A Remote Sensing Approach for Mapping the Development of Ancient Water Management in the Near East

Abstract

We present a novel approach that uses remote sensing to record and reconstruct traces of ancient water management throughout the whole region of Northern Mesopotamia, an area where modern agriculture and warfare has had a severe impact on the survival of archaeological remains and their visibility in modern satellite imagery. However, analysis and interpretation of declassified stereoscopic spy satellite data from the 1960s and early 1970s revealed traces of ancient water management systems. We processed satellite imagery to facilitate image interpretation and used photogrammetry to reconstruct hydraulic pathways. Our results represent the first comprehensive map of water management features across the entirety of Northern Mesopotamia for the period ca. 1200 BC to AD 1500. In particular, this shows that irrigation was widespread throughout the region in the Early Islamic period, including within the zone traditionally regarded as “rain-fed”. However, we found that a high proportion of the ancient canal systems had been damaged or destroyed by 20th century changes to agricultural practices and land use. Given this, there is an urgent need to record these rapidly vanishing water management systems that were an integral part of the ancient agricultural landscape and that underpinned powerful states.

Automated detection of archaeological mounds using machine-learning classification of multisensor and multitemporal satellite data

“…GEE is a fast-growing web-based geospatial platform seeing application within several academic disciplines, and in recent years it has boosted the emergence of RS-based automated applications at the continental and planetary scale of analysis ( 61 ). The archaeological application of GEE has been greatly extended only recently ( 12 , 62 – 67 ). GEE is particularly suitable for implementing large-scale multitemporal data analysis as it provides access to a 20-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets, which includes the Sentinel series and most other publicly accessible satellite data acquired since the 1970s.…”

Archaeology and Dams in Southeastern Turkey

“…The methodology has been tested successfully in the last decade, especially for areas made inaccessible by conflict. MENA examples include extensive use in Cyprus (Agapiou et al 2013), Egypt (Parcak 2015Parcak et al 2016;Fradley and Sheldrick 2017), Iraq (Fisk 2008;Stone 2008;Richardson 2011), Libya (Rayne et al 2017a;2017b), Syria (Casana and Panahipour 2014;Cunliffe 2014;Casana 2015;Danti 2015;DGAM 2013) and Yemen (Banks et al 2017).…”

The social logic of irrigation. Accessibility based approach towards evaluating the water management infrastructure of the archaeological site of Miran

“…There is no data necessary to date the canals precisely, therefore proposed research will focus on the operations of the irrigation system during the site's population peak in third–fourth century, as it is assumed that during that time all the canals were in use. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that the site was occupied for a relatively short period of time, and morphology of the water management features does not indicate any abrupt technological change – in contrast to, for example, Mesopotamia, where the palimpsest of different canal systems is eight millennia‐old (Rayne & Donoghue, 2018; Rost, 2017).…”

“…This allowed a gravitational flow of water from the feeding canal located in the southern part of the side towards offshoots oriented towards the north. An attempt to create a more detailed DEM based on CORONA imagery, using a method proposed by Rayne and Donoghue (2018), was attempted but the resolution was too low to obtain any meaningful additional information.…”