satellite photography has shown in the last decades of research – scars the southern
Mesopotamian countryside in a factually inextricable network: thus revealing pluri-
millennial mutations in the presence, size, and direction of these man-made water-
courses, together with their accompanying earthworks (embankments, barrages, levees,
weirs, sluices, etc.).
Other alterations in human occupation of the alluvium during history resulted
from structural conditions, i.e. the quantity and localization of the silt and salt deposits
borne by the watercourses to specific areas during the yearly flooding process. It is
demonstrated that river levees, although more difficult to irrigate, retain through
adequate drainage the best deposits and allow for a variety of crops, from cereals to
small fruit trees, legumes, and the date palm. Beyond the levees, the river overflow
may concentrate in low-lying basin areas, which are more at risk of inadequate
drainage, waterlogging and consequent salinization; however, irrigation is easier here
and, through crop-fallow alternation, these lands are adequate for crops of winter
cereals, flax and vegetables. As is obvious, excessive silting in the river beds or un-
controlled overflows in the surrounding territory have been constant risks, to which
Mesopotamian man has been exposed and has variously responded – with vast protective
earthworks and excavations or, alternatively, with the abandonment of the tracts
which had become either too salinized or boggy or fully dry. In a nutshell, the Tigris
and Euphrates prove to have literally created the overall profile of the surrounding
countryside over time (Potts 1997 ).
In their final tracts, the Twin Rivers prove to have accumulated such a vast mass
of sediments year after year, as to have altered the ancient coastline of Mesopotamia
on the Arabian (or Persian) Gulf. There is as yet no consensus on the exact range of
this phenomenon throughout history (cf. Lees and Falcon 1952 ; Larsen 1975 ), and
in fact the presence of two fully oppositional forces is nowadays recognized, that of
the progradation of the delta (due to constant river siltation) and that of tectonic
subsidence (with an ensuing rise of sea-level and progressive erosion of the shoreline).
It is, however, clear that the impact of both these natural dynamics (with the occasional
aid of man-made modifications of the environment) is to be viewed behind the
particular ‘mosaic-like’ appearance of southernmost Mesopotamia, with its unique
interspersal of marshland, steppeland, orchards and fields, and where – proceeding
southward toward the Gulf – enclosed sweet-water swamps progressively gave way
to more open and salty lagoons (Adams and Nissen 1972 ).
All the above factors represent the essential environmental backdrop on which a
reconstruction of the socio-economic and political-geographical ‘landscape’ of the
alluvium during the first half of the first millennium BCshould be projected: as
scenario for the multifaceted interactions of the traditional ‘Akkadian’ population of
the Babylonian region with the allogenous and recently intrusive groupings of the
Arameans and Chaldeans. During the last half-century, the characteristics of anthropic
presence in southern Mesopotamia have been the object of a number of regional or
local surveys and analyses in an anthropological–archaeological perspective (Adams
1965 , 1981 ; Adams and Nissen 1972 ; Gibson 1972 ; Cole and Gasche 1999 ). From
the combined data, an overall long-term trend for the period between the twelfth
and the late eighth centuries BCin the lower Euphrates region and in that of the
Diyala (an affluent reaching the Tigris in the area of present-day Baghdad) may be
presumed (Brinkman 1984 : 8 – 11 ): it appears marked by a general decline in population
— Arameans and Chaldeans —