Extrapolating Ebla: Combining Remote Sensing, Survey and Textual Sources to Define an Early State

The methodological revolution brought about by the systematic use of high resolution satellite imagery in Near Eastern archaeology, to which the work of Tony Wilkinson represents an unparalleled contribution, can perhaps be divided into two stages. Initially, difficulties associated with the rectification of CORONA spy photography and the prohibitive costs of high resolution modern imagery when it became available in the early 2000s restricted the spatial extent of the areas investigated. Various archaeological projects made use of both types of imagery with significant success (Kennedy 1998; Lonnqvist et al. 2011; Philip et al. 2002; Ur and Wilkinson 2008), but the