In large arid floodplains, like that of southern Iraq, the rise of the water table associated with irrigation can result in surface salt concentrations over the remains of subsurface architecture. These traces are visible only from the air but are sometimes captured by commercially available submeter pixel imagery. This article describes the methods used and some of the results of a project using QuickBird, WorldView-1, and WorldView-2 imagery to investigate settlement systems in southern Mesopotamia dating between the fourth and first millennia B.C. Following a discussion of methods used to better predict which images of which sites will produce the desired results, a brief exploration of key anthropological questions that these data allow us now to ask will be presented.

The recent introduction of irrigation around the site of Mashkan-shapir, together with the availability of high resolution satellite imagery, has resulted in the preservation of architectural traces which could not be recovered when the site was researched between 1987 and 1990. In spite of recent looting, these traces have allowed the identification of the location of the palace and the reconstruction of much of the street system of this city, including the connection points across the ancient canals. Moreover, the survey data recovered through past fieldwork can be related to these traces, allowing an understanding of the larger context for many of the activities at the site, especially burial and manufacturing. Together these data provide a detailed view of how an ancient Mesopotamian city was conceived—in this instance by Sin-iddinam, who transformed it from a small village to a large city by building the city wall.

The UK Food Standards Agency convened a workshop on 13 May 2009 to discuss recently completed research on diet and immune function. The objective of the workshop was to review this research and to establish priorities for future research. Several of the trials presented at the workshop showed some effect of nutritional interventions (e.g. vitamin D, Zn, Se) on immune parameters. One trial found that increased fruit and vegetable intake may improve the antibody response to pneumococcal vaccination in older people. The workshop highlighted the need to further clarify the potential public health relevance of observed nutrition-related changes in immune function, e.g. susceptibility to infections and infectious morbidity.

The archaeological sites of Iraq, precious for their bearing on human history, became especially vulnerable to looters during two wars. Much of the looting evidence has been anecdotal up to now, but here satellite imagery has been employed to show which sites were looted and when. Sites of all sizes from late Uruk to early Islamic were targeted for their high value artefacts, particularly just before and after the 2003 invasion. The author comments that the ‘total area looted … was many times greater than all the archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands’.

Zooarchaeologists utilize a diverse set of approaches for quantifying cutmark frequencies. The least quantitative method for cutmark analysis relies on composite diagrams of cutmarks overlain on drawings of skeletal elements (diagramatic methods). To date, interpretations of these data have generally relied on qualitative and subjective assessments of cutmark frequency and placement. Many analysts count the number of fragments that have a cutmark, regardless of the number of cutmarks on the fragments (fragment-count data). Others count the number of cutmarks (cutmark-count data). Both can be expressed as simple counts (NISP data), or as a count of some more-derived measure of skeletal element abundance (MNE data). All of these approaches provide different types of data and are not intercomparable. Several researchers have shown that fragmentation of specimens impacts the frequency of cuts, and we show here that fragmentation impacts all these current approaches in ways that compromise comparative analysis when fragmentation differs between assemblages. We argue that cutmark frequencies from assemblages with differing levels of fragmentation are most effectively made comparable by correcting the frequency of cutmarks by the observed surface area. We present a new method that allows this surface area correction by using the image analysis abilities of GIS. This approach overcomes the fragmentation problem. We illustrate the power of this technique by comparing a highly fragmented archaeological assemblage to an unfragmented experimental collection.

Mesopotamian history tends to be phrased in terms of stages: Early Dynastic city-states replaced by imperial Akkad, bureaucratic Ur III replaced by the more individualistic Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods thanks to the influence of the Amorites, etc. Lost in this process is a sense of the longue durée of Mesopotamian civilization, the basic and largely unchanging aspects of its society, economy and politics. In this paper I will explore one of these transitions, that between Ur III and Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian times, by examining the nexus between the cuneiform and archaeological records.

My aim is to explore the circumstances that resulted in the unearthing of the textual record upon which our understanding of the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods is based. Where did these tablets come from and what were the circumstances that both led to their preservation and allowed them to be recovered so that we could read them? To answer these questions, it will be necessary to look at the interconnections between the survey data, excavated data and the written record.

The broad sweep of settlement and abandonment provided by the survey data collected and analysed by Adams and his students and colleagues (Adams 1965, 1972, 1981, Adams and Nissen 1972, Gibson 1972, Wright 1981) has a direct impact on our understanding of the archaeological contexts of the cuneiform texts. Sites are subject to forces of erosion so that periods of abandonment — even if temporary relative to Mesopotamia's four-thousand-year history — still selectively remove parts of the archaeological record. Since all texts derive from archaeological contexts they are by no means immune. Indeed unbaked clay tablets are some of the most fragile of the artifacts recovered from Mesopotamian sites, only surviving to the present when buried rapidly at the outset and remaining so until uncovered by the spade of the archaeologist or, more often unfortunately, the looter. Then there is also the issue of accessibility. In most instances both archaeologists and looters dig from the top of a site down, and generally not that far down. Thus most of our data, both archaeological and textual, derive from those levels closest to the exposed surfaces of archaeological sites.

Most zooarchaeologists employ some type of derived measure of skeletal element abundance in their analyses of faunal data. The minimum number of individuals (MNI) and the minimum number of animal units (MAU) are two of the most popular derived measurements, and each is based on a prior estimate of the minimum number of elements (MNE). Thus, the estimate of MNE from fragmented faunal fragments is the essential foundation for all inferences emanating from MNI and MAU estimates of skeletal element abundance. Estimating the MNE represented by a sample of faunal fragments is a complicated procedure that involves various assumptions, possible mathematical manipulations, and subjectivity. Unfortunately, the reasoning and methods underlying this procedure are unstandardized in zooarchaeology, and even worse, rarely made explicit. We review the scarce literature on this topic and identify two different approaches: the fraction summation approach and the overlap approach. We identify strengths and weaknesses in both approaches. We then present a new method that is based on using image-analysis GIS software to count overlapping fragments that have been converted to pixel images. This method maintains the strengths of the other methods while overcoming most of their weaknesses. It promises numerous powerful analytical capabilities that go far beyond the routines available in spreadsheets and databases. It also offers nearly boundless flexibility in database recoding and extremely complete information storage. Perhaps its greatest strength is that it is based on very intuitive reasoning.

The distribution of designs on Mesopotamian terracottas can provide clues to the relationship between symbols and meaning at different localities. Unlike other Mesopotamian terracottas whose iconography reflects pan-Mesopotamian beliefs, the designs on model chariots are site-specific. While Mesopotamian religious symbols should probably be interpreted as representing aspects of divine power rather than individual deities, combinations of symbols serve to identify particular gods. When these are found on model chariots, they can be related to the titular deities of the specific city in which they were found. Examination of the findspots of these objects, especially those from Mashkanshapir, suggests a possible link between model chariots and the centralizing institutions of the city.

The student of ancient Mesopotamian society is blessed not only in having access to written evidence, but in having that evidence frequently preserved in significant archaeological context. Although all artifacts both derive meaning from their context and aid in the interpretation of this context, none can equal the cuneiform tablet in informative power. Only partial understanding is possible from a study of the texts and the other archaeological data when the two are divorced; as the texts reveal the actions of the ancient structures' inhabitants, so the archaeological remains represent the physical manifestation of these recorded actions. In the following pages we will take advantage of this unique blessing and attempt an examination of Old Babylonian residence patterns as they are reflected in house property transactions and their accompanying architectural modifications.

Although Mesopotamian archaeologists spend much of their time clearing buildings, determining construction techniques and identifying architectural modifications, relatively little attention has been paid to the social and cultural implications of these structures. Domestic architecture reflects the social needs of its inhabitants and as such is a sensitive indicator not only of variations in wealth but of variations in social organization. Since real cultural change is manifested by changes in social, economic and political organization, and not necessarily by stylistic changes in artifacts, we must use all of the tools at our disposal, in this instance textual and ethnographic, to penetrate the implications of architectural remains. It is hoped that this study may move us one step closer to this goal.