Role of Human Communities in the Evolution of Landforms, Climates and Biota: Archaeological Perspectives from Southeastern Turkey

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的资助下，蒂莫西·马特尼（Timothy Matney）博士将带领一个国际研究小组前往土耳其东南部的迪亚巴克尔省，对Ziyaret Tepe遗址进行考古挖掘和调查。Matney博士的团队由来自美国、英国、德国、芬兰、丹麦和土耳其大学的高级合作者组成。Ziyaret Tepe位于底格里斯河上游河谷，这是一个富饶的农业区，这里产生了世界上最早的谷物和动物驯化的证据。在青铜和铁器时代晚期（公元前1300 - 600年），该地区被亚述帝国的国王吞并，亚述帝国位于今天的伊拉克北部，他们随后在山谷中建立了大型城市中心。几千年来，这片土地上一直是朴素的村庄，亚述军队和殖民者的到来意味着该地区发生了根本性的变化。亚述人建立边境城市，如Ziyaret Tepe（古代的Tushhan），需要利用重要的资源，如木材、粮食和人力。此外，亚述帝国对本土的需求需要大量的原材料，特别是木材和金属矿石，从底格里斯河上游河谷下游转运到亚述首都，供皇家建筑工程、亚述官僚机构和帝国军队使用。Matney的项目旨在评估这些需求对底格里斯河上游流域的地貌、古气候和动植物群落的影响。他的团队包括一群专家（古植物学家、动物分析学家、地质学家、土壤微形态学家等），他们将收集和分析Ziyaret Tepe挖掘和在遗址半径10公里范围内进行的区域调查的数据。这是在该地区进行的第一次全面的地貌和考古调查，将使在该地区工作的许多研究小组受益。底格里斯河上游河谷的大部分地区将被伊里苏水电站的建设淹没（计划于2014年完工），因此Matney团队收集的证据将在现代经济发展计划破坏古代记录之前，挽救该地区文化遗产的宝贵信息。马特尼的研究所解决的基本问题的含义远远超出了考古学的学术学科。公元前2世纪末和公元前1千年初帝国扩张和城市化对经济、生态、社会和政治的影响是讨论现代全球化现象的相关数据点。为Ziyaret Tepe项目开发和测试的模型将为各个学科的学者提供关于城市生活方式和集约化资源利用对局部气候、自然和人类生态系统的长期影响的信息。

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Timothy Matney will lead an international research team to the Diyarbakir province of southeastern Turkey to conduct archaeological excavation and survey at the site of Ziyaret Tepe. Dr. Matney's team consists of senior collaborators from universities in the US, Britain, Germany, Finland, Denmark and Turkey. Ziyaret Tepe is located in the upper Tigris River valley, a rich agricultural zone which has produced some of the earliest evidence for cereal and animal domestication in the world. During the Late Bronze and Iron Ages (c. 1300 - 600 BC), this area was annexed by the kings of the Assyrian Empire, based in modern-day northern Iraq, who subsequently established large urban centers in the valley. A land of modest villages for millennia, the arrival of the Assyrian armies and colonists meant a radical transformation of the region. The establishment of Assyrians frontier cities, such as Ziyaret Tepe (ancient Tushhan), required the harnessing of significant resources such as timber, grain and human labor. In addition, Assyrian imperial demands from the homeland required large quantities of raw materials, especially timber and metal ore, to be transshipped from the upper Tigris River valley downstream to the Assyrian capital for consumption by royal building projects, the Assyrian bureaucracy and the imperial army. Matney's project aims to assess the impact of these demands on the geomorphology, paleoclimates and plant and animal communities in the upper Tigris River valley. His team includes an array of specialists (paleobotanists, faunal analysts, geomophologists, soil micromorphologists, etc.) who will collect and analyze the data from both the excavation of Ziyaret Tepe and a regional survey conducted within a 10km radius of the site. This is the first comprehensive geomorphological and archaeological survey to be conducted in this area and will benefit many of the research teams working in the area. Much of this portion of the upper Tigris River valley will be flooded by the construction of the Ilisu hydroelectric dam (completion scheduled for 2014), so the evidence gathered by Matney's team will salvage valuable information on the cultural heritage of the region before destruction of the ancient record by modern economic development schemes. The basic questions being addressed by Matney's study have implications well beyond the academic discipline of archaeology. The economic, ecological, social and political implications of imperial expansion and urbanization in the late second and early first millennia BC are relevant data points for discussions of modern phenomenon of globalization. The models developed and tested for the Ziyaret Tepe project will inform scholars across a range of disciplines on the long-term impact of urban lifeways and intensive resource utilization on localized climates, natural and human ecosystems.