Capital economies in ancient Mesopotamia: reconstructing palatial cuisines and agricultural systems at Carchemish, Niniveh, and Dur Kurigalzu
The Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) in southwest Asia saw major socio-political transformations, including the rise and fall of the Hittite, Kassite and Neo-Assyrian empires. Alongside socio-political and economic instability, climatically induced droughts are among the most frequently cited causes for the collapse of these states. However, direct evidence for the impact of droughts on agricultural systems is virtually absent from these periods, rendering hypotheses that see climate change at the heart of the crises hypothetical.
Tracking the Roadways Across Iranian Lands: A Geospatial Reconstruction of the Persian Royal Road(s) and the cross-cultural link between East and West during the Achaemenid Era (6th-4th century BCE)
PersianTRAIL is a research project using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and historical-archaeological data to reconstruct the Persian Royal Road (PRR), a key infrastructure of the Achaemenid Empire (6th–4th century BCE). The project examines factors like topography, resource distribution, economy, military logistics, and environmental constraints to understand the empire’s strategic planning.
The Kani Shaie Archaeological Project is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the Sulaymaniyah Directorate of Antiquities. Since 2013, the project organises excavations at the site of Kani Shaie near the town of Bazyan in Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Who was in charge? Identifying and distinguishing proto-Elamite administrative actors
Sun, 02/04/2024 - 01:27
Recently very inspiring papers from Marta Ameri (1) and Abbas Alizadeh (2) raised the question of who was behind the cylinder seals; who was actually responsible for management operations in two different Iranian regions, Seistan and Susiana? For Ameri and Alizadeh, it was a matter of defining individuals - men or women, locals or foreigners - at the origin of the development of social complexity in Iran.
Rediscovering Old Babylonian societies: The excavation project at Tell Muhammad (Baghdad)
Sun, 10/15/2023 - 20:06
In 2022, a team from the University of Catania resumed the archaeological work at the site of Tell Muhammad, a 2nd millennium BCE settlement located in the southern suburbs of the modern city of Baghdad, marked by the presence of a sacred area dated to the Old Babylonian period. Tell Muhammad has a long stratigraphic sequence that starts during the Ur III period, at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, and ends during the Kassite period (ca. XVIth-XIIIth century BCE).
