Mathematics can make a decisive contribution to saving the remains of the ancient cities of Mesopotamia threatened by climate change and human activities: thanks to the equations of a model used to calculate soil erosion, in fact, it is possible to identify the areas most at risk in order to develop targeted conservation strategies. This is demonstrated by a study conducted in Iraqi Kurdistan by the University of Milan in collaboration with the University of Newcastle. The results are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The team of archaeologists and geoarchaeologists coordinated by Andrea Zerboni of the State University focused in particular on the sites of Helawa and Aliawa, where there are two important artificial hills (defined as ‘tell’) formed by the continuous accumulation of archaeological layers composed of buildings in adobe bricks. “These two sites are crucial for understanding what happened in Mesopotamia in the last millennia,” explains archaeologist Luca Peyronel of the Milan State University, head of the Italian Archaeological Mission in the Erbil Plain (Maipe). “They tell us about the birth of the first cities, the progressive development of social and economic complexity, the advent of the first regional kingdoms, up to the rise of the great empires of antiquity in the Near East”.
Precisely on these two contexts a geomorphological model has been developed (usually used to estimate soil erosion) with the aim of understanding the dynamics in progress. “There are numerous processes that undermine the stability of the Helawa and Aliawa sites, from extreme weather events to excessive grazing by livestock,” says Luca Forti, first author of the study and researcher at the State University. “The Rusle model that we have applied identifies the areas most subject to erosion and therefore most threatened”. The application of this model makes it possible to prepare strategies to mitigate the risk of loss of the archaeological context of the tells, for example by planning archaeological excavation operations in areas most at risk, or by proposing targeted restoration protocols.
Source: Ansa
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