Tell Begum was previously explored by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1960s when excavations revealed... more Tell Begum was previously explored by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1960s when excavations revealed a multi-period site. Among the key finds were Halaf period remains that are relatively rare in the region of the Shahrizor plain and included polychrome ceramics suggesting a local variation of the Halaf culture. Recent investigations and excavations in 2011 and 2013 revealed a 5 hectare site inhabited during the Halaf, Ubaid, Late Chalcolithic, and medieval periods. The Halaf site may have had an area of about 3 hectares, making it a relatively large settlement for that period, although its full extent is unclear. Offsite work revealed the area to have been well watered in the past, with likely neighbouring regions of woodland and abundant shrubs. The heavy sedimentation in the region has partially obscured archaeological remains, including possibly Tell Begum's lower mound. The site, nevertheless, shows continuity of settlement, indicating relative stability in settlement over lon...
Many scholars and even some of the wider public recognize how the ancient Near East and Egypt con... more Many scholars and even some of the wider public recognize how the ancient Near East and Egypt contributed to modern societies. Whether it was through the sciences, literature, writing, arts, governing systems or even religion, the imprint is clear. However, some periods in the ancient Near East and Egypt look more alien to us than others. In particular, many features of the third and second millennia BCE, including ethnic groups, religions, governments, languages, and even the media for economic exchange, appear very strange to us. In the first millennium BCE, circumstances began to change and we begin to see facets, such as languages, population groups, government and social institutions, and ideas, that we find more familiar. A simple argument is that over time things change, and therefore cultures closer to today should be more familiar to us. But could there be a process that demonstrates why societies shifted to create some of the cultural traits we are more familiar with? As these changes were occurring, another clear pattern emerged, in that large states had become common. Are these two phenomena related? We think that there is a link, and we propose a process that we term universalism to explain such changes. We are also aware that such terms are often criticized, and perhaps too many terms are used to describe different cultural developments. Nevertheless, the utility of this term is that it helps to explain a process of commonalities that forms in the first millennium BCE. The evidence of such wider common attributes is clear. Hellenism is one such development: in effect, it is a merger of different cultural trends that included Greek and Near Eastern styles and cultural traits. Like Hellenism, universalism is an older term, but we provide a different way of understanding it: we look at the core attributes and qualities that made common traits emerge. Thus, universalism serves to decode a process that explains elements we see as combined, that is, the formation of new social and cultural phenomena, the creation and continuity of large states, and the fundamental process that enabled such change, which we see as population movement.
Monitoring Looting at Cultural Heritage Sites: Applying Deep Learning on Optical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Data as a Solution
Social Science Computer Review
The looting of cultural heritage sites has been a growing problem and threatens national economie... more The looting of cultural heritage sites has been a growing problem and threatens national economies, social identity, destroys research potential, and traumatizes communities. For many countries, the challenge in protecting heritage is that there are often too few resources, particularly paid site guards, while sites can also be in remote locations. Here, we develop a new approach that applies deep learning methods to detect the presence of looting at heritage sites using optical imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We present results that demonstrate the accuracy, precision, and recall of our approach. Results show that optical UAV data can be an easy way for authorities to monitor heritage sites, demonstrating the utility of deep learning in aiding the protection of heritage sites by automating the detection of any new damage to sites. We discuss the impact and potential for deep learning to be used as a tool for the protection of heritage sites. How the approach could be ...
Recent Archaeology in Iraq, 2018–2019
Iraq, 2019
Report on Excavations at Tell al-Wilaya, Iraq Further Information on the 1999 and 2000 Seasons
Tell al-Wilaya (ancient Kesh ?) is one of the few sites to be excavated in the area near Kut in I... more Tell al-Wilaya (ancient Kesh ?) is one of the few sites to be excavated in the area near Kut in Iraq. The important findings of an Iraqi expedition in the 1950s made it clear that this area, if investigated systematically, would yield valuable information on the Tigris-side of the alluvium. To halt the looting that was destroying the site in the 1990s, the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage mounted a rescue campaign in 1999-2000, which has resulted in this report. The looting of the offices of the State Board and the Iraq Museum in 2003 made it difficult to assemble full documentation on the Wilaya excavations, but the sample given here allows a glimpse of the great potential that Wilaya still would have had except for the resumption of massive looting in 2003.
Social and environmental factors affecting land use change are among the most significant drivers... more Social and environmental factors affecting land use change are among the most significant drivers transforming the planet. Such change has been and continues to be monitored through the use of satellite imagery, aerial photography, and technical reports. While these monitoring tools are useful in observing the empirical results of land use change and issues of sustainability, the data they provide are often not useful in capturing the fundamental policies, social drivers, and unseen factors that shape how landscapes are transformed. In addition, some monitoring approaches can be prohibitively expensive and too slow in providing useful data at a timescale in which data are needed. This paper argues that techniques using information fusion and conducting assessments of continuous data feeds can be beneficial for monitoring primary social and ecological mechanisms affecting how geographic settings are changed over different time scales. We present a computational approach that couples open source tools in order to conduct an analysis of text data, helping to determine relevant events and trends. To demonstrate the approach, we discuss a case study that integrates varied newspapers from two Midwest states in the United States, Iowa and Nebraska, showing how potentially significant issues and events can be captured. Although the approach we present is useful for monitoring current web-based data streams, we argue that such a method should ultimately be integrated
Many scholars and even some of the wider public recognize how the ancient Near East and Egypt con... more Many scholars and even some of the wider public recognize how the ancient Near East and Egypt contributed to modern societies. Whether it was through the sciences, literature, writing, arts, governing systems or even religion, the imprint is clear. However, some periods in the ancient Near East and Egypt look more alien to us than others. In particular, many features of the third and second millennia BCE, including ethnic groups, religions, governments, languages, and even the media for economic exchange, appear very strange to us. In the first millennium BCE, circumstances began to change and we begin to see facets, such as languages, population groups, government and social institutions, and ideas, that we find more familiar. A simple argument is that over time things change, and therefore cultures closer to today should be more familiar to us. But could there be a process that demonstrates why societies shifted to create some of the cultural traits we are more familiar with? As these changes were occurring, another clear pattern emerged, in that large states had become common. Are these two phenomena related? We think that there is a link, and we propose a process that we term universalism to explain such changes. We are also aware that such terms are often criticized, and perhaps too many terms are used to describe different cultural developments. Nevertheless, the utility of this term is that it helps to explain a process of commonalities that forms in the first millennium BCE. The evidence of such wider common attributes is clear. Hellenism is one such development: in effect, it is a merger of different cultural trends that included Greek and Near Eastern styles and cultural traits. Like Hellenism, universalism is an older term, but we provide a different way of understanding it: we look at the core attributes and qualities that made common traits emerge. Thus, universalism serves to decode a process that explains elements we see as combined, that is, the formation of new social and cultural phenomena, the creation and continuity of large states, and the fundamental process that enabled such change, which we see as population movement.
Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences, 2015
We explore settlement structures and hierarchy found in different archaeological periods in north... more We explore settlement structures and hierarchy found in different archaeological periods in northern, specifically the Khabur Triangle (KT), and southern Mesopotamia (SM) using a spatial interaction entropy maximization (SIEM) modeling and simulation method. Regional settlement patterns are investigated in order to understand what feedback levels for settlement benefits, or incentives, and abilities to move or disperse between sites in a landscape and period could have enabled observed settlement structures to emerge or be maintained. Archaeological and historical data are then used to interpret the best results. We suggest that in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and first half of the Early Bronze Age (EBA), the KT and SM appear to have comparable urban patterns and development, where settlement advantage feedbacks and movement are similarly shaping the two regions for those periods. Within period variations, such as restrictions to population diffusion or movement in the EBA, are possible. In the KT during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), multiple centers begin to emerge, suggesting a lack of social cohesion and/or political fragmentation. This is similar to SM in the MBA, but we also see the emergence of a single, dominant site. In the Iron Age (IA), movement in the KT likely becomes the least constrained in all assessed periods, as socio-political cohesion facilitates this process, with small sites now the norm and dominance by one state over the region is evident. For the same period in SM, a single site (Babylon) obtains significant settlement advantages relative to its neighbors and easy movement enables it to become far larger in size and likely socially, economically, and politically dominant. Overall, the results demonstrate that the method is useful for archaeologists and social theorists in allowing them to compare different archaeological survey results, with varied spatial dimensions and diachronically, while providing a level of explanation that addresses empirical settlement patterns observed.
Water Societies and Technologies from the Past and Present
The 'external economy': Networks and trade
Data for eBayScraper NLP Tool
This link provides data used for eBayScraper, a tool to scrape eBay and apply Natural Language Pr... more This link provides data used for eBayScraper, a tool to scrape eBay and apply Natural Language Processing (NLP) to study the antiquities/cultural heritage market.
This chapter outlines the results of the excavation of a Chalcolithic kiln found in the Bora Plai... more This chapter outlines the results of the excavation of a Chalcolithic kiln found in the Bora Plain (UTM N E; N), underneath the Iron Age structures of the Dinka Se lement Complex in operation DLT (Fig. A).
Modeling Feedbacks Between Individual Human Decisions and Hydrology Using Interconnected Physical and Social Models
The application of an entropy maximising model for understanding the rise of urbanism
The chapter presents a spatial interaction entropy model that addresses the dynamics of urban gro... more The chapter presents a spatial interaction entropy model that addresses the dynamics of urban growth using sites from the Late Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia as examples. The model addresses to what extent geography, transportation, and factors that make locations attractive for trade and settlement affect why some settlements grow while others stabilize or diminish in size through time. The results show that geographic and transport factors can enable some regions, such as the northern and central alluvium in southern Mesopotamia, to have some initially favourable advantages for urban growth. In contrast, greater attraction to specific centres and decreasing mobility of goods and people to many towns enable sites such as Uruk to rapidly grow through positive feedback effects without natural population increase. This growth also influences other settlements’ populations and use of the transport infrastructure, where aggregation of population to few centres leads to a large numb...
Spatial interaction modeling and Nippur's urban significance in the Early Dynastic Period
The extraction of raw clay for the manufacture of mudbricks, pottery, tablets and figurines is ra... more The extraction of raw clay for the manufacture of mudbricks, pottery, tablets and figurines is rarely described in the cuneiform record. Nevertheless, an examination of the sources reveals that the people of ancient Mesopotamia selected the raw material according to their needs from ‘clay pits’ (clay deposits) or other locations. Ritual texts in particular identify the origin of the clay used for the creation of magical figurines. When an exorcist was instructed to take clay from a clay pit, he first had to ritually appease and compensate the pit for its subsequent exploitation. The origin of clay for mudbricks and tablets is given in specific instances; that of potter’s clay can only be deduced from archaeological and anthropological observations.
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Papers by Mark Altaweel