2026/01/28 by Deborah Priß, Dan Lawrence, John Wainwright +2 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Bronze Age #Human settlement #Iron Age #Mesopotamia #Psychological resilience #Regional resilience and development #Resilience (materials science) #Settlement (finance) #Water management and technologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.15184/aqy.2025.10272
published in Antiquity 100(410), 340-354 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex created_date 2026/01/28 · openalex publication_date 2026/01/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The ability of urban centres to grow and persist through crises is often assessed qualitatively in archaeology but quantitative assessment is more elusive. Here, the authors explore urban resilience in ancient Mesopotamia by applying an adaptive cycle framework to the settlement dynamics of the Bronze and Iron Age Khabur Valley ( c . 3000–600 BC). Using an integrated dataset of settlements and hollow ways, they identify patterns of growth, conservation, release and reorganisation across six periods, demonstrating the value of coupling archaeological data with resilience theory and network analysis to understand the adaptive capacities of complex archaeological societies.