Einfuhrung in die Geo-Archaologie des Vorderen Orients.

• Author: Deckers, Katleen
• Position: Book review

Einfuhrung in die Geo-Archaologie des Vorderen Orients, by WERNER NUTZEL. Wiesbaden: REICHERT VERLAG, 2004. Pp. xviii + 291, illus. [euro]29 (paper).

This book begins with a somewhat awkward definition of geoarchaeology. Nutzel argues that geoarchaeology consists of combining geoscience publications with archaeological knowledge to solve unanswered archaeological and philological questions. In recent years, however, many geoarchaeologists have shown that geoarchaeology is also an active and dynamic field discipline in the pursuit of solving archaeological and philological questions (e.g., Brown 1997, Goldberg et al. 2001, and French 2003). The definition indicates what Nutzel intends to do with this book, offering a summary of published environmental works with relevance to archaeology. This, however, is a necessary task, since so much has been published and so little summarized into a coherent and up-to-date overview.

The book is divided into four parts. The first deals with the basic background for understanding interactions between people and their environment: the delineation of the dry-farming border in the Near East, an introduction of the Mesopotamian twin-stream system, and an introduction to salinization problems in the Mesopotamian plain. For the delineation of the dry-farming limit, Nutzel mentions the 300/350 mm isohyet, while most researchers in the Near East actually define the 250 mm isohyet as the theoretical dry-land farming limit. In reality, it has been observed that dry-farming cultivation has been undertaken beyond the limit of 250 mm, in spite of the fact that it is a risky enterprise (Wilkinson and Tucker 1995: 7-8). In a following chapter, Nutzel makes a valuable calculation of the salinization problem which might be introduced by irrigation without sufficient drainage.

In the second part of the book, geomorphological and palaeoclimatological data are detailed for each period in relation to the development of human settlement. For the Epipalaeolithic chapter, Nutzel briefly summarizes the history of Ice Age investigations by mentioning Penek and geomorphological research in Germany. He omits more recent achievements in isotopic research, which tend to drift away from the classical and somewhat local morphological scheme of Gunz-Mindel-Riss-Wurm and its questionable applicability to the Near East. Therefore, I think it would be better not to use the term Wurm III for the Near East as has been done in his book. During the Late Glacial Maximum the whole Persian Gulf was probably land, while glaciation evidence has been found in several mountainous areas of the Near East.

While for the subsequent Holocene section, the book is focused on the...