“…For example, Chalcolithic groups at Rasif excavated shallow wells and constructed complex trough systems, which were still in use in the fourth millennium BC (52). Hydrological studies in the oases of Tayma and Dumat al-Jandal likewise indicate water provisioning mainly from ground water, with utilization of surface runoff by means of dams (71,72). Such strategies allowed groups to transcend short-term fluctuations in the availability of surface water.…”
Section: Assessing the Environments And Archaeology Of Northern Arabiamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The archaeological evidence at Tayma is stronger, however, and occupations are considered to represent an "unbroken sequence" from the beginning of the Bronze Age in the third millennium BC to the Iron Age in the 11th century BC (51) including through the 4.2 ka event. Other sites in northwest Arabia demonstrate long term habitation as well as considerable evidence of water management (72). By the late third/early second millennium BC, the transition to the Middle Bronze Age occurred at Tayma, in which graves feature a variety of Bronze weapons.…”
Section: Assessing the Environments And Archaeology Of Northern Arabiamentioning
Recent interdisciplinary archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Arabian peninsula is transforming our understanding of ancient human societies in their ecological contexts. Hypotheses about the cultural and demographic impacts of a series of droughts have primarily been developed from the environmental and archaeological records of southeastern Arabia. Here we examine these human–environment interactions by integrating ongoing research from northern Arabia. While droughts and extreme environmental variability in the Holocene had significant impacts on human societies, responses varied across space and time and included mobility at various scales, as well as diverse social, economic and cultural adaptations, such as the management of water resources, the introduction of pastoral lifeways, and the construction of diverse types of stone structures. The long-term story of human societies in Arabia is one of resilience in the face of climate change, yet future challenges include rising temperatures and flash flooding. The history of human responses to climatic and ecosystem changes in Arabia can provide important lessons for a planet facing catastrophic global warming and environmental change.
“…For example, Chalcolithic groups at Rasif excavated shallow wells and constructed complex trough systems, which were still in use in the fourth millennium BC (52). Hydrological studies in the oases of Tayma and Dumat al-Jandal likewise indicate water provisioning mainly from ground water, with utilization of surface runoff by means of dams (71,72). Such strategies allowed groups to transcend short-term fluctuations in the availability of surface water.…”
Section: Assessing the Environments And Archaeology Of Northern Arabiamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The archaeological evidence at Tayma is stronger, however, and occupations are considered to represent an "unbroken sequence" from the beginning of the Bronze Age in the third millennium BC to the Iron Age in the 11th century BC (51) including through the 4.2 ka event. Other sites in northwest Arabia demonstrate long term habitation as well as considerable evidence of water management (72). By the late third/early second millennium BC, the transition to the Middle Bronze Age occurred at Tayma, in which graves feature a variety of Bronze weapons.…”
Section: Assessing the Environments And Archaeology Of Northern Arabiamentioning
Recent interdisciplinary archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Arabian peninsula is transforming our understanding of ancient human societies in their ecological contexts. Hypotheses about the cultural and demographic impacts of a series of droughts have primarily been developed from the environmental and archaeological records of southeastern Arabia. Here we examine these human–environment interactions by integrating ongoing research from northern Arabia. While droughts and extreme environmental variability in the Holocene had significant impacts on human societies, responses varied across space and time and included mobility at various scales, as well as diverse social, economic and cultural adaptations, such as the management of water resources, the introduction of pastoral lifeways, and the construction of diverse types of stone structures. The long-term story of human societies in Arabia is one of resilience in the face of climate change, yet future challenges include rising temperatures and flash flooding. The history of human responses to climatic and ecosystem changes in Arabia can provide important lessons for a planet facing catastrophic global warming and environmental change.
“…While the decreasing cost of commercial For the proper mapping of qanat systems, individual shafts that represent the course and complexity of the underground system need to be documented individually (Figure 3). However, mapping qanats at shaft-level is most suitable for small systems and small research areas [60]. Large qanat systems are usually mapped either as a point representing its outlet or as a line representing its approximate path from the source to the outlet.…”
Section: Remote Sens 2020 12 X For Peer Review 3 Of 19mentioning
In this paper, we report the results of our work on automated detection of qanat shafts on the Cold War-era CORONA Satellite Imagery. The increasing quantity of air and space-borne imagery available to archaeologists and the advances in computational science have created an emerging interest in automated archaeological detection. Traditional pattern recognition methods proved to have limited applicability for archaeological prospection, for a variety of reasons, including a high rate of false positives. Since 2012, however, a breakthrough has been made in the field of image recognition through deep learning. We have tested the application of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for automated remote sensing detection of archaeological features. Our case study is the qanat systems of the Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The signature of the underground qanat systems on the remote sensing data are the semi-circular openings of their vertical shafts. We choose to focus on qanat shafts because they are promising targets for pattern recognition and because the richness and the extent of the qanat landscapes cannot be properly captured across vast territories without automated techniques. Our project is the first effort to use automated techniques on historic satellite imagery that takes advantage of neither the spectral imagery resolution nor very high (sub-meter) spatial resolution.
“…Best known for its role as a crossroads on the caravan routes of antiquity, the oasis of Dûmat al-Jandal, is located in a desert region that today receives no more than 50mm of annual precipitation (Charloux 2018) (Figure 1). The oasis is situated in the lower part of a vast graben (steep-sided valley) at 580-680m asl, supplied with water by several small wadis and, especially, by a now overexploited source of fossil groundwater (Charloux et al 2018).…”
Section: Architectural and Stratigraphic Sequence Of The Platformmentioning
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