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Ur, Jason

While attempting to document Soviet nuclear capacities, the first generation of American intelligence satellites also captured vivid images of archaeological sites and landscapes across the Near East. Since their declassification, archaeologists have eagerly exploited them to investigate early cities, trackways, and irrigation systems. In many cases, forty years of development and modernization has damaged or destroyed these sites and features, leaving the satellite photographs as the best surviving record. This paper reviews case studies from Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

Landscape archaeology has emphasised the role of the entire landscape in ancient life, rather than putting an exclusive focus on those loci of intensive behaviour we call “sites.” The broader area of interest requires a corresponding reduction in intensity, the difference between digging a 100 m2 trench and surveying a 200 km2 region. In order to study entire regions efficiently, landscape archaeologists have normally turned to remote sensing data sources. In the Middle East, aerial photographs have been difficult to obtain, so these sources have generally been limited to low resolution SPOT and LANDSAT imagery, which are sufficient for geomorphological studies but too coarse to detect most archaeological landscape features. Archaeologists working in the Middle East are now beginning to take advantage of a newly available resource, the declassified CORONA satellite program, which combines the large coverage of the modern low resolution satellites with the high resolution of aerial photography. In this case study, I have used CORONA photographs to identify and map ancient road systems in north-eastern Syria (Figure 1).

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.

We present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine. Their paper claims there is a causal effect of genetic diversity on economic success, positing that too much or too little genetic diversity constrains development. In particular, they argue that “the high degree of diversity among African populations and the low degree of diversity among Native American populations have been a detrimental force in the development of these regions.” We demonstrate that their argument is seriously flawed on both factual and methodological grounds. As economists and other social scientists begin exploring newly available genetic data, it is crucial to remember that nonexperts broadcasting bold claims on the basis of weak data and methods can have profoundly detrimental social and political effects.

CORONA satellite photography taken in the 1960s continues to reveal buried ancient landscapes and sequences of landscapes – some of them no longer visible. In this new survey of the Mughan Steppe in north-western Iran, the authors map a ‘signature landscape’ belonging to Sasanian irrigators, and discover that the traces of the nomadic peoples that succeeded them also show up on CORONA – in the form of scoops for animal shelters. The remains of these highly significant pastoralists have been virtually obliterated since the CORONA surveys by a new wave of irrigation farming. Such archaeological evaluation of a landscape has grave implications for the heritage of grassland nomads and the appreciation of their impact on history.