Resilient Landscapes: The Evolution of Riparian Landscape Studies in Southern Iraq

This chapter explores the history of studies and reconstructions of the Tigris-Euphrates river systems in Southern Mesopotamia, and draws a disruptive conclusion: that the Akkad-dominated and static view of the Lower Mesopotamian plain must end. No representation of river courses as single black lines on white maps is ever fully representative of contemporary riparian dynamics anywhere, but in regions (like Babylonia) where understanding coupled anthropogenic and natural systems is essential to understanding the longe durée of enduring human settlement and civilisation, such representations fundamentally obscure both critical mechanisms, and the critical importance, of watershed transformations across space and through time.