Water and Human Settlement in the Balikh Valley, Syria

Investigations from 1992–1995

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11073259
AutoresT J Wilkinson (autor correspondente)
Ano1998
Volume25
Fascículo1
Páginas63-87
Data de publicação1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Field Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0093-4690 • E-ISSN: 2042-4582
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/jfa.1998.25.1.63
OpenAlexW2018679261
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas29
Referências citadas27

This landscape survey of the Balikh Valley in Syria straddles the limit of rain-fed cultivation. Features such as canals, low density “field scatters,” smaller sites, ancient roads, and relict river channels enable the boundary between ancient rain-fed cultivation and irrigation to be approximated. By coupling the evidence from such features with archaeological site survey, I suggest that water supply in the Balikh River constrained total settlement, and therefore population, to a limited size. During the phase of nucleated Early and Middle Bronze Age settlement, nodal settlements formed a focus for the limited pattern of irrigation canals. Settlement patterns dispersed during the later Bronze Age and Iron Age, and the landscape started to fill with numerous smaller settlements. In the Hellenistic/Roman period a major canal probably supplied much of the central Balikh Valley with irrigation water. During this phase region-wide canal systems apparently dictated the settlement pattern, which in certain cases spread out into formerly unirrigated areas away from the immediate alluvial plain

Alluvial soils · Alluvium · Archaeology · Bronze Age · Geography · Geomorphology · Human settlement · Irrigation · Population · Rural area · Rural settlement · Settlement (finance · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Ecology · Geology · Law