Prehistory in Shanidar Valley, Northern Iraq: Fresh insights into Near Eastern prehistory from the Middle Paleolithic to the Proto-Neolithic are obtained

Science ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 139 (3551) ◽  
pp. 179-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Solecki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Paleolithic ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Northern Iraq

scholarly journals Near Eastern Landscapes and Declassified U2 Aerial Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Hammer ◽  
Jason Ur
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Aerial Imagery ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Modern Agriculture ◽  
The Past ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Southern Iraq ◽  
Aerial Perspective

AbstractRecently declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology. Like other sources of historical imagery, U2 photos provide a window into the past, before modern agriculture and development destroyed many archaeological sites. U2 imagery is older and in many cases higher resolution than CORONA spy satellite imagery, the other major source of historical imagery for Eurasia, and thus can expand the range of archaeological sites and features that can be studied from an aerial perspective. However, there are significant barriers to finding and retrieving U2 imagery of particular locales, and archaeologists have thus not yet widely used it. In this article, we aim to reduce these barriers by describing the U2 photo dataset and how to access it. We also provide the first spatial index of U2 photos for the Middle East. A brief discussion of archaeological case studies drawn from U2 imagery illustrates its merits and limitations. These case studies include investigations of prehistoric mass-kill hunting traps in eastern Jordan, irrigation systems of the first millennium BC Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, and twentieth-century marsh communities in southern Iraq.

Prehistories for Modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-246
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
World War ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
First World

Chapter 7 considers the discovery, after the First World War, of the prehistoric Near East and explores its far-reaching impact on discourses on the origins of humans, their migrations, and the migration of civilizations, on time and its scale, and the relationship between recorded history and prehistory. The chapter focuses on two sites of excavations: the Middle and Lower Stone Age hangouts of the Wadi al-Mugharah on Mount Carmel in Palestine, situated near the developing town of Haifa, and the late Neolithic Tell Arpachiyah in northern Iraq, bordering Mosul. Both engendered considerable scholarly, popular, and political attention, and both demonstrate the variety and scope within prehistory and its immense stretch, covering at least 500,000 years. Near Eastern prehistory relativized senses of time, dwarfed history, and contested biblical narratives and temporality. The chapter examines the excavations in the Carmel caves against the backdrop of mandatory development policies and modernization. It demonstrates how discoveries of rich Palaeolithic tool cultures spurred comparisons between modern humans and hominins. It sets the representations of Neanderthals in broader debates on prehistoric people and their humanity, paying special attention to the attitudes of prehistorians such as Dorothy A. Garrod who conducted the Carmel excavations and Jacquetta Hawkes, a popularizer of prehistory in her poetry and autobiographical writing on prehistoric women. Neolithic Arpachiyah, too, spurred analogies by its excavators, chiefly Max Mallowan, between prehistoric and contemporary Mesopotamia and the multi-ethnic population of the newly independent Iraq, and of Syria.

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