scholarly journals Remote Sensing the Archaeological Traces of Boat Movement in the Marshes of Southern Mesopotamia

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 2474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaafar Jotheri ◽  
Michelle de Gruchy ◽  
Rola Almaliki ◽  
Malath Feadha
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Trace Fossils ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Morphological Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
Southern Iraq

This study presents the results of the first remote sensing survey of hollow ways in Southern Mesopotamia between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, primarily using the imagery in Google Earth. For archaeologists, hollow ways are important trace fossils of past human movement that inform about how people travelled in the past and what considerations were important to them as they moved through the landscape. In this study, remotely sensed hollow ways were ground-truthed and dated by association with both palaeochannels and known archaeological sites. Contextual and morphological evidence of the hollow ways indicate that they are likely the archaeological manifestation of ethnographically attested “water channels” formed through the dense reeds of marshlands in southern Iraq, not formed by traction overland like other known hollow ways. The map itself documents the first known hollow ways preserved underwater and one of the best-preserved landscapes of past human movement in the Near East.

China, Global Energy, and the Middle East

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve A. Yetiv ◽  
Chunlong Lu
Keyword(s):  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Dynamics ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Policy ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
Economic Ties

China has significantly enhanced its position and interest in the Persian Gulf region over the past 25 years, making it an important newcomer in regional dynamics. Evidence clearly shows that it has expanded, in some cases dramatically, its diplomatic contacts, economic ties, and arms sales to regional states. This represents a novel development which is likely to accelerate in the future as China's dependence on Persian Gulf oil grows. China's rising position in the region has put Beijing and Washington at odds and could generate serious friction points in the future. Policy recommendations are sketched to avoid such an outcome.

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.

scholarly journals Qatar's Modern Diplomacy and Al-Jazeera’s Role in Middle East’s Evolutions over the Recent Decades

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Ansar Amini ◽  
Mehdi Akbarsefat
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
International System ◽  
Al Jazeera ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Bargaining ◽  
Effective Role ◽  
The Persian Gulf

Development of information technology and internet today has given the concept of diplomacy a meaning broader than the past. Modern diplomacy is a mixture which has gained a specific position among academic topics. It is worth noting that the modern diplomacy was resulted from the world's changes after the World War II, where governments could no longer be the only players in the international system. The concept of modern diplomacy makes sense in relatively different ways; general diplomacy, real-time diplomacy,Nich diplomacy, etc. But our main focus in the paper is placed on the Jazeera's role in Middle East's evolutions over the recent decades. As a grand manifestation of modern diplomacy in the Middle East during the past decades, Al Jazeera is sometimes considered to be Qatar's foreign policy benchmarks (index), as it has had an effective role in events related to the country's diplomacy from the time it was established. We assume Qatar's political bargaining power in the international system, especially in the Persian Gulf region, as having enhanced over the recent years. In the present paper, therefore, the authors are about to address questions as to how Qatar's modern diplomacy has made it an active country in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East region as well, and to what extent Al Jazeera's role is deemed to be serious in the recent changes happened in the Middle east. The present research's assumption emphasizes the role of establishment of Al Jazeera Media Channel as a diplomacy-enabling tool after changes were made in Qatar's government structure, a role which obviously affects the Middle East's recent evolutions (Movements and revolutions in Arabian Countries). Analytic-descriptive approach has been used in the present paper.

scholarly journals Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches

2013 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak ◽  
Daniel Pauly
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Food And Agriculture Organization ◽  
Sensing Technology ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Catch Statistics ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
Fisheries Statistics

Abstract Global fisheries are overexploited worldwide, yet crucial catch statistics reported to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) by member countries remain unreliable. Recent advances in remote-sensing technology allow us to view fishing practices from space and mitigate gaps in catch reporting. Here, we use Google Earth to count intertidal fishing weirs off the coast of six countries in the Persian Gulf, otherwise known as the Arabian Gulf. Although the name of this body of water remains contentious, we use the name used in Google Earth. Combining, in a Monte Carlo procedure, the number of weirs (after correcting for poor resolution and imagery availability) with assumptions about daily catch and fishing season lengths, we estimate that 1900 (±79) weirs contribute to a regional catch up to six times higher than the officially reported catches of 5260 t. These results, which speak to the unreliability of officially reported fisheries statistics, provide the first example of fisheries catch estimates from space, and point to the potential for remote-sensing approaches to validate catch statistics and fisheries operations in general.

New records of the brittle stars Ophiothela venusta and Ophiactis modesta (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) from the northern Persian Gulf, with morphological details

Zootaxa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4527 (3) ◽  
pp. 425
Author(s):  
SOROOR PEYGHAN ◽  
BABAK DOUSTSHENAS ◽  
MOHAMMAD BAGHER NABAVI ◽  
MOHAMMAD TAGHI ROUNAGH ◽  
AMIR ASHTARI LARKI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Persian Gulf ◽  
New Records ◽  
Brittle Stars ◽  
The Past ◽  
Large Round ◽  
Colour Patterns ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
First Time

During a faunistic survey on two shipwrecks in the northern Persian Gulf, several species of ophiuroid were collected in 2015 and 2016. Ophiactis modesta is reported for the first time in the Persian Gulf and Ophiothela venusta is re-described, because it has likely been misidentified in the past, possibly confused with Ophiopsammium semperi. Both species were epizoic: Ophiothela venusta was found on octocorals, Ophiactis modesta on sponges. Ophiothela venusta is characterized by often bright and striking colour patterns with banded arms and large irregular patches on the disc, varying between combinations of yellow, red, blue, orange, black and grey. Its dorsal disc and arms are covered by rugose granules that vary in size and density. In comparison, O. semperi has a denser cover of smaller granules and a subdued uniform colouration. Ophiactis modesta is a hexamerous, fissiparous species that may be mistaken for Ophiactis savignyi. It can be distinguished by its large round to oval oral papilla and its smaller radial shields. 

scholarly journals Ground-truthing the ground-truth: reply to Garibaldi et al.'s comment on “Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches”

2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (7) ◽  
pp. 1927-1931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak ◽  
Daniel Pauly
Keyword(s):  
Fisheries Management ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fishing Gear ◽  
Marine Science ◽  
Anchoring System ◽  
Ground Truthing ◽  
The Persian Gulf

There has been a growing interest in the potential of Google Earth for scientific inquiries, and our previous paper (Al-Abdulrazzak and Pauly, 2014. Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71: 450–454) on weirs and their catch in the Persian Gulf is a case in point. Garibaldi et al. (2014. Comment on: “Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catchs” by Al-Abdulrazzak and Pauly. ICES Journal of Marine Science), while agreeing in principle with using Google Earth for fisheries-related purposes, criticized the assumptions, data, methodology, and results of this paper. Here, we refute their criticisms, notably by showing that the “derelict weirs” that they thought they had “ground-truthed” are not weirs at all, but another type of fishing gear in one case, and debris from a boat anchoring system in the other. We develop the theme that ground-truthing requires local knowledge, and provide recommendations for using Google Earth images in fisheries management.

Dilmun: Quest for Paradise

Antiquity ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 37 (146) ◽  
pp. 111-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. N. Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Western Boundary ◽  
Eastern Shore ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
The Past ◽  
Harappan Civilization ◽  
The Persian Gulf

The land known by the name of Dilmun (or Telmun) in the cuneiform documents has been identified by most scholars with the island of Bahrein in the Persian T Gulf (note 1), and for the past nine years a large and competent Danish expedition has been excavating on the island in the hope of uncovering there the origin of the Sumerians and their civilization (note 2). Several scholars have located Dilmun in Iran, south of Elam, and have taken it to be a land bordering on the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, whose hinterland included the province of Persis (note 3). This was the localization of Dilmun which seemed most likely to me when preparing the article 'Dilmun and the Land of the Living' some two decades ago (note 4). In recent years, however, new inscriptional material has become available which indicates that whatever its western boundary, Dilmun extended much farther to the east and included much, if not all, of that part of Iran, Pakistan, and India on which flourished the Indus or Harappan civilization (note 5). The following pages will sketch the pertinent cuneiform evidence for this identification of Dilmun in the chronological order in which it came to my attention over the years.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document