Page 18 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

-xv i-

the changing patterns of regional land use and settlement patterns as well as
provide clues to the past social systems of which each of these was a part. In
effect, this approach can be likened to time-lapse imagery of entire subsystems.
Changing distributions of material data in a regional setting may indicate a record
of long-term demographic and organizational trends.
In the Near East, Jacobsen and Adams (1958) experimented with
techniques for locating Mesopotamian settlements along early stream and canal
systems. These first attempts provided a methodology for Adams to develop a still
more detailed and sophisticated analysis of first the Karkheh, Shaur, and Karun
river basins of Khuzestan (Adams 1962), the Diyala River basin in east-central Iraq
(Adams 1965), and the area surrounding the ancient city of Uruk in southern Iraq
(Adams and Nissen 1972). More recently he has completed a major synthesis of the
Mesopotamian Plain (Adams 1981). In each case, the patterns that were discovered
suggested complex changes in social organization and demography that were not
easily visible even in the comparatively complete documentary histories of the past
2000 years.
In the Diyala, for example, it was possible to gain a quantitative
approximation of fluctuating trends in past population size that coincided with an
extensive increase in the land area in use during the Abbasid and Buyid periods
(A.D. 800-1000) and followed by a rapid collapse that left the area deserted until
the nineteenth century. Reconstruction of Sasanian irrigation networks in
Khuzestan showed distinct manipulation of stream regimes that exceeded all
previous attempts at irrigation agriculture in the area. At Uruk, the formative
changes in settlement associated with the appearance of an early urban center
were suggested by the spatial data. Thus, a new dimension was added to field
studies. Variations and improvements on these basic methods have been made by
several researchers in the Near East. Successful attempts have been made by
Gibson (1972), Johnson (1973), Sumner (1974), Wright (1981), and Mortensen (1974) to
carry out related types of areal studies. Sumner and Mortensen, like Adams, have
tried to bound their study areas by choosing natural limits, that is, river systems.
Johnson, Gibson, and Wright, on the other hand, have chosen different goals. Each