The fertility of Assur's Lands: a study of agricultural reproductivity using computer simulation

Resumen

The city of Assur and its environs are located in a region that has long been considered an agriculturally margianl landscape. However, there have been few systematic studies that have looked at the productivity of this landscape using past methods of agriculture. This paper examines  human and environmental interactions related to farming productivity of Assur's surrounding environs under three different scenarios. The results are obtained by applying new simulation technologies that incorporate ancient and modern sources of socio-environmental data. The benefits of this study not only help to show new insights in the agricultural capabilities of Assur's landscape under expected conditions in the past, but the results also show that the simulation technologies applied can be useful for testing a variety of ideas and theories related to ancient Mesopotamian societies. This study, therefore, is a test case in determining the capabilities of the simulation tools applied to addresing significant issues in ancient Mesopotamia.