Climate change and irrigation systems
A change in climate in Mesopotamia led to the development of a new shared identity. The communities in the Zerqa valley in Jordan have been building irrigation systems for 13,000 years, but the irrigation systems also built communities. This is the conclusion reached in two PhD dissertations in the field of archaeology.
- Although increasing drought often leads to competition and conflict, there seems to be no evidence of this in North Mesopotamia. The climate change that took place in the third millenium before Christ did not lead to war, but to the development of a new shared identity. This is the conclusion of research carried out by Arne Wossink. And, based on the evidence of more than 100,000 finds, Eva Kaptijn was able to determine that the Zerqa valley has been inhabited by different populations and irrigated for more than 13,000 years.
Arne Wossink
- Multidisciplinary project
- The research carried out by Wossink and Kaptijn is part of the multidisciplinary project on Settling the steppe. The archaeology of changing societies in Syro-Palestinian drylands during the Bronze and Iron Ages. This NWO-funded project aims to provide insight into the variety and stability of human habitation in marginal regions in the Near East. The two researchers are both due to obtain their PhD on 28 November.
- Closer
- Wossink studied how the farmers and nomads in North Mesopotamia - the present border of Turkey, Syria and Iraq - responded to climate change between 3000 and 1600 years before Christ. He expected to find a great deal of evidence of competition: as food and water became scarcer, the natural result could well be conflict. He discovered, however, that the farmers developed much closer bonds with the semi-nomadic cattle farmers.
Countryside
- Population growth
- Wossink analysed previous finds from the area and ancient texts. His research showed that it is important not to see climate as the only cause: human responses in particular play a major role. He studied three regions, only one of which demonstrated traces of competition between settlements. However, this area was experiencing a strong population growth, which may well have given rise to this competition.
- Adaptation
- The farmers in North Mesopotamia chose not to compete with one another, but to adapt to the circumstances. Wossink shows that the arrival of the Amorites, who had until that time been regarded as (semi-)nomadic, was not simply a process of infiltration. The rise in the Amorites should be seen as the spread of an identity that brought crop farmers and cattle farmers together. By adopting the Amoritic identity, the farmers gained access to a large trading network, that was necessary to survive the period of drought.
- 100,000 finds
- Eva Kaptijn used a method of surface collection rather than excavation. Together with her colleagues, she applied an intensive field exploration technique: at a distance of 15 metres apart, the researchers walk a grid of 50 metres. On the outward route they collect all the pottery, and on the way back, all the other material. This gave them more than 100,000 artefacts, varying from around 13,000 years old to just a few decades old. Based on further research carried out on these finds and the find locations, they were able to verify to what extent the Zerqa valley in Jordan was inhabited over the past thousand years.
Eva Kaptijn
- Jordan Valley
- The area where Kaptijn carried out her research is known as the Zerqa triangle; bordered by the Zerqa river, it forms part of the Jordan Valley, an area covering some 72 sq. km. She discovered that the triangle had been inhabited sporadically for thousands of years. But habitation was always strongly dependent on the irrigation methods applied by the inhabitants. Although the land in the valley is very rich, there was not enough rainfall to cultivate crops without extra irrigation.
Potsherd
- Capitalist sugar beet cultivation
- The irrigation method used had a major influence on the inhabitants of the valley; power was often dependent on the control over the distribution of water. Kaptijn discovered that the nature of the irrigation system could lead to a community of internally egalitarian tribes, where the tribes were linked by a strongly hierarchical order. In other periods, the valley was dominated by large scale, almost capitalist sugar beet cultivation.
PhD Defences Wednesday 28 October:- 15.00 hrs, Arne Wossink, Challenging climate change en
- 16.15 hrs, Eva Kaptijn, Life on the watershed
Supervisor: Professor J.L. Bintliff
- (27 October 2009)
