Long-Term Climate Change: A Case Study on Climate Records from the Middle East in Relation to the Neo-Assyrian Empire Agriculture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire as one of the major empires in the Ancient Near East emerged soon after late Bronze Age collapses. It ruled Mesopotamia from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to western parts of Iran and to Persian Gulf during the first millennium B.C. in a cold period in theHolocene Epoch. For my thesis, I am focusing on their plant cultivation, agriculture and plant based products in the Peshdar Plain region in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is essential to understand environmental and climatic conditions during that time to understand their influences on these plants and plant choices of farmers and elites. In this paper, I will focus on the paleoclimate records from lakes including Van, Zeribar, Mirabad, caves including Soreq and Dim, and the Neo-Assyrian archival records and cuneiforms. Different scientists documented climatic changes during this period using multiproxy records and various methods. I hypothesize that dry periods should produce a shift to more aridity resilient plants such as barley. This is confirmed by phytolith analyses, climate records and archival records cohesively.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25701