Emily Hammer
I am an anthropological archaeologist of the Middle East and South Caucasia and currently Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Archaeology in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at the University of Pennsylvania. My research applies spatial analyses to material culture to investigate the territorial organization of ancient polities, the development of early cities, and long-term changes in the interactions between culture and environment. I use geographic information science (GIS) methods, archaeology, satellite imagery analysis, and archival research as tools for recovering human experiences that have otherwise been sidelined in narratives about the past, particularly the experiences of mobile pastoralists and other communities that lived in agriculturally marginal environments such as deserts and highlands.
Through field research in southeast Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, and Iraq, I have studied the relationship between mobile pastoral and sedentary communities of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and medieval/Ottoman periods. My current collaborative projects include a survey designed to investigate the urban structure of the early Mesopotamian city at Ur, Iraq; a survey in Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan, focused on the relationship between South Caucasia’s earliest urban centers and fortresses in the Bronze and Iron Ages; publication of extensive regional settlement data to investigate demographic patterns of the last 8000 years on the plains of the Tigris River of southeastern Turkey; and geological dating of rock-carved cisterns located adjacent to archaeological campsites in southeastern Turkey. Other team-based laboratory research includes a project that uses satellite imagery and environmental modeling to examine the relationship of mass-kill hunting traps (desert kites) and settlement in eastern Jordan to areas where surface or ground water may have seasonally pooled under wetter conditions and a project that uses satellite imagery and topography models to analyze pre-Islamic fortification patterns in the Balkh oasis of northern Afghanistan in relationship to irrigation networks. Both the Jordan and the Balkh projects draw from new, rarely-used archival data sources, specifically recently declassified military intelligence imagery (early Cold War-era Hexagon and U2 imagery) that shows archaeological features much more clearly than modern satellite imagery. As a participant in the global collaborative project “LandCover6K,” I am working with other historians and archaeologists to reconstruct land use over the last 6000 years in the Middle East and other part of Asia.
I hold a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University (2012) and a BA both in Mathematics and Classical & Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College (2006). Prior to coming to Penn, I taught at the University of Chicago (2014-2017) and New York University (2012-2014). At the University of Chicago, I directed the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes (CAMEL) and directed satellite imagery-based work on the cultural heritage of Afghanistan.
Address: University of Pennsylvania
Williams Hall
255 S 36th Street #847
Philadelphia, PA, USA 19104
Through field research in southeast Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, and Iraq, I have studied the relationship between mobile pastoral and sedentary communities of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and medieval/Ottoman periods. My current collaborative projects include a survey designed to investigate the urban structure of the early Mesopotamian city at Ur, Iraq; a survey in Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan, focused on the relationship between South Caucasia’s earliest urban centers and fortresses in the Bronze and Iron Ages; publication of extensive regional settlement data to investigate demographic patterns of the last 8000 years on the plains of the Tigris River of southeastern Turkey; and geological dating of rock-carved cisterns located adjacent to archaeological campsites in southeastern Turkey. Other team-based laboratory research includes a project that uses satellite imagery and environmental modeling to examine the relationship of mass-kill hunting traps (desert kites) and settlement in eastern Jordan to areas where surface or ground water may have seasonally pooled under wetter conditions and a project that uses satellite imagery and topography models to analyze pre-Islamic fortification patterns in the Balkh oasis of northern Afghanistan in relationship to irrigation networks. Both the Jordan and the Balkh projects draw from new, rarely-used archival data sources, specifically recently declassified military intelligence imagery (early Cold War-era Hexagon and U2 imagery) that shows archaeological features much more clearly than modern satellite imagery. As a participant in the global collaborative project “LandCover6K,” I am working with other historians and archaeologists to reconstruct land use over the last 6000 years in the Middle East and other part of Asia.
I hold a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University (2012) and a BA both in Mathematics and Classical & Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College (2006). Prior to coming to Penn, I taught at the University of Chicago (2014-2017) and New York University (2012-2014). At the University of Chicago, I directed the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes (CAMEL) and directed satellite imagery-based work on the cultural heritage of Afghanistan.
Address: University of Pennsylvania
Williams Hall
255 S 36th Street #847
Philadelphia, PA, USA 19104
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Papers by Emily Hammer
[This paper is open access; please click on the DOI to download it from the AJA website]
This chapter reviews and reassesses conflicting views about the political and economic role of irrigation in Urartu and offers two preliminary landscape archaeology studies of Urartian-era irrigation structures. The first examines textually described irrigation structures from the heart of Urartu—the Lake Van basin—using historical satellite imagery and hydrological modeling. The second draws on recent fieldwork in Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan, to discuss the characteristics of Urartian-contemporary irrigation along the Araxes River, at the kingdom’s eastern fringes. These two studies provide insight into the debate about whether Urartian irrigation systems were designed to benefit agricultural or pastoral food production systems and also provide the basis for scale comparisons to better-known, roughly contemporary irrigation features of the Neo-Assyrians, the Urartians’ enemies to the south. Specifically, this chapter argues that irrigation played a minor political role in Urartu and that securely dated Urartian irrigation systems were used for agricultural production and especially urban water supply. Any state involvement in irrigation for the purposes of increasing pastoral production would most likely have focused on the production of fodder for military horses rather than mobile pastoralists’ sheep, goat, and cattle. Several lines of evidence indirectly suggest indigenous (rather than Assyrian) inspiration for Urartian irrigation systems and the involvement of local rulers rather than the king in the construction of water features.
territorial polities with complex bureaucracies, but it has only been through recent intensive survey and examination of settlements beside fortresses that archaeologists have developed a better understanding of the inhabitants of fortress-polities and their landscapes. Near-surface geophysical prospection near two hillforts overlooking the Arpaçay river valley, Naxçıvan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan, evaluated previously published hypotheses about Bronze and Iron Age fortresses. These two forts, Oğlanqala, a 12-hectare hilltop fortress inhabited in the Iron Age, and Qızqala 1, a 2-hectare fort with Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery, were previously documented through survey and excavations as part of the Naxçıvan Archaeological Project (NAP). Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry surveys focused on areas of potential significance identified in the NAP. Magnetic gradiometry survey in the plain between Oğlanqala and Qızqala located a fortification wall segment that connects to previously recorded surface features argued to date to the Middle Iron Age; the path of this wall lends support to the hypothesis that it enclosed least 324 ha surrounding Oğlanqala and Qızqala and limited access to a narrow mountain pass and fertile lands in the river valley. Geophysical prospection at a settlement site on a bedrock shelf near Qızqala 1 suggests that architectural remains are preserved within part of the large enclosure. Geophysical prospection elsewhere in the alluvial plain did not reveal evidence for preserved architecture within or outside of the hypothesized enclosure, though this could be a result of soil conditions. Magnetic gradiometry of a Middle Bronze Age kurgan field outside of the enclosure identified the potential locations of burials that were not identified during surface survey. New sources of historical satellite imagery aided interpretation of geophysics results from highly-disturbed alluvial areas.
[This paper is open access; please click on the DOI to download it from the AJA website]
This chapter reviews and reassesses conflicting views about the political and economic role of irrigation in Urartu and offers two preliminary landscape archaeology studies of Urartian-era irrigation structures. The first examines textually described irrigation structures from the heart of Urartu—the Lake Van basin—using historical satellite imagery and hydrological modeling. The second draws on recent fieldwork in Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan, to discuss the characteristics of Urartian-contemporary irrigation along the Araxes River, at the kingdom’s eastern fringes. These two studies provide insight into the debate about whether Urartian irrigation systems were designed to benefit agricultural or pastoral food production systems and also provide the basis for scale comparisons to better-known, roughly contemporary irrigation features of the Neo-Assyrians, the Urartians’ enemies to the south. Specifically, this chapter argues that irrigation played a minor political role in Urartu and that securely dated Urartian irrigation systems were used for agricultural production and especially urban water supply. Any state involvement in irrigation for the purposes of increasing pastoral production would most likely have focused on the production of fodder for military horses rather than mobile pastoralists’ sheep, goat, and cattle. Several lines of evidence indirectly suggest indigenous (rather than Assyrian) inspiration for Urartian irrigation systems and the involvement of local rulers rather than the king in the construction of water features.
territorial polities with complex bureaucracies, but it has only been through recent intensive survey and examination of settlements beside fortresses that archaeologists have developed a better understanding of the inhabitants of fortress-polities and their landscapes. Near-surface geophysical prospection near two hillforts overlooking the Arpaçay river valley, Naxçıvan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan, evaluated previously published hypotheses about Bronze and Iron Age fortresses. These two forts, Oğlanqala, a 12-hectare hilltop fortress inhabited in the Iron Age, and Qızqala 1, a 2-hectare fort with Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery, were previously documented through survey and excavations as part of the Naxçıvan Archaeological Project (NAP). Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry surveys focused on areas of potential significance identified in the NAP. Magnetic gradiometry survey in the plain between Oğlanqala and Qızqala located a fortification wall segment that connects to previously recorded surface features argued to date to the Middle Iron Age; the path of this wall lends support to the hypothesis that it enclosed least 324 ha surrounding Oğlanqala and Qızqala and limited access to a narrow mountain pass and fertile lands in the river valley. Geophysical prospection at a settlement site on a bedrock shelf near Qızqala 1 suggests that architectural remains are preserved within part of the large enclosure. Geophysical prospection elsewhere in the alluvial plain did not reveal evidence for preserved architecture within or outside of the hypothesized enclosure, though this could be a result of soil conditions. Magnetic gradiometry of a Middle Bronze Age kurgan field outside of the enclosure identified the potential locations of burials that were not identified during surface survey. New sources of historical satellite imagery aided interpretation of geophysics results from highly-disturbed alluvial areas.
For two summers, archaeological research in the Şərur Plain of Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan, has revealed a multiple fortress-settlement complex that offers the opportunity to examine the ancient populations living in the shadows of fortresses. The dominant fortress on the plain, Oğlanqala, was part of a settlement complex consisting of two fortresses and a domestic settlement, all of which may have been surrounded by a wall enclosing at least 490ha. The position of the complex at the entrance to a river pass may have facilitated control highland pastoral and lowland agricultural resources. These survey findings demonstrate that a large, potentially urban settlement emerged in Naxçıvan in during the “nomadic” MBA, and indicate that the Middle IA Urartian state (ninth-seventh centuries BC) expanded into an area with pre-existing complex political and settlement traditions."
Recent archaeological survey work in southeastern Turkey provides an example of highly sustainable local water manipulation schemes by pastoral nomads of the last 500 years. Transhumant groups in this region have altered marginal areas to improve water availability and pasture quality for themselves and their animals. Water collection and soil enhancement structures can be best understood as landscape nodes: features that are in continuous and modified use. Although small-scale and locally managed, the water and pasture improvement features examined by the archaeological survey have had enduring impacts on local land-use. These small-scale interventions continue to structure how subsequent groups and generations have inhabited the local landscape.