Reconstruction and Dating of ancient rivers in the Najaf wetland area - Southern

Mesopotamia

Jaafar Jotheri 1, Tony Wilkinson 2 and Mark Allen 1

1 Earth Sciences Department, Durham University , UK 2 Archaeology Departments, Durham University, UK I am Jaafar Jotheri, currently a PhD student in the Earth Sciences Faculty at Durham University. I am originally from Iraq where I work as a lecturer in the Archaeology Department at Al-Qadisiya University in Iraq. j.h.a.jotheri@durham.ac.uk or jaafarjotheri@gmail.com

Baghdad

Basra

Mosul

Najaf

Syria

Saudi Arabia

Iran

Turkey

Kuwait Arabian Gulf

Location map of the Najaf marshland

The Najaf wetland area is located in central Iraq on the Euphrates River. It lies west of the ancient site of Babylon.

Najaf

Ancient site of Babylon

20 Km

(Cole and Gasche, 1998; Gasche et al., 2002 and Steinkeller, 2001) in Heyvaert,2008.

Present study mapping

Babylon

Najaf

Najaf

Active river

Ancient river

Ancient rivers in the Najaf wetland area has not been mapped before this study

Gap

CORONA

SRTM

Topographical

Geological

Digital Globe

Historical text

Landsat

Fieldwork and

ground-truthing

Historical map

Orientalists Map

GIS

Laboratory

Methodology I have used several methods of research in this study such as:

Pottery and cuneiforms

Methodology - Remote sensing

CORONA 1968

DigitalGlobe 2006

3 Km

1 Km

Landsat 2000

20 Km

Examination of several types of satellite image like CORONA, SRTM, Landsat and DigitalGlobe, based on ArcGIS .

Methodology - Historical texts

Petermann, 1862 Ibn Hawqal (died in 978 AD)

Corona Image 1968 British Survey map ,1916

Ottoman map,1848

Najaf branch

Babylon branch

Najaf

Najaf Najaf

These are different maps showing the Najaf wetland area in the past. The oldest map is from the tenth century by the Islamic writer Ibn Hawqal.

Ancient river Active river

Ground Truthing (Ancient river)

Ground-Truthing (river Channels and canals)

ancient canal levees

Archaeological t site

Active canal

Ancient levees of river Active canal across archaeological site

Flooded area

Earlier this year I undertook fieldwork, across the area to carry out a ground-truth for what I had detected before in remotes sensing work. Here in this picture are the canal levees; in this one is the active one. Here you can see the flooded area and the ancient river levees. Here in this picture, this canal was constructed across an archaeological site.

Methodology – Ground truthing (Archaeological sites on satellite images)

50 m 100 m

In this slide, you can see how archaeological sites are visible in high resolution satellite images. They have since been confirmed during ground truthing.

Ancient foundations

Landsat Images DigitalGlpe Images

Methodology – Ground truthing (Buried archaeological sites)

Not all the archaeological sites can be seen in the satellite images because many of them are buried by river sediments as in these examples.

Buried Site

Drilling several shallow boreholes (4-7m in depth) and collection of organic materials for radiocarbon test

Using hand gauge auger

Selected organic materials

Molluscs shell for Radiocarbon dating

To reveal the lithology of the Najaf marshland area, several boreholes were drilled by hand-auger to depths between 4 and 7 m. Then radiocarbon dating tests were carried out on three selected samples from three selected locations.

Boreholes locations

Methodology - Radiocarbon dating boreholes

22

21

20

19

18

17

16 Grey medium sand

Con 4100 + - 30 year BP Cal 4700 to 4670 BP

Con 2710 +/- 30 BP Cal 2860 to 2760 BP

Silt, clay, silty clay rich in molluscs and organic materials

Con 2120 BP+/- 30 Cal 2150 to 2000 BP

Above SL

Buried Sites , have been dated around 4000 BP

Boreholes locations

Results – Tracing and Dating of the ancient river

Ancient Babylon

Najaf

Before ~ 4000 BP Before 2000 BP Before 100 BP

Najaf

Ancient Babylon

Archaeological site Wetland Ancient river Active river

Ancient Babylon

Najaf

Buried Sites

Archaeological sites

Active river

Ottoman river

Islamic river

Babylonian River

Babylon

60 m above SL

25 m

SRTM

Wetland

Results – Tracing and Dating of the ancient river

Conclusions

3- This scenario (changing of rivers and buried of archaeological sites) may be occurred in several area in the Mesopotamian floodplain , such as , the area of marshes in the south.

1- Najaf wetland area was a wetland region from about 4000 BP years until now .

Recommendations

To discover more hidden archaeological sites in this area , geophysical exploration methods are useful, such as GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar ) especially alongside ancient channels.

2- Many archaeological sites were totally or partially buried by (4-6 m) of Euphrates river sediments when river changed its waterway from Babylonian course to Najaf course .

Thank you for your attention