CHAPTER TWO

HYDRAULIC L ANDSCAPES AND

IRRIGATION SYSTEMS OF SUMER
!"#
Tony J. Wilkinson

I t is often implied that Sumer derived much of its economic strength from irrigation,
but in reality water provided an even more fundamental context for everyday life.
This is because water manifested itself in many ways: not only as a supplier of essential
drinking water for humans and their flocks, but also in the form of marshes and
wetlands, as irrigation water, and as rivers and channels for bulk transport. The Tigris
and Euphrates rivers not only nurtured major economic resources in the form of fish,
reeds, and other wetland products, but were also regarded as sacred rivers (Wood 2005).
Consequently, rather than simply discussing irrigation, this chapter tackles the overall
‘hydraulic landscape’.
Some cuneiform texts emphasise the role of water as the provider of abundance
(Winter 2007: 136). For example, a ‘hymn’ of the Ur III or Old Babylonian periods
(referred to as Ur-Nammu D) describes the king as having been provided with broad
wisdoms by Enki, digging a ‘canal of abundance’ in his home city of Ur, which then
produced plentiful fish, birds, and plants, as well as watering large tracts of arable land
where barley ‘sprouts like reed thickets’ (Winter, 2007: 136; Flückiger-Hawker 1999:
D21–22, 33–36). By the late third millennium BC, much of the available water of
southern Mesopotamia was used for the irrigation of grain crops and the province of
Lagash became a major centre of grain production, much of which was delivered to
redistribution centres in the form of bala tax (Rost 2010: 8). In terms of landscape
development, this is difficult to imagine because in the mid-twentieth century AD the
city mound of al-Hiba/Lagash was surrounded by marshes (Cotha Consulting 1959a:
maps).
Ultimately, the maximum amount of land that could be irrigated in Mesopotamia
was limited by the overall discharge of water in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers,
specifically during the period of low flow during the autumn and early winter.
Although estimates of the total area of potential cultivation in the Mesopotamian
lowlands range from 8,000 to 12,000 sq km (Adams 1981: 5–6), if the Euphrates
alone is employed, to as high as 30,000 sq km (Ionides 1937), it is evident that the
irrigated area was but a fraction of the total potential cultivable area, especially when
the often large amount of fallow and wasteland is taken into account (Adams 1981;
Gibson 1972).
Water has a range of practical roles or functions and in southern Mesopotamia these
can be summarised as follows (Hunt 1988: 189–190):

33
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

• Irrigated agriculture
• Transportation
• Drinking water
• Waste removal
• Water for manufacturing.

These functions were serviced by a complex array of natural and artificial flows and
hydraulic installations some of which are recorded in texts and in the landscape, others
of which must be inferred.

SOURCE OF INFORMATION
The source material for the Sumerian hydraulic landscape is substantial, but because
these sources are very uneven, they need to be interpreted with care. Consequently, it
is difficult to make a realistic reconstruction of the landscape of irrigation without
making a number of educated guesses or by employing ethnographic data to flesh out
the record and aid interpretation. Although there are evident differences between the
ancient and modern landscapes of modern Iraq, it is necessary to have a general
understanding of how the contemporary communities manipulated water and how the
soils were harnessed, and discussions of traditional Mesopotamian irrigation are
provided by Charles (1988, 1990), Pemberton et al. (1988), Postgate (1990), Poyck (1962)
and Fernea (1970).
Much basic information on irrigation terminology and labour organisation derives
from cuneiform administrative, mathematical and literary texts. Particularly engaging
are the mathematical texts which provide problems to be solved along the lines of: a
cistern was defined as of given dimensions and depth, therefore how much land could
a depth of X irrigate (Powell 1988: 162)? Of course, because these exercises were not
necessarily designed to be used for real-life situations, Powell regards these simply as a
‘paradigm for calculation’. Nevertheless, they provide valuable insights into the
excavation of canals, the types of excavation that took place (such as ‘throw-out work’
and ‘basket work’) as well as information on features such as dams and barrages and a
wide range of lists of terms used (Powell 1988: 164, 166, 169–170).
Similarly, administrative texts provide valuable information on the role of irrigation
in agriculture, and especially useful is the so-called Georgica or ‘Farmers’ Instructions’
(Civil 1994: 134). Unfortunately, such texts were often rather partial in the amount of
information they conveyed and many were simply intended to calculate the costs of
labour, earth moving and related activities. Usually the scribes of the Ur III period
preferred to focus upon the amounts of earth extracted and piled up rather than on the
cross-sections of the water courses themselves, because such volumes are more amenable
to computation (Civil 1994: 135). Nevertheless, these mundane administrative concerns
with earth moving find significant parallels in the landscape where visible features
such as mounds of up-cast sediment are particularly conspicuous. Such mounds can
sometimes be more conspicuous than ‘negative features’ dug into the ground.
Overall, there is a lack of reference to officials or offices related to water manage-
ment (Rost 2010: 14) as well as a dearth of irrigation accounts or calendars. This situ-
ation contrasts with, for example, the qanat/falaj books that detail the allocation of
irrigation water in, for example, post-medieval Oman (Wilkinson, J.C. 1977).

34
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

More subversively, administrative texts, being derived from state archives, tend to
support centralised models of irrigation management such as that of Wittfogel (1957).
In other words, because they only seem to refer to that part of the system that needed
to be recorded for the purposes of the state, cuneiform records cannot therefore be
regarded as providing a picture of the operation of the entire irrigation system (Rost
2010: 2).
Within Mesopotamia there is, unfortunately, a dearth of detailed archaeological data
on the size and layout of Sumerian irrigation systems as well as for actual water control
features. Nevertheless, in addition to texts, the landscape itself provides information on
ancient irrigation, including the canals themselves, alignments of ancient sites along
former channels, and less frequently, evidence of field systems (Wilkinson, T.J. 2003:
45–46, fig. 5.7). Techniques employed to record such traces include satellite imagery
and air photographs (Hritz 2010), detailed contour maps that distinguish ancient levees
(Coles and Gasche 1998), digital terrain models (Hritz and Wilkinson 2006) and auger
investigations that provide cross-sections of alluvial sediments (Verhoeven 1998). In
addition, a wealth of information occurs in consultants’ reports, usually made for
twentieth-century agricultural development projects. Charred plant remains recovered
from excavated archaeological layers are particularly useful because they supply infor-
mation on irrigated crops, weeds of cultivation, as well as on the relative abundance
of water (Neef 1989).
Unfortunately, it is not always easy to link the above classes of information together.
For example, although administrative texts might refer to a canal, it is not always easy
to know which of a ganglion of canals on a satellite image might refer to the feature
discussed in a particular cuneiform tablet. Whereas archaeobotanical remains can be
dated by radiocarbon methods, it will not be clear where they were originally culti-
vated; on the other hand, canals and relict channels, although they can be accurately
located within the landscape, are often difficult to date. A particularly serious problem
with the evidence from field archaeology is that much Mesopotamian archaeology was
conducted before palaeobotanical and landscape analysis became commonplace
techniques, and because at the time of writing, it continues to be difficult to gain secure
safe access to Mesopotamia, it is difficult to undertake the appropriate ‘ground con-
trol’. Nevertheless, judicious use of the range of sources discussed above makes it
possible to attempt plausible reconstructions of ancient irrigation systems.

PHYSICAL CONTEXT OF THE HYDRAULIC LANDSCAPE

Sumer developed within an alluvial depression sandwiched between the Zagros
Mountains to the east and the western desert of Iraq to the west (Pournelle this
volume). The alluvium of this sedimentary basin has been deposited by the combined
waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, as well as in the form of marine deposits within
the head of the Persian Gulf, which at around 4000 BC extended some 200–250 km
inland of the present coastline near Fao (Ur this volume: fig. 7.1).
The southern part of the Mesopotamian plains that make up the land of Sumer have
been subdivided into four broad soil zones (Buringh 1960: 121):

• The floodplain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the sinuous or anasto-
mosing rivers usually flow on low levees with levee slopes ideal for gravity flow

35
 Tony J. Wilkinson

irrigation. They include floodbasins where water tables are higher and salinisation
can be a chronic problem.
• The delta plain o f the Tigris and Euphrates where the rivers are prone to branch into
a network o f channels. Here drainage is slow, water tables are high, many soils have
a tendency to be waterlogged, and flood basins are often covered by water or marshy.
• The marsh region where the rivers are virtually lost in reed-fringed extensive shallow
marshes and where groundwater is always high.
• The estuarine zone - here the tidal effect o f the G u lf is felt so that rises and falls o f
water levels contribute to both irrigation and drainage.

The nature o f the river systems

The most obvious, but profoundly deceptive, feature o f the lower Mesopotamian
plains is that they appear almost flat. W hat this means is that even minor differences
o f elevation can make a significant difference to the flow o f water. Therefore the
gradient, which can be as low as 5—10 cm per km (see Table 2.1), is sufficient for rivers
to flow and to discharge that flow into the Gulf. Because the channels in the lower
plain have a tendency towards straightness rather than being meandering, it is difficult
to distinguish between natural and artificial channels (Adams 1981:19; Wilkinson 2003:
82-85) —an ambiguity reflected in the cuneiform texts that do not distinguish between
natural rivers and artificial, dug canals. Two features o f the Tigris and Euphrates are
particularly significant for the development o f the hydraulic landscape: first, the rivers
tend to branch thereby forming what are termed anastomosing rivers; and second, they
flow on slightly raised levees up to a few metres high that result from the preferential
deposition o f sands and silts closer to the trunk channels, and finer clays further away
(Figure 2.1). Such low sinuosity anastomosing rivers are ideal for navigation by boats
and therefore for the transportation o f bulk products (Algaze 2008: 50-63). Moreover,
the location o f channels on levee crests enabled early irrigators to avoid one o f the
fundamental constraints o f the plain, namely, its low gradient. In other words, because
the gradient down the levee slope away from the river is much greater than the
longitudinal gradient along the river, it is easier to lead canals down the levee rather
than dig much longer canals that follow the overall gradient o f the plain (Adams 1981:
8; see below).

Levee
Crest

2.0m
2.0 m
1.0
1.0
Flood basin with
0 Gilqai
0

- 1.0 1.0

Fine sand + silt of Silt Silt + clay of

relict channel flood basins

Figure 2.1 Section through levees showing the deposits o f canals and ancient channels
(re-drawn from Diyala report)

36
 H ydraulic landscapes a n d irrigation systems

Some distance from the levees occur flood basins o f clay-rich and usually saline soils
that accumulate floodwaters from the rivers or the overflow from canals (Figure 2.2).
In the long term, such depressions became marshes that together with the perennial
and estuarine marshes characteristic o f the head o f the G u lf contributed to the overall
verdant nature o f the lower plains. In the vicinity o f the estuaries, the slight rise and fall
o f the tides also provided a natural system o f irrigation as well as drainage which allows
soils to be leached thereby mitigating the more extreme forms o f salinisation.
In addition to providing the foundation for local irrigation networks, the raised
anastomosing channels provided the framework for the distinctive alignments o f third
millennium settlements discussed by Jacobsen, Adams and Nissen (see Ur this
volume). Nevertheless, as argued by Pournelle (2007), the earlier patterns o f settlement
appear to have been less linear than those o f the Early Dynastic and later periods
because during the Ubaid the mosaic o f ‘turtlebacks’ and wetlands were also an
important locus o f settlement.
Unfortunately, this verdant ‘Garden o f Eden was marred by the tendency o f
the rivers to occasionally burst their banks and adopt new channels, a process
known as avulsion. Such catastrophic events, which are a well-known feature o f the
Mesopotamian plains (Gibson 1973; Adams 1981; W ilkinson, T.J. 2003: 84-85;
Morozova 2005), could lead to entire settlement systems being left without water, but
equally could have created new channels and new opportunities for settlement. This

Figure 2.2
Levees and flood basins in the
southern alluvium around
modern Suq al-Shuyukh
0 5 km (re-drafted from Buringh i960:
fig- 97)

37
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

process has not escaped the attention of cuneiform scholars and Edzard, drawing on
historical records that described a catastrophic shift in the bed of the Euphrates near
Mussaiyib in AD 1820, has suggested that similar shifts could have dispersed those
ancient populations whom the Old Babylonian kings say they returned to their
settlements (Edzard 1957: 117; also Potts 1997, note 6). Also, a statement by Sin-
iddinam, king of Larsa, (c.1849–1843 BC) may refer to an earlier avulsion:

In order to provide sweet water for the cities of my country . . . [An and Enlil]
commissioned me to restore it [to its original bed].
(Frayne 1990: 158–160; Steinkeller 2001)

Wetlands
Although today much of southern Mesopotamia appears to be alluvial desert, arid salt
flats and belts of sand dunes, that indispensible guide to twentieth-century Iraq, The
Geographical Handbook, states: ‘In striking contrast to conditions on the Syrian desert,
the alluvial lands of southern Mesopotamia suffer from a surfeit of water’ (Naval
Intelligence Division 1944: 189). In fact, marshes and wetlands were probably much
more significant during the Ubaid and the development of early states (Pournelle
2007). That wetlands were important during the period of Eridu is suggested by
Wright, who points out that the marshes provided a significant resource for the Ubaid
inhabitants (Wright 1981: 323) and Postgate who described the marshes as ‘teeming with
life’ (Postgate 1994: 158). The role of wetlands in the development of the prehistoric
communities was emphasised by Oates (1960) and more recently by Pournelle who
suggests that the earlier phases of Ubaid settlement were closely tied into a wetland
environment and many sites occurred on drier ‘turtle backs’ in the form of relict
Pleistocene islands (Pournelle 2003, 2007).
Although wetlands evidently formed an important source of resources during the
phases of Ubaid settlement, the analysis of charred plant remains from Tell Oueli
demonstrate that cereals were also irrigated (Huot 1989: 26; Neef 1989), but it is
difficult to say which was more important to the Ubaid economy. However, by the
third millennium BC, Sumer had become an important area of cereal production
(Winter 2007: 120), and irrigated cultivation probably gained ground over the use of
wetlands. This may be because, although marshlands provide a wealth of resources in
terms of reeds, building materials, fish and molluscs, their over-exploitation can result
in their depletion, whereas irrigation and cereal agriculture enabled the economic base
of the growing Sumerian civilisation to be enlarged. This process of ‘positive feedback’
would have enabled the economy to grow further, as discussed below. It is even
apparent that during the third millennium BC wetlands were drained, as in the case of
the Ur III king Ur-Nammu, who is recorded as draining marshes estimated to cover 1
shargal (SHAR2.GAL, perhaps 233 sq km; Civil 1994: 112).

The flood cycle

Critical to the agricultural economy was the annual flood cycle, which is poorly
synchronised with the needs of cultivators. In contrast to the Nile, whose monsoon-
driven annual flood well matches the needs of irrigation, the annual flood of both the

38
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

Tigris and the Euphrates peaks in April and May as a result of winter rainfall and spring
snowmelt on the mountains of Anatolia, Iran and Iraq (Adams 1981: 3–6). This not
only threatens the ripening grain crops, but also requires that considerable efforts be
made to protect the fields from flooding (Hunt 1988: 193). Thus Miguel Civil may be
correct to suggest that the Sumerians expended more effort on flood control than in
the distribution of water for irrigation (Civil 1994:110):

Most Ur III texts dealing with earth moving refer to the construction of embank-
ments (ég). This is (i)n agreement with the water regime in the area. The need to
protect the crops, ready for harvest from the river’s high waters, and to prevent the
flooding of towns and fields, is clear in economic and literary texts.
(Civil 1994: 134)

Of the two rivers, the Tigris had both a higher total annual water discharge and a
higher flood level, and this combined with the entrenched nature of part of its valley
means that it is conventionally regarded as being the more difficult of the two rivers for
irrigation.
The mismatch between the annual flood and the eventual development of large-
scale irrigation is perplexing because it makes it difficult to understand how the early
phases of irrigation developed. The Dutch soil scientist Buringh suggests that initial
irrigation was a form of flood recession agriculture that took place in the lower flood
basins following the retreat of the annual flood waters (Buringh 1960: 152). Although
simple irrigation could subsequently have developed out of small natural overflows and
levee breaks, which provided the locus for more organised irrigation (Buringh 1960;
Wilkinson, T.J. 2003: 89), these could only operate during the spring floods when the
water was at its peak, which was not the correct time for the irrigation of cereals.
Moreover, by discharging excess water at weak points on the river bank, these crevices
could be enlarged by the river thereby encouraging channel breaks and even channel
shifts or avulsions. On the other hand, spring and early summer floods would have
benefited the palm gardens that require copious water, especially during the hot
summer months and which must have been a very important crop during the third
millennium BC (Crawford 2004: 52). Because date gardens occupy the levee crests, this
cycle of summer irrigation would have been in keeping with the natural ecology of the
region. This spring and early summer flood would also have provided the appropriate
soil water to initiate cereal crops’ growth in the autumn. As the need for cereals grew
during the later stages of the Ubaid and/or the Uruk period, irrigation channels could
have been extended down levee to more distant fields that would progressively
withdraw more water during the lower phases of the flood cycle. Such an evolutionary
model of progressive development away from a riverine belt of palm gardens would fit
the model of traditional palm garden agriculture in southeast Arabia where palm
garden oases formed the primary focus of cultivation together with lower storeys of
plants within the shade. In such cases, only excess flow from the irrigation systems
would have been guided to temporary cultivation downstream of the oasis. The levee-
crest garden agriculture of southern Mesopotamia would complement the wetland
resources to provide the formative stage of Sumerian agriculture.

39
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

Salinity
Soil mapping in advance of major irrigation projects has demonstrated that water-
logged so-called hydromorphic soils are particularly common within the floodbasins
and lower levee slopes of southern Mesopotamia. These soils tend to become saline
when the water table remains close to the ground surface so that osmotic processes
cause salts to rise and accumulate near the surface (Buringh 1960). Since Jacobsen and
Adams (1958) suggested that a shift towards the more salt tolerant barley was associated
with increased salinisation, there has been a vigorous debate concerning the role of
salinisation in the demise of Sumerian civilisation. Although this model has been
disputed (Powell 1985), there can be little doubt that if irrigation spread down levee
towards flood basins, there would have been greater loss of crops due to salinisation.
However, as discussed below, because cereal cultivation may have been mainly confined
to the levee slopes during the third and even the early second millennium BC, the worst
affects of salinisation may have been avoided.

BROAD PATTERNS OF WATER DISTRIBUTION

Whereas the conventional model suggests that the lion’s share of irrigation water
during the third millennium BC derived from the more readily controlled and less
incised Euphrates River (Jacobsen 1960), it has been argued that the Tigris also played
a role in the supply of water to the lower plains (Potts 1997: 7–10, 26). This debate must
be contextualised within the dynamic and branching nature of the Mesopotamian
rivers which shifted significantly throughout the Holocene.
During the earlier Holocene a joint Tigris–Euphrates channel is thought to have
flowed through the centre of the plain (Paepe 1971), with the two rivers subsequently
separating so that the Tigris migrated to the east and the Euphrates to the west (Adams
1981; Algaze 2008, fig. 5; Hritz 2010: 187). After these early and rather obscure phases,
the record becomes clearer and ancient levees in the region of Sippar demonstrate that
during much of the third and second millennium BC the Mesopotamian plains received
a significant amount of water from branches of the Euphrates that radiated out from
the region of Sippar and contributed multiple channels that ultimately flowed to the
Sumerian cities of the lower plains (Jacobsen 1960; Cole and Gasche 1998). On the
other hand, Heimpel (1990: 213) has shown that the watercourse that flowed past
Girsu, Umma and Adab was the Tigris or a branch of it. Unfortunately, this recon-
struction runs into the problem that east of Sippar in the northern plains levees of
branches of the Euphrates extended east as far as the Tigris River and appear to have
watered the southern plains (Cole and Gasche 1998: map 5). Alternatively, Hritz shows
that a massive levee within the Diyala region may have been an earlier course of the
Tigris, which would then have supplied southern Sumer with irrigation water from a
northerly direction (Hritz 2010: figs. 13 and 14). This reconstruction also places the
Tigris at a level which would have enabled it to supply irrigation water by gravity flow
to a much larger area without the need for labour intensive water-lifting devices.
Illustrative of the complexities of these dynamic river systems is that of the water
supply of Umma which had two principal watercourses: the Idigna and the Iturungul,
both of which were its major lifelines (Adams 2008: 6). Whereas the former was a
branch of the ancient Tigris, its clearly canalised offshoot to the south, the Iturungul,
ultimately joined a major branch of the ancient Euphrates not far downstream from

40
 H ydraulic landscapes a n d irrigation systems

ancient Uruk (Figure 2.3). In other words, not only did processes such as avulsion
create branching systems of channels, additional seemingly artificial cuts extended the
number of channels for both transport and irrigation.
In the twentieth century AD, before the massive damming of the rivers, the flow of
the Tigris and Euphrates was progressively reduced downstream by both evaporation
and the withdrawal of water for irrigation. Thus at Hit, on the Euphrates at the head
o f the Mesopotamian plains, the discharge averaged 5,400 cubic metres per second,
whereas downstream at Nasriyah it was reduced to 1,740 (Potts 1997: 10). Despite this
diminution, which was probably less extreme during the third millennium BC, the
problem in the southern plains would have been to a) protect crops from excess water,
b) get rid of it by drainage, c) redistribute water via irrigation or take advantage of it
via flood-recession agriculture, and d) to utilize the abundant resources of the marshes.

Modern
Shatt al-
Gharraf

Bad Tibira

Uruk
0 25km

Figure 2.3 Archaeological sites o f the Ur III, Larsa and Old Babylonian periods and associated
channels in the area o f Umma. This ganglion-like pattern illustrates the complexity o f ancient
watercourses evident on air photographs and satellite images; the Shatt al-Gharraf currently flows
on a broad low levee from the Tigris to the north (re-drawn from Adams 2008, fig. 1).

41
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

Overall, the natural hydraulic landscape of anastomosing rivers and marshes was
taken advantage by early communities who probably used levee crests for palm gardens,
levee slopes for supplementary cultivation, with wetlands and perhaps tidal areas
providing marshland resources alongside flood recession agriculture (Kouchoukos 1998;
Pournelle 2007). Gradually, however, this landscape mosaic became more managed
so that what had been a ‘natural’ landscape became transformed into a ‘cultural’ lands-
cape with canals and fields becoming more formalized and extensive (Algaze 2008).
Nevertheless, ‘natural’ elements presumably persisted but were also managed in order to
conserve their valuable resources. This was a landscape mosaic in which rivers, marshes
and artificial channels all played a role, and presumably where artificial canals became
increasingly significant and elongated by the later third millennium BC.

THE LAYOUT OF CANALS AND WATER SUPPLY

River levees and the framework for Sumerian irrigation
One question raised by the textual evidence is the paucity of records of large canals.
Whereas the embankments of smaller canals of 6–9 m2 cross section (Civil 1994: 135) were
quite common, administrative records relating to Ur III Umma and Girsu appear silent
on the existence of larger canals. Mathematical texts also point to rather short canals by
implying that most canals and irrigation ditches (pa5 sig in Sumerian) were mainly
1.8–2.16 km long (Powell 1988: 163). On the other hand, in his royal inscriptions Ur
Nammu claims to have authorised the excavation of major works, and records of large
canals, such as the 50 km Nina canal, were occasionally recorded (Rost 2010: 16–17).
If canals were constructed to flow down the longitudinal gradient of the plain, due
to its very low gradient, it would have been necessary for the head gates of canals to
have been up to 40 km upstream from the point where water was distributed for
irrigation (Hunt 1988: 201). However, a key advantage of the Mesopotamian landscape
is the presence of riverine levees raised 1–3 metres above plain level and which con-
tributed a gradient normal to the main river that was significantly steeper than that
of the plain itself. Such levee back-slopes that led away from the stream towards
adjoining basins provided natural drainage and were highly suitable for cultivation
(Adams 1981: 8).
The significance of gradient is demonstrated by statistics provided in irrigation
reports of the Shatt al-Gharraf area (Cotha Consulting) (Table 2.1).
Table 2.1 Range of gradients of floodplain and levee slopes in the Gharraf East Area, near Tello-Girsu

Orientation of gradient Mean regional gradient Range of gradients

Longitudinal (over 130 km) 0.05/1000 (1: 20,000) 0.04/1000 (1: 25,000) to
0.45/1000 (1: 2222)
Transverse (gradients for main channel levees):
Gharraf (1500m) 2/1000 = 1: 500
El Amah (1700 m) 1.4/1000 = 1: 714
Shattrah (3200 m wide) 0.8/1000 = 1: 1250

Note: From Cotha 1959b: 14 Table A. VIII-1.

42
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

The communities of Sumer therefore had the choice of digging either long canals
up to 40 km (Hunt 1988: 194) with extremely gentle gradients, or rather shorter canals
from the rivers down the slope of the levee (Figure 2.4 a and b). The latter have
significantly steeper gradients which are more flexible for water distribution to the
fields and which are less likely to silt up or be subject to salinisation. Such channels
would provide modest-size irrigation modules capable of being organised by kin groups
or small-scale communities (Fernea 1970; Rost 2010; Pollock 1999: 31). In fact, many
traditional irrigation systems illustrated on maps of the southern Mesopotamian plains
adopt this configuration (Figure 2.5). Significantly, short canals of 1.8–2.2 km would
correspond roughly to total levee widths of 3.6–4.3 km, figures comparable to the levee
widths of 2–5 km estimated by Pournelle (2007). This is also similar to the width of
distributions of clay sickles used by Henry Wright to estimate the agricultural belts
around Ubaid and Ur in the Ubaid and Uruk periods (Wright 1981: 324).
Overall, it is therefore possible to reconstruct the hydraulic landscape of third–early
second millennium BC Sumer as forming three basic zones:

• The levee crest where channels irrigated palm gardens, other orchard crops (some
as a storey below the palms), vegetables and grain fields.
• The levee slopes where short canals irrigated fields mainly to grow cereals, perhaps
pulses and onions (Hruška 2007: 58). Together, zones one and two probably
extended some 2–5 km away from the levee crest or main channel.
• A mosaic of steppe, marshes, fallow and alluvial desert steppe beyond the main
levees. Although cultivation could have been extended into this zone, this would
result in rapid salinisation. This zone would have supplied grazing, fishing, game
birds, reeds and other marshland resources (Pournelle 2007).

There was therefore a choice between either long canals that followed the grade of the
plain, but required more labour and were prone to siltation, or shorter steeper canals
that serviced a small area, but which were potentially vulnerable to peak floods that
could rip through off-takes. Because the levee width would limit the area of cereal
production, and territorial boundaries between neighbouring towns and cities would
limit the cultivated territories along the river channels, the total productive area would
have been constrained. Nevertheless a 5–6 km wide levee with settlements some 10 km
apart would have been capable of sustaining towns of up to 8,000–12,000 people,
perhaps covering between 40 and 120 ha. During times of social cohesion and political
accord between communities, the ease of transport of bulk products by boat would
have enabled shortfalls of crop production to be addressed by transporting grain from
neighbouring communities (Wilkinson et al. 2007: 188). However, if political relations
with city states upstream or downstream soured, the existing site territory may have
been insufficient to supply the towns and there would have been a temptation either
to violate fallow in order to provide crops every year (Gibson 1974), or to build longer
canals, thereby increasing the cultivable area. However, if such canals were extended
into the lower flood basins, there would have been the risk of salinisation. In other
words, greater political unity would have enabled more boat traffic to take place
between communities as was the case in the Ur III period, a period when it was also
easier to mobilise grain for the payment of the bala tax (Steinkeller 1987; Algaze 2008:
56–57; Widell 2008).

43
 Tony ] . Wilkinson

Figure 2.4a
Layout o f an ancient canal system
that distributed water from a levee
crest channel in the northern
alluvium (Widell 2008)

Canals

Sites as recognised
on soil maps Canals

0 1 km

Figure 2.4b MAIN CHANNEL

Diagrammatic layout
showing the possible Fields
distribution o f lateral canals
and their associated irrigated
land (left) versus a single
longitudinal canal (right)

SECONDARY Longitudinal
CHANNEL canal

Incised secondary
channel
Levee
0 5km

44
 H ydraulic landscapes a n d irrigation systems

Figure 2.5
Ottoman irrigation system around
Qal’a Sussa on the Shatt al Kar
showing the inferred belt o f irrigated
land (adapted from Adams and Nissen
1972: fig. 26).

Inferred
zone of
irrigated
cultivation

0 5 km

Canals Archaeological sites

A landscape mosaic
Whereas the flat topography of lower Mesopotamia gives the impression that irrigated
landscapes could have extended over wide areas, the levee model suggests that the
irrigated area might have been rather limited. A similar picture is evident from Ur III
cuneiform records which suggest that out of the very roughly 2,000 sq km estimated
for the city o f Ummas region, only some 127 sq km were recorded as in use for
cultivation (Adams 2008:10; after Dahl 2007: 36). The area actually cultivated may not
therefore have exceeded a half kilometre or so in depth, but at the yields resulting from
irrigation, this may have been sufficient to support the inhabitants o f the city.
Alternatively, there may have been an 'invisible5non-state sector providing the balance
required. The very modest ‘footprint’ of the ensi’s agricultural administration would
have been served by state-maintained (and irrigation taxed) canals and water courses:

No extended layouts of dendritic irrigation systems are in evidence, on the model

of those that came to characterize the Mesopotamian plain two and a half millennia

45
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

later. Instead there was a patchwork of urban-centred zones of varying size along
connective but often narrow canal or river-branch corridors, and zones of irrigated
agriculture, apparently interspersed with marsh and steppe deemed difficult or
unsuitable (sometimes too saline) to justify irrigating.
(Adams 2008: 15, 1978)

This differentiated pattern of irrigation also implies that there were limitations to
the extent of either provincial or royal authority which may not have spread into the
more remote areas of the countryside (Adams 2008: 16).

WATER SUPPLY AND AGRICULTURE

The terminology from mathematical texts, school texts and the ‘Farmers Instructions’,
when combined with knowledge of modern irrigation techniques and ethnography,
enable plausible reconstructions to be made of ancient hydraulic works (Pemberton et
al. 1988; Postgate 1990; Hunt 1988). It is necessary to be wary, however, not only
because some features of the Sumerian landscape will have been significantly different
from those of the recent past (Zettler 2003), but also because the term ‘water works’
rather than ‘irrigation canals’ may be more appropriate for much of the terminology
because many activities were focused on flood control, not just irrigation (Powell 1988:
162; Civil 1994).
Powell (1988) subdivides Sumerian water works into three broad groups:

• Canals and irrigation ditches

• Dams and barrages
• Wells, cisterns and reservoirs.

Channels, canals, banks and irrigation ditches

The term pa4/pa5–(r) refers to an irrigation ditch (Civil 1994: 109), but because the state
authorities were more concerned with labour expended on digging canals, the texts
refer to the volume of soil up-cast and the size of the resultant levees. Therefore
evidence of canals derives mainly from references to the mounds of up-cast alongside
(ég), rather than the ditch itself (Civil 1994: 109; Pemberton et al. 1988: 212–213). For
example, at Girsu, texts refer to small embankments with cross-sections ranging from
0.5 x 0.5 to 1.25 x 2.5 m (Ibid.: 118), whereas around Umma cross-section areas ranged
from 6 x 0.5 m to 9 x 2.5 m (Ibid.: 118). The latter represents a canal of substantial size,
especially because there would probably be two banks, one on each side. In addition,
those parts of the levees that were vulnerable to erosion or to rising flood waters were
reinforced with reeds or rushes (ú-sag11: Ibid.: 121).
Canal construction was often commemorated, and the king Rim-Sin refers to the
excavation of the canal known as Simat-Erra as follows: ‘its two embankments/levees
are like mountains’. This is an apt description for anyone who has seen the landscape
associated with major canals which dominate the topography, often rising above the
ancient city mounds. Other texts give a flavour of the landscape itself, by referring to
levees with tamarisks, poplars or ash trees (Ibid.: 113), a phenomenon also mentioned
by Guest (1933) for twentieth-century Iraq.

46
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

Despite the need to rid the land of water, which was arguably as important as
bringing water to it, especially to safeguard against salinisation, there is little reference
to drains (Postgate 1994: 181). Nevertheless, it is likely that some linear soil marks evi-
dent on the ground and satellite images (and perhaps of later date than the Sumerians)
are probably drains rather than canals.

Features along canals

After water was conducted along canals it was necessary to get this water into sec-
ondary, tertiary and smaller channels, and ultimately into the fields. This was probably
effected by using either regulators or weirs. Probably the best-known archaeological
example of a canal regulator was that excavated by Parrot at Tello, ancient Girsu (Parrot
1948: 213; Potts 1997: 20–21). Constructed of baked bricks and bitumen, this feature
appears to have taken a large volume of water and funnelled it through a narrow brick-
built channel which would have constrained flow to a given discharge after which the
water then flowed into a widening funnel, presumably back into another channel
(Postgate 1994: fig. 9.2; Pemberton et al. 1988: fig. 9).
In modern irrigation systems it is necessary to employ distributors, with or without
gates, to subdivide flow into smaller canals. In Iraq, this role is traditionally played by
dams or weirs constructed of reeds, palm trunks and mud, which operate to both raise
and divert flow into subordinate channels (Rost and Hamdani in press). Because the
water level is usually low when it is required for irrigating cereals, a regulator is required
to raise the water to a sufficient level for it to flow into smaller channels or fields.
Accordingly ‘the cultivators build a series of dams each of which holds up the water
till the fields in the neighbourhood have been flooded, and it is then broken to let the
water pass on to the next dam’ (GB Admiralty: 1918: 434).
Here it has been necessary to digress into traditional irrigation methods because
there is no universal agreement regarding the meaning of all the Sumerian terminology
for features referred to in the texts. For example, the meaning of terms such as a-ga-
am (perhaps an artificial pond to slow down the flow of water (Civil 1994: 130)) and
nag-ku5 (lateral ponds or reservoirs into which excess flood waters were diverted for
later use (Civil 1994: 133; Zettler 2003: 32)) continue to be debated. Particularly vexing
is that because these Sumerian features do not seem to occur in the modern landscape,
it appears that the Sumerian landscape may have been rather different from that of
today. Adding to the enigmatic nature of these features is that if the nag-ku5 were in fact
reservoirs, they did not appear to have held sufficient water for the irrigation of fields
of grain (Hunt 1988: 194), nor for holding large amounts of flood water.
Finally, the water reached the fields, which were frequently long and narrow with
the upper (short) end facing a water course (Civil 1994: 125; Liverani 1996). However,
occasionally there is reference to the irrigation of palm orchards with an under-storey
of other plants such as pomegranates (Civil 1994: 131).
Overall, what would have originally been a natural fluvial system that evacuated
excess water and sediments from the Tigris–Euphrates basin into the Gulf, under
human management eventually became a massive sediment trap. This is because most
irrigation practices either imposed impediments to the flow, slowed the flow, or by
allowing water to infiltrate the soil, precipitated excess silts and clays. Therefore not
only was it a massive labour-intensive task to remove the accumulated silt and clay, as

47
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

with the famous irrigation systems of southern Arabia, but also the fields must
gradually have been raised by siltation relative to the level of the inlet canals, thereby
slowing down flow even more and encouraging further sedimentation. Because rivers,
canals and fields were all gradually aggrading, the entire hydraulic landscape required
considerable effort to constrain this to within an acceptable amount, or alternatively to
remodel the system so that it continued to function.

RIVERS AND CANALS AS TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS

It has long been recognised that canals and channels were as important as transport
routes as they were for conducting irrigation water, a theme that remains central
to the so-called ‘Mesopotamian Advantage’ (Sauren 1966: 36; Algaze 2008). The
branching ‘low sinuosity’ river systems were ideal for the mobilisation of bulk goods
from city to city (Figure 2.6; Algaze 2008: 51–62; Potts 1997: 28) so that not only did
they provide an excellent distribution system, but also like many modern road systems
they functioned as a network that was capable of being extended. Thus the large
Iturungul canal of probably third millennium BC ‘provided a connective link in an
enclosing network of natural and artificial watercourses serving the major southern
Mesopotamian cities’ (Adams, 2008: 6, 9; Adams 1981: figs 18, 21; Steinkeller 2001: 40
map 1). Furthermore, any open water marshlands would also have increased the
connectivity of the channel system (Pournelle 2007). Such increased connectivity is
important because it indicates how just one extra link in a network can improve the
overall connectivity of that system thereby making it much more efficient to transport
goods throughout the entire network.
Apparently the scale of grain shipments during the Ur III state was so significant
that perhaps half of the gross harvest from Umma’s cultivated lands, according to state
records, moved by barge especially between the major Ur III urban centres of Ur, Uruk
and Nippur (Sharlach 2004: 27, 161; Adams 2008: 9). Nevertheless, the rivers and

Figure 2.6 Bulk transport of reeds by boat. Photo: V 009, courtesy of the Gertrude Bell Archives.

48
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

canals must have served multiple functions so that when, for example, dams were
inserted to guide water into canals they must have interfered with the movement of
boats.

LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS OF IRRIGATION

Canal construction was frequently a royal undertaking and many canals are credited to
specific kings (Walters 1970: 144). Thus cuneiform texts not only demonstrate the
concerns of the kings to provision the populace with good water and to create new
agricultural lands (Potts 1997: 21) but they also provide insights into the layout of the
canals. For example, canals are sometimes referred to as being extended to the sea (Potts
1997: 21; Cooper 1986: 70; Jacobsen 1960: 174–185). In other cases, canals may have
operated as boundaries (Jacobsen 1960: 178); however, because the term ‘ég’, which is
often interpreted as a canal, was probably a bank of up-cast from a canal, features which
represented boundaries between states, such as that between Umma and Lagash, may
simply have been linear banks (Postgate 1994: 182–183).
Moreover, the generosity of both gods and the king as suppliers of abundance was
celebrated:

that the vast fields might grow rich, that the ditches and canals of Lagash be full to
the brim, that in the plain . . . the grain goddess . . . might proudly look up . . ., that
after the good fields have brought barley, emmer and all kinds of pulses, enormous
grain heaps, the whole yield of the land of Lagash might be heaped up.
(Edzard 1997: 75–76 cited in Winter 2007: 120)

Although fundamentally a communal enterprise that requires human cooperation in

order to function, irrigation systems were also the focus of disputes that needed to be
resolved within a legal framework (Bruun in Wikander 2000). For example, according
to the law code of Hammurabi, if a farmer failed to maintain the banks of his irrigation
canals or let water flow on to another man’s fields thereby causing damage to crops,
the farmer at fault was expected to pay damages (Bruun 2000; Postgate 1994: 182).
Although these laws as written were Babylonian, they may have been based on
Sumerian precedents.

Irrigated lands and estates

Although there is explicit evidence for the role of the king in the construction of major
water works, most scholars accept that the temple was not the state (Postgate 1994: 115;
Gibson 2010: 86–87), and its role in the organisation of the entire system of irriga-
tion is now questioned (Rost 2010). Nevertheless, much irrigation was harnessed to
supply large institutional estates, many under the administration of the king, and it is
therefore important to understand how such estates developed from earlier small-scale
agriculture.
The tendency for certain types of field and garden areas to evolve through time can
be inferred from the work of agricultural consultants in the 1950s. Poyck (1962: 75),
for example, makes the counter-intuitive point that tenant farmers enjoyed a higher
standard of living than most owner occupiers. This is because they sowed relatively

49
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

large areas of land, albeit at a relatively low yield and return, which necessarily resulted
in the deployment of large areas of fallow also available for grazing, which resulted in
significant ‘wealth on the hoof ’. This exceeded that of the owner occupiers, who had
less land at their disposal for grazing. In other words, tenants of larger holdings, despite
their requirement to pay a significant proportion of their production to the estate
owner, would generate more wealth. As Fernea (1970: 48) reminds us, the role of fallow
is therefore not only essential to allow for leaching of salts, it is also advantageous for
building up large herds.
Because share cropping on large estates was perhaps more profitable than income
from dependent farmers (Fernea 1970: 48), it is therefore possible to imagine (but
difficult to prove) that in early Sumer, estates which taxed dependent farmers could
grow at the expense of smaller household plots. Furthermore, large land holdings such
as estates would also benefit from economies of scale because many of the tasks
performed were more efficient when they were conducted on a large scale (Postgate
1994: 188). Because smaller holdings were probably associated with palm gardens along
the levee crest, the estates probably grew relative to them and extended down slope to
form the cereal zone described above.

CONCLUSIONS
Water clearly played a fundamental role in the development of Sumerian civilisation,
although the Sumerian farmer often had to devote as much time in getting rid of it as
collecting it to nurture crops. Whereas Ubaid landscapes probably formed a mosaic of
riverine gardens, wetlands with ‘turtle back’ islands and desert steppe, by the third
millennium BC settlements appear to have gravitated towards levees so that both towns
and irrigation systems became aligned. Although marshes would have remained
important, some were evidently drained whereas others would have grown as a result
of the discharge of excess water from canals.
When cuneiform and field evidence are combined, it can be inferred that areas such
as that around Umma consisted of relatively narrow cultivated zones between which
would have extended areas of desert-steppe and marsh, which was itself a valuable
resource. Although evidence exists for the construction of larger canals, especially in
the later third millennium BC, most appear to have been less than 5 km long and only
in the Ur III-Isin-Larsa period did the landscape include longer canals (Adams 1981:
fig. 31), a pattern that became particularly evident by the later second millennium BC
(Ur this volume fig. 7.8).
Sumerian irrigation, rather than being a monolithic system dominated by a
theocratic state, therefore was probably more heterogeneous and less centrally managed
than previously thought (Rost 2010: 3). Moreover, there is now little support for the
notion that the need to irrigate large irrigation systems actually created the state as
argued by Wittfogel (1957). Instead, shorter canals leading from the main channels
could have been readily organised by Sumerian communities in the same way as recent
kin-based social systems in southern Iraq (Fernea 1970). There is also no reason why
the state should have controlled everything because in modern systems both state-
controlled administration (upstream) and independent or privately owned systems
(downstream) co-exist (Ertsen 2010). In other words, in Sumer, the state or the king
could have sponsored and built the main infrastructure and controlled estates, while

50
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

local kin-based or tribal communities could have organised much of the remainder.
Because cuneiform tablets only provide a record of the state-controlled system, it is
evident that irrigation, although perhaps providing the backbone of state production,
may only have provided an unknown proportion of total production.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Particular thanks go to the University of Chicago MASS project and colleagues for
discussions that contributed to this article: specific thanks go to Mac Gibson, Magnus
Widell, Carrie Hritz, Jonathan Tenney, Stephanie Rost, Benjamin Studevent-Hickman,
Jason Ur and Tate Paulette. I am especially grateful to the editor, Harriet Crawford, for
her patience.

REFERENCES
Adams, R.McC. 1978. Strategies of Maximization, Stability, and Resilience in Mesopotamian Society,
Settlement, and Agriculture. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 127: 329–335.
—— 1981. Heartland of Cities. Surveys of ancient settlement and land use on the central floodplain of
the Euphrates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
—— 2008. An Interdisciplinary Overview of a Mesopotamian City and its Hinterlands. Cuneiform
Digital Library Journal 2008: 1 (UCLA).
Adams, R.McC and Nissen H. 1972. The Uruk Countryside. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Algaze, G. 2008. Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press
Bruun, C. 2000. Water Legislation in the Ancient World (c. 2200 BC–c. AD 500.) In Handbook of
Ancient Water Technology, Ö.Wikander (ed.), pp. 539–604. Leiden: Brill.
Buringh, P. 1960. Soils and Soil Conditions in Iraq. Baghdad: Republic of Iraq, Ministry of
Agriculture.
Charles, M.P. 1988. Irrigation in lowland Mesopotamia. Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 4: 1–39.
—— 1990. Traditional crop husbandry in southern Iraq 1900–1960. Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture
5: 47–64.
Civil, Miguel. 1994. The Farmer’s Instructions. Barcelona: Aula Orientalis.
Cole, S.W. and Gasche, H. 1998. Second- and first-millennium BC rivers in northern Babylonia. In
Changing watercourses in Babylonia. Towards a reconstruction of the ancient environment in lower
Mesopotamia, H. Gasche, and Tanret, M. (eds). Chicago: University of Ghent and the Oriental
Institute of the University of Chicago.
Cooper, J.S. 1986. Sumerian and Akkadian Royal Inscriptions, I: Presargonic Inscriptions. New Haven,
CT: American Oriental Society.
Cotha Consulting Engineers. 1959a. Drainage Investigations in Gharraf East area. Baghdad: Republic
of Iraq Ministry of Agriculture, Directorate General of Irrigation, Final Report, accompanying
maps.
Cotha Consulting Engineers. 1959b. Drainage investigations in Gharraf East area. Baghdad:
Republic of Iraq, Ministry of Agriculture, Directorate General of Irrigation Final Report,
vol. II, appendix 2.
Crawford, H. 2004. Sumer and the Sumerians (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dahl, J. 2007. The Ruling Family of Ur III Umma. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije
Oosten.
Edzard, D.O. 1957. Die ‘zweite Zwischenzeit’ Babyloniens. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
—— 1997. Gudea and his Dynasty. In The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods 3/1.
Toronto: University of Toronto.

51
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

Ertsen, M.W. 2010. Structuring properties of irrigation systems: understanding relations between
humans and hydraulics through modelling. Water History 2 (2): 165–183.
Fernea, Robert A. 1970. Shaykh and Effendi. Changing Patterns of Authority among the El Shabana of
Southern Iraq. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Flückiger-Hawker, E. 1999. Urnamma of Ur in Sumerian Literary Tradition. OBO 166. Fribourg:
University Press.
Frayne, D. 1990. Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Early Periods vol. 4 (2003–1595 BC). Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
GB Admiralty. 1918. A Handbook of Mesopotamia. London: Intelligence Division.
Gibson, McG. 1972. The City and Area of Kish. Miami: Field Research Publications.
—— 1973. Population shift and the rise of Mesopotamian civilisation. In The Explanation of Culture
Change: models in prehistory, Colin Renfrew (ed.), pp. 447–463. London: Duckworth.
—— 1974. Violation of fallow and engineered disaster in Mesopotamian civilization. In Irrigation’s
Impact on Society, T.E. Downing and McG. Gibson (eds), pp. 7–19. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press.
—— 2010. The Dead Hand of Deimel. In Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the
Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East, R.A. Carter and G. Philip (eds). Chicago: SAOC 63,
Oriental Institute.
Guest, E. 1933. Notes on plants and plant products with their colloquial names in Iraq. Bulletin of
the Department of Agriculture, 27, Baghdad, Iraq.
Heimpel, W. 1990. Ein zweiter Schritt zur Rehabilitierung der Rolle des Tigris in Sumer. Zeitschrift
fur Assyriologie 80: 204–213.
Hritz, C. 2010. Tracing settlement patterns and channel systems in southern Mesopotamia using
remote sensing. Journal of Field Archaeology 35 (2): 184–203.
Hritz, C. and Wilkinson, T.J. 2006. Using shuttle radar topography to map ancient water channels.
Antiquity 80: 415–424.
Hruška, B. 2007. Agricultural techniques. In The Babylonian World, G. Leick (ed.), pp. 54–65.
London: Routledge.
Hunt, R.C. 1988. Hydraulic management in southern Mesopotamia in Sumerian times. Bulletin on
Sumerian Agriculture vol. IV, part 1: 189–206.
Huot, J-L. 1989. ‘Ubaidian villages of lower Mesopotamia. Permanence and evolution from ‘Ubaid
0 to ‘Ubaid 4 as seen from Tell el’ Oueili. In Upon This Foundation: The ‘Ubaid reconsidered,
E.F. Henrickson and I. Thuesen (eds), pp.19–42. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute
Publications 10.
Ionides, M.G. 1937. The Regime of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris. London: E. and F. Spon.
Jacobsen, T. 1960. The waters of Ur. Iraq 22: 174–185.
Jacobsen, T. and R. McC. Adams. 1958. Salt and silt in ancient Mesopotamian agriculture. Science
128: 1251–1258.
Liverani, M. 1996. Reconstructing the rural landscape of the ancient Near East. Journal of the Social
and Economic History of the Orient 39: 1–49.
Morozova, G.S. 2005. A review of Holocene avulsions of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and
possible effects on the evolution of civilizations in Lower Mesopotamia. Geoarchaeology 20:
401–423.
Naval Intelligence Division. 1944. Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Geographical Handbook B.R. 534. UK
Government.
Neef, R. 1989. Plant remains from archaeological sites in lowland Iraq: Tell el ’Oueili. In Larsa:
Travaux de 1985, J-L. Huot (ed.), pp. 321–329. Paris: Editions CNRS.
Oates, J. 1960. Ur and Eridu, the prehistory. Iraq 22: 32–50.
Paepe, R. 1971. Geological approach of the Tell ed-Der area. In Tell ed-Der I, L. De Meyer, H. Gasche
and R. Paepe (eds.), pp. 9–27. Louvain: Editions Peeters.
Parrot, A. 1948. Tello: Vingt campagnes de fouilles (1877–1933). Paris: Albin-Michel.

52
 –– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––

Pemberton, W., J.N. Postgate and R.F. Smyth. 1988. Canals and bunds, ancient and modern. Bulletin
on Sumerian Agriculture IV: 207–221.
Pollock, S. 1999. Ancient Mesopotamia: the Eden that Never Was. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Postgate, J.N. 1990. A Middle Tigris Village. Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture V: 65–74.
—— 1994. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. London: Routledge.
Potts, D.T. 1997. Mesopotamian Civilization: the material foundations. London: Athlone Press.
Pournelle, J.R. 2003. Marshland of Cities: Deltaic Landscapes and the Evolution of Early Mesopotamian
Civilization. Ph.D. dissertation, Dept of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego.
Pournelle, J.R. 2007. KLM to CORONA: A bird’s eye view of cultural ecology and early
Mesopotamian urbanization. In Settlement and Society: Essays Dedicated to Robert McCormick
Adams, E. Stone (ed.), pp. 29–62. Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen Institute.
Poyck, A.P.G. 1962. Farm Studies in Iraq: an agro-economic study of the agriculture in the Hilla-
Diwaniya area in Iraq. Mededelingen van de Landbouwhogeschool te Wageningen 62 (1).
Powell, M.A. 1985. Salt, Seed, and Yields in Sumerian Agriculture: A Critique of the Theory of
Progressive Salinization. Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 75: 7–38.
—— 1988. Evidence for agriculture and waterworks in Babylonian mathematical texts. Bulletin on
Sumerian Agriculture IV: 161–72.
Rost, S. 2010. Irrigation Management in the Ur III period: A Reconsideration based on a Case Study
of the Maintenance of the íd-NINA-šè-DU Canal of the Province Lagaš. In Die empirische
Dimension altorientalischer Forschungen, Selz, G.J. and Wagensonner, K. (eds), Wiener Offene
Orientalistik. 6. Vienna.
Rost, S. and Hamdani, A.A. (in press). Traditional dam construction in 20th century Iraq: a possible
analogy for the understanding of ancient irrigation practices in Mesopotamia. Iraq.
Sauren, H. 1966. Topography der Provinz Umma nach den Urkunden der Zeit der III. Dynastie von
Ur. Teil I: Kanäle und Bewässerungsanlagen. Heidelberg: K. Urlaub.
Sharlach, T.M. 2004 Provincial Taxation and the Ur III State. Cuneiform Monographs 26. Leiden-
Boston: Brill-Styx.
Steinkeller, P. 1987. The Administration and Economic Organization of the Ur III State: The Core
and the Periphery. In M. Gibson and R. D. Biggs, (eds.), The Organization of Power: Aspects of
Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East. Chicago, Oriental Institute: SAOC 46, pp. 119–141.
—— 2001. New light on the hydrology and topography of southern Babylonia in the third
millennium. Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 91: 22–84.
Verhoeven, K. 1998. Geomorphological research in the Mesopotamian floodplains. In Changing
watercourses in Babylonia. Towards a reconstruction of the ancient environment in lower
Mesopotamia, H. Gasche and Tanret, M. (eds), pp. 159–245. Chicago: University of Ghent and
the University of Chicago Oriental Institute.
Walters, S.D. 1970. Water for Larsa; an Old Babylonian archive dealing with irrigation. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Widell, M. 2008. Lecture at the 2009 BANEA meeting, Durham, UK.
Wilkinson, J.C. 1977. Water and Tribal Settlement in Oman. A Study of the Aflaj of Oman. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Wilkinson, T.J. 2003. Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Wilkinson, T.J., McG. Gibson, J.H. Christiansen, M. Widell, D. Schloen, N. Kouchoukos, C.
Wood, J. Sanders, K.-L. Simunich, M. Altaweel, J.A. Ur, C. Hritz, J. Lauinger, T. Paulette, and
J. Tenney. 2007. Modeling settlement systems in a dynamic environment: case studies from
Mesopotamia. In The Model-Based Archaeology of Socio-Natural Systems, T.A. Kohler and S.E. van
der Leeuw (eds), pp. 175–208. Santa Fe New Mexico: School for Advanced Research Press.
Winter, I. 2007. Representing Abundance: the visual representation of the Agrarian State. In
Settlement & Society: Essays dedicated to R McC. Adams E, Stone (ed.), pp.113–138. Los Angeles:
UCLA Cotsen Institute.

53
 –– Tony J. Wilkinson ––

Wittfogel, K. 1957. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Wood, C. 2005. On the Euphrates. Zeitschrifte fur Assyriologie 95: 7–45.
Wright, H. 1981. The southern margins of Sumer. Survey of the area of Eridu and Ur. In Heartland
of Cities, Adams, R.McC. (ed.), pp. 295–345. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zettler, R.L. 2003. Reconstructing the world of ancient Mesopotamia: divided beginnings and
holistic history. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46 (1): 3–44.

54