Rediscovering the Heartland of Cities Early Southern Mesopotamian States in Their Setting through New Field Research Nicolò Marchetti and Federico Zaina QD038 - Tell Dlehim (Adams’ site no. 1237) from northwest. View of the site with the high terrace complex in the background. he study of Mesopotamian early urbanism has it is roots of discoveries in Mesopotamia was fuelled by advancements in in Robert McCormick Adams’s pioneering research of methodologies of reconnaissance on the ground and the identi- the 1960s and 1970s. From the holistic approach applied fication of archaeological sites and ancient waterways through Tduring his long academic career derived the historical narratives a large array of publicly accessible satellite imagery (Hritz 2010; Pournelle 2004; Ur 2013; Wilkinson 2003). These new survey still representing the starting point for many recent reapprais- methodologies have shown how the results obtained by Adams als. Adams’ surveys in southern Mesopotamia were carried could be refined to a greater level of detail, allowing the iden- out according to standards and scopes that were unparalleled tification of new archaeological sites and ancient canals (Hritz in their time. The large-scale perspective applied to different 2010), as well as a better understanding of the urban shape and regions of central and southern Iraq during over thirty years layout of many ancient Mesopotamian cities (Hammer 2019). of fieldwork resulted in seminal works like The Land behind The QADIS project (which is an abbreviation suggesting the Al-Qadisiyah region) is part of this new research approach: It Baghdad (1965), The Uruk Countryside (1972) and Heartland aims to provide a new, detailed understanding of both the an- of Cities (1981). cient landscape and the layout of early cities of Mesopotamia. In particular, the project was driven by different research questions Innovative research methodologies introduced by Adams in- including: cluded the use of aerial photographs for locating sites and map- 1. What new evidence can be produced about the develop- ping traces of ancient water canals in parallel as well as system- ment of settlement patterns and hydraulic systems through atic site surveying and recording in order to understand their the use of updated research methodologies in the field of size, function, and chronology of occupation. The resulting data archaeology? collected were then discussed within historical, economic, and 2. As for the early states, how can we better understand the agricultural narratives among others, and they resulted in a com- urban setting of the fourth- and third-millennia BCE sites? prehensive interpretation of settlement patterns and hydraulic activities through time. To answer to these macro-questions, a three-year project, As a result, the approach introduced by this early research extending over an area of approximately 1829 km2 (fig. 1), was in Iraq paved the way for many new regional projects over the begun in 2016, with six campaigns of two to three weeks each, entire Near East. Moreover, since the early 2000s, a new season carried out in January and October of each year between 2016 146 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 83.3 (2020) Figure 2. Launching an aerial survey of the ancient site of Tell Drehem/Puzrishdagan in 2016 using a DJI Phantom 3 drone. provides ample available data about settlements and waterways distributed across the entire chronological range of the region; (2) there is evidence of new, unrecorded sites that can expand Figure 1. The QADIS survey area. the existing dataset; (3) there is a wide range of archaeological sites of different sizes and from different periods showing visible structures on the surface; (4) recent intensive looting has dra- and 2018 (Marchetti, Benati et al. 2019). Our survey area is lo- matically changed the conditions of materials collection on the cated at the core of Adams’ Heartland of Cities and comprises 415 surface, providing new insights about details of their occupation sites dating from later prehistory to the Ottoman period, and it (e.g., the functional characterization of urban sectors). In fact, includes some of the most important cities of the Mesopotamian the availability of satellite imagery allowed an assessment regard- floodplain, including Adab, Puzrish-Dagan, Kisurra, Karkara, ing points 2–4 above prior to our fieldwork. and Tummal. In order to shed further light on the development of the set- tlement patterns and hydraulic systems, we first created a digi- The QADIS Project: Research Design tal base map integrating geographic data extracted from survey and Methodology reports and satellite imagery. The latter has recently become increasingly popular among archaeologists, as its provides an When we started to design the QADIS survey project we no- unprecedented array of information for the study of ancient ar- ticed the need to update the current understanding of the an- chaeological landscapes (Hritz 2010; Pournelle 2003; Ur 2006, cient Mesopotamian cultural landscape as previously theorized 2013; Wilkinson 2003). For our research we employed historical (Adams 1981; Wilkinson 2003). Using a multidisciplinary team, and recent high-resolution satellite imagery (World View, Geo- our aim was to shed new light on the processes that led to the eye, Landsat, SRTM, and Corona) available through free-access formation of urban centers in central and southern Iraq begin- online platforms (Google Earth, Bing Maps, USGS, CAST Atlas). ning in the fourth millennium BCE and their subsequent shrink- By analyzing the morphology of the terrain, including the pres- ing and expansion. ence of areas with different colors, or particular visible lines pos- Our research design combined a range of techniques, from sibly interpreted as ancient structures, we were able to hypoth- remote sensing to aerial mapping, from archaeological surface esize the presence of two hundred new potential archaeological collection to superficial test soundings, from geoarchaeological sites and several hundred ancient waterways. investigations to the study of epigraphic materials. From this in- Thus, in order to validate this type of preliminary data, we tegrated methodology we were hoping to achieve detailed recon- carried out ground-truthing activities, meaning confirming the structions of ancient urban landscapes and an updated map of archaeological evidence on the field. In particular, part of the ancient channels and harbors. The area selected by the QADIS team carried out random surface collections for determining the project follows the administrative borders of the Qadisiyah re- chronology and extension of occupation of a site on the basis gion to the south and east, and extends to near Fara/Shuruppak of the presence of ancient finds on the surface. Thanks to this in the west, and Afak in the north. The area provided an ideal methodology, 120 out of 200 hypothesized new archaeological setting for applying such an approach for different reasons: (1) It sites unidentified as such by Adams, and first singled out by us NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 83.3 (2020) 147 New Epigraphic Documents and the Impact of Early Empires Gianni Marchesi The QADIS survey project provided a number of new inscribed artifacts. The most remarkable of these finds are two bricks of Ur-Namma from Tell Jidr with a dedication to Ishkur, which confirms the hypothesized identification of Tell Jidr with ancient Karkara. The latter toponym was known from cunei- form sources as the name of the main cultic center of Ishkur, the Sumerian storm god. These inscribed artifacts also allowed us to identify the exact loca- tion of the temple of Ishkur in Karkara, the é-ud- gal-gal(-la), “House of the Great Storms,” which was evidently built (or rebuilt) by Ur-Namma. In addition, two bricks with inscriptions of rulers from the so-called Lagash II Dynasty (Gudea and Ur-Ningirsu II) were also found in Jidr. These some- what unexpected finds raise the issue of the reuse of building materials in antiquity. According to their inscriptions, the bricks in question were meant to be Baked bricks drain from Sounding A1 at Tell Dlehim/Tummal (QD038, Adams 1981: no. 1237), possibly associated used for temples located in the cities of Telloh/Girsu with the ki-a-nag (“mortuary chapel”) of Ur-Namma built by Amar-Zuena. and Surghul/Nigen, in the Lagash region. It is con- ceivable that these bricks were originally set there, and then, after those cities were abandoned, they were removed, transported to Karkara, and reused. The same can be said for two additional Gudea bricks that were collected by the team of Adams in Jidr in a previous survey (Adams and Nissen 1972: 217). Four bricks with an inscription of Amar-Suen, third king of the Ur III Dynasty, were found at Tell Dlehim, the alleged Tummal of the cuneiform sourc- es (Steinkeller 2001: 66–71). Apart from a single brick that comes from the area of the oval temple (perhaps the temple of Ninlil), all of them were used to build a drain in Sounding A1 (Box 1, figs. 1–2). Since the building of the ki-a-nag, “mortuary chapel” of Ur-Namma is the only construction work that Amar-Suen appears to have carried out in Tum- mal (Steinkeller 2015: 158, n. 81), it is tempting to suggest that the drain in question belonged to this building complex. Finally, it should be noted that some sites from our survey, such as Adab and Karkara, which are traditionally regarded as lying in the basin of the Euphrates, lay actually along the course of the Tigris in ancient times. In fact, ancient sources are very clear on this point: The cities of Adab and Karkara were situated along the Idigna, which was what the Sumerians called the Tigris (Steinkeller 2001). To all appearances, the Idigna River flowed much more Baked bricks with an inscription of Amar-Zuena, third king of the Ur III Dynasty, Tell Dlehim/Tummal (QD038, Adams westward than the present-day Tigris.