I have reread the preface to the first edition many times: extreme events, dire warnings about Green-house warming, El Niño–Southern Oscillation prediction … Little has changed in the fifteen years since I wrote about them. I am still perplexed because extreme events continue to happen and global warming is no closer to occurring. As Sydney in February 2004 experienced a heat wave of a magnitude unprecedented since at least 1939, I was chasing my favourite research topic – cosmogenically induced mega-tsunami – on Stewart Island, New Zealand some two thousand kilometres away where an unprecedented cold snap was occurring. One event witnessed by four million people got all the publicity; the other played out in a remote cabin in front of half of dozen trekkers got none. Yet both climatic extremes were produced by the same pattern of atmospheric circulation controlled by the same sequence of mobile polar highs. Sydney lay on the equatorial ‘greenhouse’ side of the highs and Stewart Island lay on the poleward ‘Ice Age’ side. This book covers two of the phenomena I experienced in my February of extremes – mobile polar highs and tsunami. As with the first edition, the book does not cover the third phenomena, Green-house warming. This book is about everyday climatic and geological hazards that can be explained, predicted, and alleviated.

RATIONALE

The field of environmental studies is usually introduced to students as one of two themes. The first examines human effects upon the Earth's environment, and is concerned ultimately with the question of whether or not people can irreversibly alter that environment. Such studies include the effect of human impact on climate, of land-use practices on the landscape in prehistoric and recent times, and of nuclear war upon the Earth's environment. The second theme totally disregards this question of human impact on the environment. It assumes that people are specks of dust moving through time subject to the whims of nature. In this sense, calamities are ‘acts of God’, events that make the headlines on the evening news, events you might wish on your worst enemy but would never want to witness yourself.

University and college courses dealing with this latter theme usually treat people as living within a hostile environment over which they have little control. Such courses go by the name of ‘“Natural” Hazards’. The difference between the two themes is aptly summarized by Sidle et al. (2003). Both themes describe hazards. The first theme can be categorized as chronic while the second is episodic or periodic. Chronic hazards would include desertification, soil degradation, and melting of permafrost. The causes could be due to humans or global warming. Periodic hazards are large magnitude events that appear over a short time period.

INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 3, waves were often mentioned as one of the main agents of erosion and destruction by storms. In fact, destructive waves can occur without storm events, and in association with other climatic and oceanographic factors such as heavy rainfall and high sea levels, to produce coastal erosion. In this sense, waves form part of a group of interlinked hazards associated with oceans. This chapter examines these and other oceanographic hazards. Wave mechanics and the process of wave generation will be outlined first followed by a description of wave height distribution worldwide. This section will conclude with an appraisal of the hazards posed by waves in the open ocean.

Wind is the prime mechanism for generating the destructive energy in waves. In cold oceans, seas or lakes, strong winds can produce another hazard – the beaching of drifting sea-ice. Sea-ice is generally advantageous along a coastline that experiences winter storms, because broken sea-ice can completely dampen the height of all but the highest waves. When frozen to the shoreline as shorefast ice, sea-ice can completely protect the shoreline from any storm erosion. However, floating ice is easily moved by winds of very low velocity. These winds might not generate appreciable waves, but they can drive sea-ice ashore and hundreds of metres inland. The force exerted by this ice can destroy almost all structures typically found adjacent to a shoreline.

Patterns of settlement

Archaeologists have always been interested in the way in which people used their environment, but the value of the systematic study of patterns of settlement only became apparent to them in the 1950s and early 1960s. Archaeological interest resulted from the work being done by geographers like Chorley and Haggett (1967), following in the footsteps of earlier scholars such as Christaller and Losch, who attempted to identify the regularities of spatial patterning which could be detected in many different parts of the world. These seemed, at least in part, to determine the position and reflect the size and status of each settlement. Obviously such theories had immediate and important applications in archaeology and were especially relevant to the attempts then in progress to recognise the earliest urban centres and to define the processes which led to their appearance. In order to achieve these aims and identify the early urban centres, archaeologists borrowed wholesale the geographers' concepts of the ranking of settlements, of central-place function and of ideal patterns of settlement forming hexagonal territories in an undifferentiated landscape.

The only way in which the archaeological evidence needed for these studies could be collected was by survey, and the 1950s and 1960s also saw a refinement of existing techniques and the development of new ones using first air photographs and then satellite imagery. These advances were coupled with an increasing sophistication in their application and interpretation.

The elaborate economic framework which we described in the last chapter was only possible because the Sumerians had developed what is probably the earliest recording system in the world. Even Egyptian hieroglyphics are thought to be slightly more recent. The earliest attempts at keeping records cannot be called a writing system, but seem to be an attempt to record simple transactions, and date back to the pre-pottery Neolithic period. Small clay tokens have been recovered in a limited number of shapes at several different sites from 00E7;atal Hüyük in Anatolia to Jarmo in Iraqi Kurdistan. These tokens, it is thought, were used to represent various commodities. In time, certain tokens seem to have come to represent certain types of goods, sheep or cattle for example (Fig. 10.1). Different sizes and shapes also came to represent different quantities, so that it was possible to keep a simple record of transactions by this means. Schmandt-Besserat has elaborated this initial idea to suggest how a more sophisticated genuine writing system may have developed from these simple beginnings (Schmandt-Besserat 1986). Her ideas are not universally accepted, but at the moment represent the most coherent attempt at explanation that we have.

The next stage in this development was a proliferation in the variety and complexity of tokens as more and more goods began to be exchanged, goods which included textiles and foodstuffs for instance.

Ever since the advent of Christianity, the lands of the Bible have exerted a special fascination for the people of western Europe and America.

After the last crusade, English contacts with these countries became somewhat tenuous. Although a few ships continued to ply between Europe and the Holy Land, reliable information about the region became very sparse and the stories increasingly apocryphal. The numerous editions of the travels of Sir John Mandeville remained a standard work for many years because there was nothing better on offer, even though the anonymous fourteenth-century author may never have left his own fireside having used other earlier works for his composition (Moseley 1983). It was only in the nineteenth century, when Britain established direct political relations with the Ottoman provinces as well as with Istanbul itself, that it again became possible for curious individuals to travel moderately freely in Syria, Palestine and Iraq. J. S. Buckingham, writing in 1827, claims to be the first European for a century to publish his travels in these countries, and he found it sensible to travel dressed as an Arab and to act as a Muslim. The dangers involved were many and real, coming from both men and beasts, as Austen Henry Layard found even fifty years later when he too adopted Muslim dress and customs for his journeys (Layard 1903).

We began by looking at the patterns made by settlements in the landscape. The largest of these settlements were the towns and cities. The city, ‘uru’ in Sumerian, was the focus of life on the Mesopotamian plain: it was seen as the ideological, commercial, administrative and social centre of the world around it, but we still know surprisingly little about the details of life in a third-millennium urban centre or about its physical appearance. This chapter will look at the earliest evidence we have for town planning and for some of the most prominent buildings within these important centres. (For a survey of the evidence see van de Mieroop 1997.)

This evidence is very incomplete: the cost of excavating an entire site has always been prohibitive, even in the comparatively wealthy days before the Second World War. An American expedition had to abandon the attempt in the 1930s to excavate the relatively small tell of Tepe Gawra in its entirety. About half-way down, the scale of the undertaking became apparent and funds began to run short. This means that, especially when dealing with large urban sites, such as Uruk, we are forced to deduce overall patterns from a number of small, disjointed scraps of evidence usually gained by survey and small-scale excavation, a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation. However, by using evidence from survey, from ethnography and from the texts, as well as from excavation, it is possible to make some general observations on the use of space in Sumerian towns and cities.

This book is intended for students, and especially for students beginning to study the archaeology and history of the ancient Near East. The changes which took place on the Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the fourth and third millennia bc are of crucial importance in understanding subsequent developments in western Asia and beyond. A range of major innovations in both technology and social development is attributed to this period and it is these innovations which will be described in the following chapters. Many of them have their roots in much older periods. Where evidence which complements or extends that from Mesopotamia is available from adjacent geographic areas, it too will be included. Since 1991 it has not been possible to dig in Iraq itself and, as a direct result of this, there has been an explosion of archaeological activity in neighbouring countries such as Syria and the Gulf states. This new evidence has brought important new insights and has led to a reappraisal of the Sumerian world.

There are several ways of approaching such a study. One is the straightforward chronological account traditionally favoured by historians and archaeologists, which tries to describe a society in its entirety from genesis to extinction. More recently, authors have begun to isolate specific aspects of a society, taking one stimulus such as trade, or one theme such as the ecological background. The role of that specific factor in the development of the society is then explored.

As so many of the manufactured goods we have been discussing were made of imported materials, this seems an appropriate place to consider what is known of Mesopotamia's foreign trading contacts. It should be noted that the word ‘trade’ is being used very loosely in this discussion to cover the acquisition of foreign goods by any means, including foraging, pillaging and tribute. In addition, pedlars, craftsmen and, especially, women represent another channel by which goods were moved around over considerable distances. It is clear from the texts that diplomacy and trade were closely linked and that the daughters of the rulers of the city-states were often married to foreign royalty on the fringes of the Mesopotamian world as part of such diplomatic efforts. They took with them all the comforts of home, providing yet another method of exchanging goods, and no doubt this pattern was repeated at a less elevated social level with individual merchants consolidating their business ties by similar means. Foreign craftsmen working in Mesopotamia are sometimes referred to in the texts and may well have produced goods in foreign styles for the Mesopotamian market, thereby complicating the picture still further.

It is often almost impossible to distinguish archaeologically between these methods of acquiring goods and of moving them from one place to another and we will not attempt to do so here.

The period dealt with in this book covers between 1,500 and 1,800 years. There are, potentially, two major ways of dividing up this long span of time in order to identify the main phases and to pinpoint the changes which took place. The first is the purely archaeological method, which provides a relative system only, while the second, using scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating, gives us absolute dates. In some rare cases the absolute dates obtained by scientific methods can be cross-checked against the dates obtained from historical or quasi-historical inscriptions, but in this early period that is unusual. The archaeological or relative sequence begins with the Uruk period, named after the site at which the distinctive plain pottery was first identified, and we will look first at the other archaeologically recognisable characteristics of this and the succeeding periods. These can then be used to establish the relative dating of sites.

The Uruk period was a long one which may have lasted more than a thousand years, and it is conventionally divided into three phases. The earliest is poorly understood, while for the middle phase the best evidence comes from outside south Mesopotamia and is to be found at sites like Sheikh Hassan on the middle Euphrates, Tell Brak in eastern Syria and Hacinebi Tepe in Turkey (see Schwartz 2001; Stein 2001). It is only in the late Uruk phase that we have good evidence from the south.

This book has described individually each of the ‘building blocks’ of what is rather loosely called Sumerian civilisation. This civilisation was, more realistically, the result of a fertile amalgam of peoples of different linguistic and geographic origins amongst whom those who spoke Sumerian seem to have been in the majority. The first two chapters looked at the basic parameters, the physical environment, and the historical and chronological framework of the period. Then the way in which the inhabitants had used the environment was explored and the settlement patterns which characterised each phase of the 1,800 years covered by this study were summarised. An attempt to interpret what the observed changes in these patterns may have meant in terms of political and historical developments followed. The internal characteristics of the more complex settlements, their layout and the major public buildings which dominated them were then described and an attempt was made to relate these changes, too, to the wider issues of changes in the way of life and in political thought or ideology. This information was then contrasted with newly available evidence from Upper Mesopotamia where developments followed a rather different trajectory.

The life of private individuals was explored, firstly by looking at housing in both rural and urban settings and then by looking at graves. Paradoxically, the grave goods tell us more about the living than do their houses, for it was only in death that the accessories of everyday life escaped the endless recycling which was a crucial feature of the Sumerian economy.

Some of the most exciting and important archaeological sites to have been explored in the past twenty years are located in the area called, for convenience, Upper Mesopotamia. It lies between the Euphrates and the Tigris north of the Hit–Samarra line and south of the Taurus mountains. Today it is partly in Syria and partly in Iraq. The area used to be seen as a poor, provincial relation of the civilised southern plain, but thanks to a mass of new evidence the picture has changed dramatically for the period in which we are interested and archaeologists are now rethinking many of their old assumptions. In the course of the later fourth and the third millennium the north was the home of a number of distinctive urban cultures whose influence on the south is beginning to be hotly debated (Map 8).

North Mesopotamia lies in what was described in chapter 2 as our second ecological zone, which in turn sub-divides into two sub-sections. As we saw, the terrain and the natural resources are very different to those in the south. There are great rolling plains and in the north of the region agriculture is extensive rather than intensive, while in the south of the area it is a highly risky business because of the low and unpredictable rainfall. Although irrigation can be used to enhance yields, rain-fed agriculture is possible over most of the area.

Public buildings

Although, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the temples and ziggurats were the dominant architectural features of Sumerian towns and cities, there is a good deal of evidence for other important buildings, some genuinely monumental, some merely larger and more imposing than their neighbours. It is often difficult to identify the purpose of these buildings and as a convenience, rather than for any more objective reason, they are sometimes labelled as palaces. This nomenclature is misleading. Many of the buildings in question seem to have been multi-purpose; some of them may have housed officials of either temple or state; some may have been the homes of wealthy extended families; some may have been industrial units; many seem to have shared several of these functions.

More significantly, the use of the word ‘palace’ implies a whole political system which may well not have existed until the later part of the third millennium. We must be cautious about assuming the presence of a king earlier than this. Evidence for a dichotomy of ‘church’ and ‘state’ in the organisation of the Sumerian city before ED III is slight. The ruler and his wife had religious duties which were seen as essential to the well-being of his people and sometimes the king actually held priestly office as well. At a later stage, of course, he became a god himself, so that the secular and religious halves of the state always seem to have been closely interwoven and inextricably intertwined.

As we saw in chapter 5 the private houses tell us relatively little about the everyday life of the people who lived in them. They have few distinctive features and, generally speaking, are poor in small finds. This is not because the people who lived in them were poor and unsophisticated, but because objects tended to be reused until they fell apart and furniture and fittings were not widely used. The plans of the houses, which usually focus inwards on a central hall or court, suggest the self-contained nature of these households and their importance as the basic unit in society. The plans sometimes suggest the segregation of certain members of the household, as they are subdivided into a number of discrete units, which do not seem necessarily to be distinguished by differences of function. The position of the house at the centre of family life is emphasised by the presence, from late ED I onwards, of graves below the floors, representing a return to earlier customs. The graves contain the bones of people of both sexes and all ages, in contrast to earlier times when it was normally only children who were buried in this way. The number of graves is not usually large enough to have contained all the postulated inhabitants of a house, so some members of the family seem to have been singled out for this treatment, while the rest were presumably buried in cemeteries outside the settlements.