FIELDWORK

Archaeology, once focused almost exclusively on "sites," and particularly on the most substantial structures within the most substantial settlements, has moved in recent decades toward a much more holistic approach to the remains of the past. Several projects have attempted to map the entire layout of a major settlement, such as the investigation at Abu Salabikh. This site has also been the testing ground for a micromorphological study, providing new clues to the activities that had taken place in parts of the settlement. Many new scientific techniques of analysis are now available to archaeologists; some such as micromorphology give new insights into the function and use of structures and areas within them, and others such as microwear analysis and the analysis of residues on or in objects provide new information about the uses to which artifacts were put.

Settlements are now generally not viewed and investigated as isolated entities but as a part of a landscape that has many aspects: the natural environment, which provided resources and opportunities but also imposed constraints; a superimposed economic environment of human exploitation and land management, such as farming practices, forestry, agricultural infrastructure (including facilities for irrigation and water control), industry, and mineral extraction; the human landscape, including both the distribution and hierarchy of settlements and the networks of communications; and the ritual landscape.

Aerial photography has for many decades provided an important tool for investigating the landscape and human activity at all levels; aerial reconnaissance has seen tremendous advances in recent years. As well as conventional photography, there are now infrared photography, high-resolution satellite photography, and radar scans, among others. The political situation in Iraq since 1991 means that the area has been exceptionally well covered by aerial reconnaissance (although it could be some time before the resulting material becomes available for archaeological scrutiny). The resolution that can be achieved with satellite sensors can be as good as 60 centimeters, allowing features of the size of people to be identified. Using satellite imaging, ancient watercourses have been traced in several parts of the Near East, including Mesopotamia; space imaging radar even allows the detection of former rivers buried under several meters of sand. Computers play a major role as tools for handling this data: enhancing images, filtering out noise, converting information to a form that can be easily transferred to maps, and allowing other types of manipulation. The latter includes use within GIS (Geographical Information Systems), which enable information on a range of aspects of the natural and human environment, such as topography, settlement patterns, industrial activity, communications networks, and vegetation, to be combined and considered in relation to each other.

Floods, Marshes, and Coastlines

The marshland of the south has always been a place that has harbored refugees, fugitives, and rebels (see photo p. 9), as well as the indigenous peoples who more than 8,000 years ago developed a way of life adapted to the region. After the Shi'ite uprising in 1991, Saddam Hussein attempted to deal with this refuge area by draining it. Since his overthrow in 2003, work has begun on restoring the marshes, regarded by many as the original Garden of Eden. Before the area is once again inundated, there is a window of opportunity to investigate and map traces of early settlement, extinct watercourses, and the changing coastline along the head of the Gulf. The interplay of rising sea levels, sedimentation, and changing river channels means that the coastline and the distribution of watercourses, marshes, and dry land have been constantly changing throughout prehistoric and historic times. These have had a major impact on human settlement patterns, and human interference has also shaped the landscape, redistributing water via canals, dykes, and other works for irrigation and water conservation. Much has still to be learned of the detail of these changes, and even the general picture is still debated.

The Great Flood

Fieldwork in this region could shed new light on a related topic of absorbing interest: the Flood. Familiar to children from the biblical story of Noah, an earlier Mesopotamian version of the story has been known since the nineteenth century c. e. The Sumerian King List, composed around 2100 b. c.e., refers to the Flood, and a fragment of a Sumerian version of this story is also known, although the earliest surviving full account is Atrahasis, in a version dated around 1700 b. c.e. The hero of this tale was a legendary king of Shuruppak, known in different versions as Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Ut-napishtim. Chronological data derived from various sources suggests a date of around 2900 B. C.E. for the origin of the Flood story. Deposits composed of alluvial silt consistent with a major flood have been excavated at Shuruppak, dated around 2900 b. c.e., and at Kish around the same time, and significant changes in the course and number of channels of the Euphrates River have been documented in the period 3000-2800 b. c.e. At present, however, this is far from being evidence of a universally destructive inundation, rather than a number of separate episodes affecting different cities. Personal experience of recent localized floods in Britain shows how quickly the sufferings of different regions in separate years can be conflated in popular memory: How much easier it would have been before the days of global communications and a universally used calendar for a series of such local floods to be seen later as one single catastrophic deluge.

Another suggestion less plausibly links the Flood to global postglacial changes in sea levels, rivers, and lakes, on the grounds that this would account for the widespread currency of the story. One recent theory moves the Flood away from Mesopotamia to the Black Sea. Here underwater reconnaissance has revealed that the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were once separated by a narrow land bridge between Asia and Europe. Rising sea levels in the Mediterranean caused this to be breached around 5500 b. c.e., pouring water into the much lower basin of the Black Sea and drowning a huge area of land around the Black Sea shores, with catastrophic effects. Those who did not lose their lives would have fled to inland areas of Europe and Anatolia. To suggest, however, that this event gave rise to a Flood myth in southern Mesopotamia strains credulity.

The Lost City of Agade

When Sargon of Akkad created his empire, he established a new city, Agade, to be his capital. The poem "The Curse of Agade" describes the new city in glowing colors: its warehouses filled with grain, gold, and precious stones; the convivial and festive life of its inhabitants, well furnished with food and drink; its cosmopolitan feel, with exotic animals rubbing shoulders with flocks of wooly sheep and colorful foreigners with the healthy, happy, and fulfilled locals; its quays overflowing with goods from every land. After Sargon's dynasty fell, the city was never again of national importance, but it was still known and visited in the first millennium b. c.e.; Nabonidus investigated and restored temples here. Like most other Mesopotamian cities it was later forgotten, but unlike most it has not been rediscovered, despite many attempts to find it.

Clues to its location can be gleaned from textual references, but they are not unambiguous. The city lay in the alluvial plain north of Kish. Ships from Meluhha, Magan, and Dilmun moored at its quays; these were probably substantial seagoing vessels, and so this must imply that they had sailed up a major river. One text speaks of ships traveling from Agade to Nippur, implying that both were on the same river, the Euphrates. The heartland of the Akkadian Empire, the region in the center of Mesopotamia where the Tigris and Euphrates most nearly approach each other, has not been extensively surveyed. Many scholars believe that the evidence suggests Agade was situated somewhere between Babylon, Kish, and Sippar. Agade could lie partially beneath the city of Babylon, where later deposits would have prevented it from being detected. Before the Iraq war a Japanese team were investigating a site on the outskirts of Kish that they hoped might prove to be Agade. Other scholars, however, locate Agade well toward the east, on the Tigris, perhaps near its confluence with the Diyala or perhaps within the area of modern Baghdad. This long-lived and extensive metropolis could well overlay and hide the remains of an ancient city, but if so there must have been a canal system linking the Tigris and Euphrates: Aerial reconnaissance could shed light on this.