Ancient Landscapes in Southeastern Anatolia

This article considers the nature of ancient landscapes and their archaeological investigation in southeastern Anatolia, one of the most intensively studied regions in modern Turkey. Southeastern Anatolia's diversity of environments and long history of settlement make it an ideal region for a landscape approach to the human past. Shifting constellations of settlement—in response to environmental, social, and political factors—have been revealed through decades of field survey and have provided a broad geographic frame that complements the spatially limited results of excavation. At present, particularly vivid trends in settlement and land use have been demonstrated for the Late Chalcolithic Uruk Expansion, the mid-to-late-third-millennium-BCE phase of urban growth, and the Iron Age/Neo-Assyrian period, to name a few examples.