Abstract
The landscape of the southern portion of the Central Mesopotamian Plain is a unique maze of ancient settlement sites and canals. A number of these have been inventoried and mapped during the last century using ground surveys. Because of the size of the region and problems with accessibility, remote sensing and GIS mapping techniques have proven invaluable in our recent studies of this area. Specifically, we studied the area around the ancient site of Nippur and Lake Dalmaj, making use of a variety of sensor systems including Landsat, SPOT, Radarsat, ASTER, and Corona. A variety of enhancement and classification techniques were applied to these different image types to better understand patterns and distributions on the land, as well as the capabilities of different sensor systems. To aid in this investigation extensive GIS databases were created from a variety of field studies such as Robert Adams’s work, the Heartland of Cities. These databases were used in conjunction with the imagery to isolate different age groupings of sites and canals and map their location and extent; areas potentially containing new sites were also identified. This study illustrates how distinctive this area is in terms of mounds and layers of canals as compared to areas farther north.
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Richason, B.F., Hritz, C. (2006). Remote Sensing and GIS Use in the Archaeological Analysis of the Central Mesopotamian Plain. In: Wiseman, J., El-Baz, F. (eds) Remote Sensing in Archaeology. Interdisciplinary Contributions To Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-44455-6_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-44455-6_12
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