High Risk: Deltaic Resilience and the Genesis of Mesopotamian Cities (Iraq)

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Jennifer Pournelle博士、Carrie Hritz和Jennifer Smith将对底格里斯河-幼发拉底河冲积低地进行勘察，以调查湿地资源对美索不达米亚南部城市出现和发展的贡献，这是世界上最早和寿命最长的城市中心地带。该小组将与伊拉克旅游和文物部的代表一道，（1）对以前挖掘的遗址进行勘察，以确定地质考古数据收集地点;（2）评估巴士拉大学地质系储存和分析样品的实际能力;（3）与巴士拉的同事一道，探索新的可进入地区，并选择具体地点进行地质考古取芯和地震成像。该地区包括一个刚刚发现的遗迹景观，包括超过4,000公顷的干燥，密集的建筑地基，田野和以前淹没在哈马尔湖下的运河。 恢复哈马尔沼泽地现在是国家的一个高度优先事项，如果不迅速采取行动，在该地区开展工作的机会之窗将关闭。该团队将与教师，政府官员，后勤和安全人员会面，以准备详细的计划，起草支持合同，获得必要的许可证，选择地点，并收集试点数据，以提交给NSF。设想的后续研究将包括一个多年期的多国地质考古，地貌和民族考古调查和挖掘计划，旨在快速收集证据，以评估公元前5 - 3千年期间伊拉克南部三角洲景观中千年规模的人类与环境相互作用。伊拉克南部的底格里斯河-幼发拉底河三角洲是五千年来城市持续存在的中心。 虽然新的研究表明，当代的原始城市政体出现在叙利亚北方和伊朗西南部的平原上，但这些政体并没有表现出伊拉克冲积低地出现的城市中心的强大寿命。 现有的证据表明，南部冲积层的人口从他们在一个不断变化的三角洲系统，即使通过剧烈的气候波动周期提供了丰富多样的资源的情况下，取得了显着的财富和交通优势。这种三角洲的弹性，它是假设持续的城市化进程在南部美索不达米亚通过多个，多变量，系统的变化，人类相互作用和他们不断变化的环境。该奖项将启动一项研究计划来验证这一假设。该项目具有在整个海湾地区开展合作努力的巨大潜力。 与巴士拉大学合作，该项目有望为伊拉克新一代教师和研究生搭建桥梁。结果将提供一个基础，在其他三角洲的背景下，如印度河流域（哈拉帕），沿海秘鲁（卡拉尔，苏佩，奇穆），韦拉克鲁斯（奥尔梅克），和埃及，在尼罗河三角洲的取芯程序的比较研究表明，最早的，最复杂的定居点合并三角洲湿地和他们的生产力是必不可少的国家出现。

With support from the National Science Foundation Drs. Jennifer Pournelle, Carrie Hritz and Jennifer Smith will conduct a reconnaissance of the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial lowlands in order to investigate the contribution of wetland resources to the emergence and growth of cities in southern Mesopotamia, the earliest and longest-lived urban heartland in the world. With representatives from the Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the team will (1) conduct reconnaissance of previously excavated sites, in order to identify loci for geoarchaeological data collection (2) assess the University of Basrah Department of Geology's physical capacity for sample storage and analysis, and (3) with Basrah colleagues, explore newly accessible areas and select specific locations for geoarchaeological coring and seismological imaging. This area includes a just-discovered relict landscape comprising over 4,000 hectares of now-dry, densely packed building foundations, fields, and canals previously submerged beneath Lake Hammar. Restoration of the Hammar marshes is now a high national priority and if quick action is not taken, the window of opportunity for conducting work in this region will close. The team will meet with faculty, government officials, and logistics and security personnel in order to prepare detailed plans, draft support contracts, obtain necessary permits, select locations, and collect pilot data toward a fully developed proposal for submission to NSF. Envisioned subsequent research will include a multi-year, multi-national program of geoarchaeological, geomorphological, and ethnoarchaeological survey and excavation aimed at rapid collection of evidence essential to assessing millennial-scale human-environment interaction in the deltaic landscape of southern Iraq during the 5th - 3rd millennia BC, when urban civilization arose there.The Tigris-Euphrates delta of southern Iraq is the locus of a continuous urbanpresence over five millennia. While new research indicates that contemporary proto-urban polities arose in the plains of northern Syria and southwestern Iran, those polities did not exhibit the robust longevity of the urban centers that emerged in Iraq's alluvial lowlands. Available evidence suggests that populations of the southern alluvium drew significant wealth and transportation advantage from their situation in a prograding deltaic system that provided varied and abundant resources even through cycles of dramatic climatic fluctuation. This deltaic resiliency, it is hypothesized sustained urbanizing processes in southern Mesopotamia through multiple, and multivariate, systemic changes in humans interactions with each other and their shifting environment. This award will launch a research program to test this hypothesis. This project has high potential for developing cooperative efforts throughout the Gulf region. With the University of Basrah, the project will, hopefully, build bridges to a new generation of Iraqi faculty and graduate students. Results will provide a basis for comparative studies of regions/ polities in other deltaic contexts such as the Indus Valley (Harrapan), coastal Peru (Caral-Supe, Chimu), Veracruz (Olmec), and Egypt, where coring programs in the Nile delta have shown that the earliest, most complex settlements coalesced within deltaic wetlands and their productivity was essential to state emergence.