Khandaq Shapur has been named one of the great barriers of the ancient world, but very little is known about the monumental-scale linear feature. This interdisciplinary paper brings together archaeologists and historians to present (1) an updated history of the Khandaq Shapur drawing upon a wider range of sources, including Arabic scholarly sources, and (2) a modern map of the Khandaq Shapur produced from a ground truthed remote sensing using historic Corona satellite imagery from the 1960s and imagery available in Google Earth. This new map of the Khandaq Shapur’s ground truthed location is compared to the known locations of Sasanian sites from previous archaeological surveys to contextualise the Khandaq Shapur within the wider archaeological landscape. Together, the landscape archaeology and historical evidence provide a comprehensive picture of this unique feature: shedding light not only on its precise location, but also its nature (what was it?) and how it was used over time.
The landscape of the Mesopotamian floodplain is mainly structured by channel processes, including the formation of levees, meanders, scrollbars, oxbow lakes, crevasse splays, distributary channels, inter-distributary bays, and marshes. Moreover, several human-made features also form and shape this landscape, such as canals, roads, trenches, farms, and settlement sites ranging in size from villages to cities. A significant part of the Mesopotamian floodplain is covered by marshes, especially the southern region. These marshlands have thrived for thousands of years and are well known for their sustainable biodiversity and ecosystem. However, after the deliberate draining of the marshes in the 1990s, the areas have become dry and only small areas of shallow water and narrow strips of vegetation remain. Several kinds of archaeological landscape features have appeared on the surface and can be clearly identified in both ground surveys and with the use of remote sensing tools. This paper aims to determine the type and nature of the preserved archaeological features that appear in the landscape of the dried marshes and whether they are different from other features elsewhere in the Mesopotamian floodplain. An intensive ground survey was carried out in a selected area of the dried marshland, resulting in the identification of six types of archaeological features: settlement sites, rivers, canals, farms, grooves, and roads (hollow ways). These features used to be covered by bodies of deep water and dense zones of vegetation (reeds and papyrus).
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