Assyrian provinces and frontiers. Drawing on archaeological survey evidence and a critical reading of the textual accounts of urban foundations, this paper argues that such mobility of Assyrian landscapes was part and parcel of broader processes of environmental and settlement change in Upper Mesopotamia. Assyrian annalistic texts point to an elaborate rhetoric of landscape that portrays state interventions in the form of city foundations and building programs, construction of irrigation canals, planting of orchards, opening of new quarries, and settlement of populations. Furthermore, the making of commemorative monuments such as rock reliefs and stelae allowed the Assyrian state to inscribe symbolically charged places in foreign landscapes and incorporate them into the narratives of the empire. By drawing attention to the long-term trends of settlement in Upper Mesopotamia during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages and the agency of landscapes, the article contextualizes the Assyrian political rhetoric of development at the time of a highly fluid world of geographical imagination.

A GIS Comparative Analysis of Bronze Age Settlement Patterns and the Contemporary Physical Landscape in the Jazira Region of Syria

by Tony Mathys

Most of the datasets presented in this thesis are available for free in ArcGIS shapefile format on the ShareGeo Open data repository at http://www.sharegeo.ac.uk/.

These datasets are available for everyone to use as it is important to encourage data sharing in support of research activities.

There are also some CORONA satellite images available on ShareGeo for the Syrian Jazira region. The plan is to eventually provide complete CORONA coverage for this region, though geo-referencing will not be precise as it's intended to be more for user orientation.

Acknowledgement should go to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which makes CORONA imagery available via its EarthExplorer online data service at http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/NewEarthExplorer/
Many CORONA images are available to download for free from this service, though require processing and geo-referencing for use in a GIS or a software package for processing remotely sensed imagery.

Relevant to this, and the thesis, is the following paper presented which first introduced how CORONA satellite imagery could be applied to archaeological work in the Near East. Martin Fowler also wrote about the potential of CORONA in the Aerial Archaeology Research Group (AARG) news.

Mathys, Tony. “The Use of Declassified Intelligence Satellite Photographs in a GIS (IDRISI) to Map Archaeological Sites and the Surrounding Landscape in the Northeastern Region of the Syrian Jazirah. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute, NASA and St. Cloud State University Remote Sensing Applications in Archaeology Conference. St. Cloud, Minnesota, May 29-31, 1997.

Unfortunately, papers presented at this conference were not published.

My gratitude and thanks to Dr Sarah Parcak for citing this unpublished conference paper in her book (Satellite Remote Sensing in Archaeology), and to Dr Aled Rowlands and Dr Apostolos Sarris for citing it in their Journal of Archaeological Science article 34 (2007).

The Iraqi Mandate: An Examination of the Relationship between Britain and Iraq In the Aftermath of the First World War

by Victoria Whitecotton

HIST351 History of Iraq Class Research Paper

LAURITO ROMINA, MEZZASALMA ALESSANDRA, VERDERAME LORENZO, 2008 «Texts and Labels: A Case Study from Neo-Sumerian Umma», in A.A.V.V. (eds.), Classifications of Knowledge in the Ancient Near East: Lexicography, Iconography, Stratigraphy, Proceedings of the 51st R.A.I., Chicago, July 18-22, 2005, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (SAOC) 62, Chicago.

by Romina Laurito

LAURITO ROMINA, MEZZASALMA ALESSANDRA, VERDERAME LORENZO, 2006 «Oltre la tavoletta. Documenti archivistici dall’amministrazione mesopotamica del III millennio», in Mora C., Piacentini P., (eds.) L’ufficio e il documento. Forme, modi e strumenti dell’amministrazione in Egitto e nel Vicino Oriente Antico, Quaderni di Acme 83, Milano, Atti delle giornate di studio degli Egittologi e degli Orientalisti italiani tenutesi a Milano-Pavia il 17-19 febbraio 2005.

by Romina Laurito

LAURITO ROMINA, 2005 «Sumerian Written Clay Documents: Early Dynastic bullae and pisan-dub(-ba)in Administration», in Perna M. (ed.) Studi in onore di Enrica Fiandra, Contributi di archeologia egea e vicinorientale, Studi egei e vicinorientali, vol. 1, Napoli.

by Romina Laurito

LAURITO ROMINA, PERS MARIAPAOLA, 2002 «Attestations of Canals in the Royal Sources from the Sumerian to the Paleobaylonian Period», in Egitto e Vicino Oriente XXV, Università di Pisa.

by Romina Laurito

Ein Bollwerk für Syrien. Septimius Severus und die Provinzordnung Nordmesopotamiens im dritten Jahrhundert. In: M. A. Speidel, Heer und Herrschaft im Römischen Reich der Hohen Kaiserzeit, Stuttgart 2009, 181-210.

by Michael Alexander Speidel

Lamb, Mutton, and Goat in the Babylonian Temple Economy

by Michael Kozuh

Civic institutions and self-government in Southern Mesopotamia in the mid-first millennium BC

by Gojko Barjamovic

Published as: ‘Civic institutions and self-government in Southern Mesopotamia in the mid-first millennium BC,’ in J.G. Dercksen (ed.), Assyria and Beyond: Studies presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, (PIHANS 100), Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2004: 47-98.

I documenti di pesatura di tessili da Umma

by Lorenzo Verderame

(draft only)
in M. Perna e F. Pomponio, The Management of Agricultural Land and the Production of Textiles in the Mycenaean and Near Eastern Economies, Studi Egei e Vicinorientali 4, Napoli, 2008, pp. 111-133

I3-kal-la, scribe of (wool) textiles and lynen

by Lorenzo Verderame

(con G. Spada), in stampa negli atti del convegno From the 21st Century BC to the 21st Century AD: The Present and Future of Neo-Sumerian Studies, Madrid, CCHS-CSIC, 22-24 Luglio 2010

KEYWORDS: Ur III; administrative texts; textiles; Umma; cuneiform; Sumerian KEYWORDS: Ur III; administrative texts; textiles; Umma; cuneiform; Sumerian

City. I: Ancient Near East

by Ömür Harmansah

Harmansah, Ömür; in press. "City. I: Ancient Near East" in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Edited by Hermann Spieckermann et al. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York.

“Ancient Mesopotamia” chapter including entries on Ur, Tell Asmar, Babylon, Khorsabad, and Development of Writing

by Ömür Harmansah

Archaeologica: The World’s Most Significant Sites and Cultural Treasures. Aedeen Cremin (ed.). London: Frances Lincoln Publishers, 2007: 214-223.

Ur, J. A., P. Karsgaard, and J. Oates. 2011. The Spatial Dimensions of Early Mesopotamian Urbanism: The Tell Brak Suburban Survey, 2003-2006. Iraq 73: 1-19.

by Jason Ur

Published version can be downloaded here: http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/5366597

The 2003–2006 Suburban Survey at Tell Brak investigated the spatial dimensions of the city’s urban origins and... more 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.

Review of R.D.Barnett, J.E.Curtis, L.G.Davies, M.M.Howard, C.B.F.Walker, with contributions by I.L.Finkel, N.Tallis, and E.Sollberger. The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II. London: THE BRITISH MUSEUM PRESS, 2008. Pp. xvi 264, plates. $100.

by Ömür Harmansah

Forthcoming in Ancient West & East.

Geoarchaeological research in Lower Khuzestan: state of the art.

by Vanessa Heyvaert

Heyvaert, V.M.A., Verkinderen P., Walstra J., Baeteman C., Tanret M. (accepted, forthcoming June 2012). ‘Geoarchaeological research in Lower Khuzestan: state of the art’. In: De Graef K. and Tavernier J. (eds.), Susa and Elam. Archaeological, Philological, Historical and Geographical Perspectives, Brill publishers, MDP/ 58 , Boston-Leiden.  ISBN - 9789004207400

Book content:
In December 2009, an international congress was held at Ghent University in order to investigate,... more Book content:
In December 2009, an international congress was held at Ghent University in order to investigate, exactly 20 years after the 36th RAI “Mésopotamie et Elam”, the present state of our knowledge of the Elamite and Susean society from archaeological, philological, historical and geographical points of view. The multidisciplinary character of this congress illustrates the present state of research in the socio-economic, historical and political developments of the Suso-Elamite region from prehistoric times until the great Persian Empire. Because of its strategically important location between the Mesopotamian alluvial plain and the Iranian highlands and its particular interest as point of contact between civilizations, Susa and Elam were of utmost importance for the history of the ancient Near East in general.

2007 Contacts between pre-classical Greece and the Near East in the context of cultural influences: An overview.

by Erik van Dongen

In: R. Rollinger, A. Luther, J. Wiesehöfer (eds.), "Getrennte Wege? Kommunikation, Raum und Wahrnehmung in der alten Welt", Oikumene 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Antike 2007), 13-49.

The subject of the relations between pre-classical Greece and the ancient Near East has received ample attention in... more The subject of the relations between pre-classical Greece and the ancient Near East has received ample attention in recent times. Archaeologists and historians have discussed ways in which peoples came into contact in the Late Bronze, Dark and Greek Archaic Ages, while others have published about cultural elements that the Greeks might have taken over from the ancient Near East. As a result, the old position about the isolated development of the Greek world has become untenable: the origins of many elements of Greek culture can now without a doubt be traced outside the Greek world. Nonetheless, the available archaeological and historical data is hardly ever taken into account in research on cultural influences. Consequently, publications on influences often seem incomplete, since attention is paid only to the similarities between certain cultural elements without consideration of the process of transmission. This article is intended to contribute to changing this situation by gathering the archaeological and historical data relevant for research on Near Eastern influences on ancient Greece, in order to present an overview of which groups of people in what time and under what circumstances the Greeks met or came to know about.

Map languages Anatolia,North Syria and Upper Mesopotamia 1700 BC.

by Joost Blasweiler

Explanation of the languages of Anatolia, Upper Mesopotamia and North Syria around 1700 BC after the destruction of the karum and city of Kanesh. With gegographic and historical information.
Comments are welcome !