Land Use and Environment in a Zone of Uncertainty: A Case of the Sasanian Expansion in Eastern Iraq – Western Iran

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores diverse patterns of settlement and land use across an environmentally transitional area in eastern Iraq and western Iran during the Sasanian period. Historical and modern high-resolution satellite images in conjunction with field surveys are employed to document archaeological features. Analysis of multispectral satellite imagery creates a historical and traditional land use model that contributes to a spatial understanding of land classes and their relationship with archaeological features. Thereafter, data are interpreted with respect to the environmental and ethnographic records. Results indicate the limitations of our past archaeological knowledge of human-environment interactions during late antiquity. They present multitier land use and subsistence strategy in a region outside of the empire’s political and economic core zones. I discuss intertwined interactions between the sedentary and non-sedentary populations and argue that while intensification occurred in the late Sasanian period, agropastoralism and mobility have been dominant patterns of settlement and land use.