D. J. Tucker

Bio: D. J. Tucker is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Settlement (litigation). The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 120 citations.

CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study

Abstract: Middle-eastern archaeologists are winning new information from declassified military photographs taken 25 years ago. This study shows how pictures of north-eastern Syria are revealing the routeways, and by inference the agricultural systems of Mesopotamia in the early Bronze Age.

Cycles of Civilization in Northern Mesopotamia, 4400–2000 BC

Abstract: The intensification of fieldwork in northern Mesopotamia, the upper region of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, has revealed two cycles of expansion and reduction in social complexity between 4400 and 2000 BC. These cycles include developments in social inequality, political centralization, craft production and economic specialization, agropastoral land use, and urbanization. Contrary to earlier assessments, many of these developments proceeded independently from the polities in southern Mesopotamia, although not in isolation. This review considers recent data from excavations and surveys in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey with particular attention to how they are used to construct models of early urban polities.

The Structure and Dynamics of Dry-Farming States in Upper Mesopotamia [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: A model describing the layout of Early Bronze Age Mesopotamian states is synthesized using a range of off-site and on-site data from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. These allow the description of the basic settlement patterns, land use, and exchange systems of an early state system. The hypothesis is tested that Bronze Age settlements in this zone of rain-fed farming tended not to exceed IOO hectares, an area which was capable of accommodating between io,ooo and 2o,ooo people. Detailed off-site surveys and landscape archaeology suggest that these settlements were provisioned by intensively farmed zones of cultivation that surrounded the central settlement and by tributary secondary or satellite communities. This main production zone was just capable of supporting the population of the prime site, but the constraint of labour and the frictional effect of distance meant that food produced farther away than some io-is km made only a minor contribution to the main settlement. As a result, settlements tended not to expand beyond a certain size. Even then, the maximizing effect of intensive crop production in such areas of highly variable rainfall and episodic major droughts made these communities very vulnerable to collapse.

Regional Approaches to Mesopotamian Archaeology: The Contribution of Archaeological Surveys

Abstract: This work synthesizes and critically evaluates the results of field surveys conducted over the last 20 years in southern (lower) and northern (upper) Mesopotamia, with emphasis placed on the increasing contribution of off-site and intensive surveys to regional analysis. During the Ubaid period the density of settlement was probably higher in the rain-fed north than the irrigated south, and even during the phase of 3rd millennium B.C. urbanization, settlement densities in the north were probably equivalent to or even exceeded those in the south. Although trends in settlement were often synchronous between north and south, there was also a marked spatial variability in settlement, with declines in one area being compensated by rises elsewhere. Particularly clear was the existence of a major structural transformation from nucleated centers during the Bronze Age towards dispersed patterns of rural settlement and more extensive lower towns in the Iron Age.

Mapping patterns of long-term settlement in Northern Mesopotamia at a large scale

Abstract: The landscapes of the Near East show both the first settlements and the longest trajectories of settlement systems. Mounding is a characteristic property of these settlement sites, resulting from millennia of continuing settlement activity at distinguished places. So far, however, this defining feature of ancient settlements has not received much attention, or even been the subject of systematic evaluation. We propose a remote sensing approach for comprehensively mapping the pattern of human settlement at large scale and establish the largest archaeological record for a landscape in Mesopotamia, mapping about 14,000 settlement sites—spanning eight millennia—at 15-m resolution in a 23,000-km2 area in northeastern Syria. To map both low- and high-mounded places—the latter of which are often referred to as “tells”—we develop a strategy for detecting anthrosols in time series of multispectral satellite images and measure the volume of settlement sites in a digital elevation model. Using this volume as a proxy to continued occupation, we find a dependency of the long-term attractiveness of a site on local water availability, but also a strong relation to the relevance within a basin-wide exchange network that we can infer from our record and third millennium B.C. intersite routes visible on the ground until recent times. We believe it is possible to establish a nearly comprehensive map of human settlements in the fluvial plains of northern Mesopotamia and beyond, and site volume may be a key quantity to uncover long-term trends in human settlement activity from such a record.