Soil development and early land use in the Jazira region, Upper Mesopotamia

Abstract The Jazira forms an extensive semi‐arid area within the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It has been settled and cultivated for over 8,000 years and the typical soil, the Calcic Xerosol, can produce cereal crops in most years. Crops are mainly watered by rainfall alone. Mature soil profiles can develop within 5–6,000 years. Analysis of soil phosphates, and extensive sherd sampling techniques, have shown that the ploughsoil has been enriched by animal wastes and settlement refuse, possibly as a result of both pasturing of animals and manuring in antiquity. Earlier chalcolithic settlement and agricultural systems appear to have been extensive, but by the Early Bronze Age land use had intensified with each settlement showing evidence of a surrounding halo of sherd scatters. Such scatters appear to correspond to episodes of maximum population or urbanization.

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