Join us in the third 2024 GIAP Seminar!
3rd GIAP Seminar this 2024 will be on March 20, at 12 h CET. Open, online session: no need to register, just pop in!
Dr. Jaafar Jotheri, from the University of Al-Qadisiyah (Iraq), and Dr. Louise Rayner, from the University of Newcastle (Australia) will hold the talk:
‘Sustainable hydraulic landscapes in southern Iraq’.
Abstract:
In the arid environment of southern Iraq, irrigation is necessary to facilitate cultivation. Dense networks of intersecting and overlying canal systems have created a complex hydraulic landscape. In this seminar, we discuss how the landscape has developed in the long term, the factors which determined or limited its longevity and sustainability, and the tools we can use to study it.
An important criticism of water history research is the lack of scientific dating of features which are often dated by association with nearby settlements and monuments. Recent research including our projects focused around the site of Eridu has combined remote sensing analysis with field-based study to obtain samples for scientific dating. For example at Eridu we obtained C14 dates from our excavations of channels beginning in the 5th-4th Millenium, revealing the earliest stages of irrigation. Later dates encompassed the 3nd Millenium. In the 2nd millennium, the systems were abandoned, in this case due to a shift in the location of the Euphrates river.
Our research At Basra has focused on later water systems which were also abandoned. A large area of linear ridges has been linked to historical sources which suggests that these were the result of salt-clearing from the fields in the Early Islamic period, possibly a factor in the Zanj rebellion. Scientific dating by means of OSL as part of our work has found that these features are contemporaneous with this period. If these are hydraulic features as we expect, then their sustainability may have been limited due to salinity which ultimately led to their abandonment.
This pattern of water systems vulnerable to environmental hazards continues into the recent past and the present. A series of springs along the western edge of cultivation in Iraq has been surveyed in detail by Jotheri and his team. These have been developed since the Sasanian period and continued to feed canal systems but are now at risk due to climate change and pressures on water resources. We are now beginning a programme of monitoring and remote sensing analysis to record threats to the sustainability of this threatened hydraulic landscape.
Keywords: Archaeoentomology, Insects, Taphonomy, Biodiversity.
Access the webinar here: https://bit.ly/GIAPseminars2024
No registration is required. Hosted in Microsoft Teams (no Microsoft/Teams account needed).
More info at Next GIAP Seminar!
La temporada 2024 dels Seminaris GIAP s’estendrà fins al mes de juny, amb el següent programa de sessions:
