Photos taken from a drone have shown a metropolis in the marshes of ancient Mesopotamia.

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• mesopotamian
• archaeology
• euphrates
• archaeological
• wetlands

There was no historic core or fortification wall enclosing this city.

An aerial spycam has been instrumental in reviving a once-dry city in southern Mesopotamia, which has been likened to the Venetian lagoons of the Mediterranean. Knowing that this ancient city was situated on a body of water sheds light on the conditions under which urban life thrived in the area now known as Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, some 4,500 years ago.

University of Pennsylvania anthropological archaeologist Emily Hammer claims that remote sensing data primarily acquired by a specially fitted drone shows that a massive urban metropolis known as Lagash predominantly comprised of four marsh islands linked by canals. According to Hammer's research, published in the December issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, this new information provides crucial details to an emerging view that southern Mesopotamian cities did not, as previously thought, expand outward from temple and administrative districts into irrigated farmlands that were encircled by a single city wall.

Because of human settlement and environmental change, Lagash "may have evolved in numerous ways to be a metropolis of marsh islands," Hammer adds.

She hypothesizes that, like the later Italian city of Venice, Lagash had no geographical or ceremonial core, thus different parts of the city established unique economic activities on separate marsh islands. For instance, on one marsh island, where fishing and reed harvesting may have predominated, streams or canals crisscrossed the landscape.

Gated walls, which seem to have encircled two additional islands in the Lagash marsh and surrounded what appear to be finely planned city streets and areas with enormous kilns, provide evidence that these parts of the city were established earlier or at least were developed in phases. There's a chance that people grew crops and made ceramics there.

Drone images of what seem to be marinas on each marsh island provide evidence that water transport linked urban districts. Further excavations may investigate the idea that the structures found in and around the canals connecting the marsh islands were formerly footbridges.

Jennifer Pournelle, an anthropological archaeologist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, had previously shown that Lagash and other towns in southern Mesopotamia were constructed on elevated mounds in marshes by analyzing the timeline of ancient wetlands expansions in southern Iraq. Satellite imagery has led archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York to conclude that Lagash had around thirty-three rather tiny marsh islands.

Hammer claims that the drone shots offered a more in-depth view at the subterranean buildings in Lagash than the satellite imagery did. For six weeks in 2019, a drone followed initial ground-level remote-sensing data to take high-resolution photos of most of the site's surface. The recent heavy rains soaked off salt from the soil, allowing the drone's technology to identify the ruins of houses, walls, roadways, and canals that had been buried at ground level.

According to Hammer, three islands make up the most densely populated areas of the historic city, as determined by drone data. Those islands might have been a part of a delta waterway that led to the Persian Gulf. On a fourth, smaller island, a massive temple stood out as the island's primary landmark.

According to Augusta McMahon, an archaeologist from the University of Chicago and one of three co-field directors at the site, "the hypothesis of populated islands linked by watercourses" is supported by the results of Hammer's drone study of Lagash.

McMahon hypothesizes that waves of immigration into Lagash occurred between 4,600 and 4,350 years ago based on drone evidence of diverse communities on separate marsh islands, some of which seem planned and others more haphazardly built. As shown by excavations, the newcomers comprised people from both adjacent and faraway communities, nomadic herders who were searching for a permanent home, and slave workers taken from surrounding city-states.

Hammer claims that tens of thousands of people formerly called the sprawling city of Lagash home because to the dense concentration of homes and other structures across the city. Four to six square kilometers is about the size of Chicago at that time.

It's not apparent whether towns in ancient northern Mesopotamia that weren't situated on wetlands had distinct residential areas (SN: 2/5/08). Archaeologist Guillermo Algaze from the University of California San Diego suggests that Lagash and other towns in southern Mesopotamia saw exceptional expansion because they took advantage of water transport and commerce among closely spaced communities.

Hammer claims that Lagash is the best example of a city from early southern Mesopotamia that has been preserved in its ancient state. A thousand years or more after Lagash's departure, when the area had grown less watery and sections of longer-lasting cities had spread and amalgamated, nearby cities nevertheless remained inhabited. "We have a unique chance to examine what other ancient towns in the area looked like earlier in time," says Hammer of the archaeological dig at Lagash.