Under the supervision of Dr. Jason Ur, Emily Hammer will examine the spatial organization of nomadic pastoral inhabitation over the last 500 years in Diyarbakýr province, southeastern Turkey. The study area is located at the northern edge of ancient Mesopotamia, along the Tigris River at the interface between a fertile plain and an agriculturally marginal area of eroded limestone hills. For approximately 9000 years Middle Eastern economy and society was composed of both sedentary agriculturalists and transhumant pastoral nomads. To date however, Mesopotamian archaeologists have collected data almost exclusively on the sedentary sector of ancient societies with economies based on agriculture. The ephemeral traces of nomadic pastoral encampments rarely survive in the archaeological record because they are typically destroyed by modern farming activities. The study area is of particular importance because it has preserved the remains of both campsites and surrounding landscape features such as cisterns, corrals, and caves resulting from at least 500 years of nomadic pastoral land-use. This provides a unique opportunity to begin to correct biased, "sedentary-centric" understandings of Middle Eastern history.
The project will contribute to anthropological theory by investigating an enduring anthropological phenomenon - the transformation of natural resources into socially constructed places of significance. Many studies of space and place have focused on the cultural transformations associated with public and urban spaces; the proposed research extends these studies by focusing on the meaning invested in landscapes by past mobile groups through seasonal re-inhabitation and the manipulation of natural resources. By investigating cisterns as spatial nodes in the landscape orienting people's camping and pasture patterns over long periods of time, the project will contribute to ongoing discussions of how people inscribe their presence on the environment in an enduring way.
Archaeological survey and satellite imagery work have mapped features that provide evidence for diachronic patterns in nomadic pastoral winter land-use, including campsites and spatially associated landscape features such as cisterns, corrals, and caves. In the current phase of the project, analyses will focus on how water accessibility relates to inhabitation and herding patterns. Via sediment coring and radiocarbon and terrestrial in-situ cosmogenic nuclide dating methods, the project will determine the relative dates of campsite use and cistern creation in order to evaluate hypotheses about the evolution of mobile settlement and landscape.
The research has broader implications for internationally collaborative salvage research, geoarchaeology, and anthropology. As the Ilýsu Dam reservoir on the Tigris River will soon flood the study region, the proposed fieldwork and analysis will gather data on features and landscapes that will soon be destroyed. Collaborative fieldwork, analysis, and publication will strengthen cooperation between American and Turkish archaeologists. Fieldwork will involve training both Turkish and American graduate students in field methodology and GIS technology. Results will be published in peer-reviewed publications and presented at scientific conferences in Turkey and the US. The application of terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclide dating, a geological technique whose archaeological applications have been limitedly realized, will help add another method for dating inorganic materials to the archaeological toolkit. The proposed methodology is novel and will have wider geological applications.
Under the supervision of Dr. Jason Ur, Emily Hammer examined the spatial organization of mobile pastoral inhabitation over the last 600-700 years in Diyarbak?r province, southeastern Turkey. The study area is located at the northern edge of ancient Mesopotamia, along the Tigris River at the interface between a fertile plain and an agriculturally marginal area of eroded limestone hills. For approximately 9000 years Middle Eastern economy and society was composed of both sedentary agriculturalists and transhumant pastoralists. To date, however, Mesopotamian archaeologists have collected data almost exclusively on the sedentary sector of ancient societies with economies based on agriculture. The ephemeral traces of mobile pastoral encampments rarely survive in the archaeological record because they are typically destroyed by subsequent farming activities. The study area is of particular importance because it has preserved the remains of both campsites and surrounding landscape features such as cisterns, corrals, and caves resulting from at least 600-700 years of mobile pastoral land-use. This provided a unique opportunity to begin to correct biased, "sedentary-centric" understandings of Middle Eastern history. The major activities supported by the NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant were: 1) archaeological survey of a marginal landscape in southeastern Turkey, 2) environmental analysis of the study area using vegetation indices derived from multi-spectral satellite imagery, 3) spatial analysis of the surveyed features in relation to each other and the environment, and 4) dating of limestone cisterns found in association with pastoral campsites. Archaeological survey and satellite imagery work mapped features that provide evidence for diachronic patterns in mobile pastoral winter land-use. Subsequent analyses focused on how water accessibility related to inhabitation and herding patterns. Via terrestrial in-situ cosmogenic nuclide dating methods, the project attempted to determine the relative dates of campsite use and cistern creation in order to understand the evolution of mobile settlement and landscape. The outcomes of the major activities were: 1) Analysis of the organization of pastoral landscapes in eastern Anatolia over the last 600-700 years and identification of historically-specific mobile pastoral land-use practices as well as the positive impact that pastoral groups had on local pasture conditions. 2) Development of a novel methodology for the dating of archaeological features carved from bedrock and successful application of the methodology to limestone cisterns located near mobile pastoral campsites. The method determined that these cisterns were likely "recently" carved, a result that agrees with archaeological evidence from associated campsites. The archaeological and ethnographic data collected were integrated in the graduate student co-PI’s dissertation and a resulting article in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, where she argued that the features surveyed by the project represent "landscape anchors"—geographic foci that structured the spatial organization of local landscapes. More specifically, landscape anchors are physically and spatially fixed investments in the productivity of the landscape that have evidence for maintenance and re-use and that play a long-term role in mobile pastoral camping patterns, local settlement, and land-use. The completed research had broader implications for internationally collaborative salvage research, geoarchaeology, and anthropology. 1) As the Il?su Dam reservoir on the Tigris River will soon flood the study region, the proposed fieldwork and analysis gathered data on features and landscapes that will soon be destroyed. Collaborative fieldwork, analysis, and publication strengthened cooperation between American, Turkish, and Azerbaijani archaeologists. Results have been published in peer-reviewed publications and have been presented at scientific conferences in the US and abroad. The NSF-funded project also provided technical training and professional development opportunities for the graduate student co-PI. 2) The application of terrestrial in-situ cosmogenic nuclide dating, a geological technique whose archaeological applications have been realized to a very limited extent, adds another method for dating inorganic materials to the archaeological toolkit. The methodology applied by the study is novel and will have wider geological applications, such as dating glacial recession in areas where glacial erosion of bedrock has not been sufficient enough to remove rock containing inherited cosmogenic nuclides. 3) Vertical pastoral nomadism occurs in a number of forms all along the mountain belt of Eurasia from Spain to China. The project has developed models for empirically investigating the past and present role of vertical pastoral nomadism in rural society and on rural landscapes across Eurasia. The project further contributes to anthropological theory by investigating an enduring anthropological phenomenon—the transformation of natural resources into socially constructed places of significance. By investigating cisterns as spatial nodes in the landscape orienting people’s camping and pasture patterns over long periods of time, the project contributes to ongoing discussions of how people inscribe their presence on the environment in an enduring way.
