Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey

在国家科学基金会的支持下，埃尔比勒平原考古调查（EPAS）将调查新亚述帝国（约1000年）核心的景观。公元前900-600年）在伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区。 有证据表明，亚述国王通过强迫被征服的人民迁移，对可耕地进行农业殖民，以及通过水坝和运河改变自然水文来故意改变景观。 EPAS将在亚述帝国的心脏地带进行为期3年的3,200平方公里的考古调查，以评估这一假设。 尽管它在考古学上很重要，但亚述的中心地带从未被系统地调查过。 第一阶段将利用卫星图像确定考古遗址和景观特征（例如，运河、地下坎儿井水系统、轨道）。 随后，这些地方将被访问，绘制地图，并收集表面文物。 与此同时，该项目将访问运河，轨道和雕刻浮雕，以确认它们的身份并绘制地图。 该项目将描述新亚述的景观以及早期和随后的模式。该项目将调查被迫迁移的地理后果和早期帝国重新设计环境的力量，并将制作早期帝国景观的模型。 它将测试一种新的卫星遥感方法，该方法尚未得到严格的地面验证。 由于新的数字调查技术、研究历史、新的政治稳定以及伊拉克人对合作的渴望的偶然并列，该项目有潜力重建古代定居点和土地使用，其规模可与苏美尔、瓦哈卡和墨西哥谷的大调查相媲美，EPAS将培训美国和其他西方国家的研究生进行野外调查、遥感和空间分析。 它将向伊拉克考古学学生介绍这些概念，这些学生在技术和方法培训方面处于特别不利的地位。 来自EPAS的现场数据将成为所有这些学生的论文研究，会议报告和出版物的一部分。 EPAS将与伊拉克的博物馆、大学和文物管理局合作;这些机构及其人员现在正在摆脱数十年的国际孤立，在某些情况下还受到前复兴党政府的迫害。 由此产生的遗址和景观特征清单将提供给地方和国家一级的文物组织，以便纳入国家文化遗产数据库。 伊拉克，特别是埃尔比勒地区正在迅速发展，如果在规划决策中考虑到该国的文化遗产，这样一个数据库是至关重要的。 最后，国家强迫移民的创伤是伊拉克几乎每一个成年库尔德人的生活记忆中的经历。 通过记录古代和现代被迫移徙的空间影响，该项目将促进人们对其地理和社会后果的认识。

With NSF support, the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) will investigate the landscape of the core of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (ca. 900-600 BC) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Evidence suggests that Assyrian kings deliberately transformed the landscape through forced migration of conquered peoples, the agricultural colonization of arable lands, and the modification of natural hydrology through dams and canals. EPAS will evaluate this hypothesis in the heart of the Assyrian empire by means of a 3-year archaeological survey of 3,200 km2. Despite its archaeological importance, the Assyrian heartland has never been surveyed systematically. The initial phase will employ satellite imagery to identify archaeological sites and landscape features (e.g., canals, subterranean karez water systems, trackways). Subsequently, these places will be visited, mapped, and surface artifacts collected. At the same time, the project will visit canals, trackways, and carved reliefs to confirm their identifications and map them. The project will describe the Neo-Assyrian landscape as well as earlier and subsequent patterns.This project will investigate the geographical consequences of forced migration and the power of early empires to redesign their environments, and will produce a model of an early imperial landscape. It will test a new satellite remote sensing methodology that has yet to receive rigorous ground truthing. Because of the fortuitous juxtaposition of new digital survey techniques, the history of research, and new political stability and desire for collaboration by Iraqis, this project has the potential to reconstruct ancient settlement and land use on a scale comparable to the great surveys of Sumer, Oaxaca, and the Valley of Mexico, but undertaken with spatial technologies unavailable to this earlier generation of projects.EPAS will train American and other Western graduate students in field survey, remote sensing, and spatial analysis. It will introduce these concepts to Iraqi archaeology students, who have been particularly disadvantaged in technical and methodological training. Field data from EPAS be a part of thesis research, conference presentation, and publication for all of these students. EPAS will form collaborations with Iraqi museums, universities, and antiquities directorates; these institutions and their personnel are now emerging from decades of international isolation, and in some cases persecution by the former Baathist government. The resulting inventory of sites and landscape features will be provided to Antiquities organizations at the local and national level, for incorporation into the national cultural heritage database. Iraq, and especially the Erbil region, is developing rapidly, and such a database is critical if the nation's cultural heritage will be taken into consideration in planning decisions. Finally, the trauma of forced migration at the hands of the state is an experience in the living memory of nearly every adult Kurd in Iraq. By documenting the spatial impact of forced migration, ancient and modern, this project will promote the awareness of its geographic and social consequences.