The third case of archaeological research we will take into account today concerns surveys instead of excavations, as in the previous cases of Nineveh and Ebla. In contemporary archaeology, survey is a basic typology of field research, which, without accomplishing a real excavation, aims at gathering every type of evidence from the surface, most of all in order to define the chronological succession, topographic extension and functional characterization of settlements. This type of research, particularly if it is integrated with studies of bioarchaeology, as usually happens nowadays, may offer quite precious, sound enough information, without excavating, about the historical development of one region, about successive phases of urbanization, ruralization, and abandonment. Moreover, surveys are absolutely necessary as a base for archaeological charts, namely for the topographic researches which register any presence of the past in any landscape of the present. Thus, it is quite evident that this kind of research is nowadays of basic importance for the preventive protection of areas of archaeological and historical purport also where visible, more well preserved, architectural evidences of the past do not appear on surface. The basic tool for the archaeological surveys is the analytical study of pottery fragments, which can be found on surface, and belong to every life period of the buried settlements. Of course, these pottery fragments which appear on surface, are scattered on the surface of the archaeological site, following quite different dynamics, not easy to detect. The amount of pottery sherds collected, and their concentration or dispersal over individual sectors of the sites surfaces are elements which might lead to dating with a good approximation the successive settlements of one archaeological site. Thus, surveys are a basic type of research for the knowledge of the history of a territory, and the contributions they can provide are completely different from those of an excavation. As is quite patent, and excavation leads to the knowledge, sometimes quite exhaustive, not only of the history of an individual settlement, but also of the architectural, material culture, and artistic evidences, thus allowing to build up the history of the site diachronically, as well as synchronically, providing basic evidence for the meaning, and role of that settlement. On the other hand, the survey is not able to provide similar results for an individual site, but it can satisfactory shape, the history of a territory, throwing light on the main phases of development of an area, on the periods of decline, on the dynamics of peoples displacements in that area, on when people concentration took place, leading to a growth on one or more settlement size, on people decrease, or even on the abandonment of settlements. Thus it's quite clear that surveys are most important and irreplaceable, not only for the knowledge of one territory, but also for the phenomenon of changes in territory use; it's also quite patent that, if surveys are implemented by bioarchaeological investigations, most of all, by Paleobotanic and Archaeozoology, these methods of research become a formidable tool for the reconstruction of economy and society of an individual territorial unit. The case we will discuss today concerns one of the most important historical contributions the world of the ancient Near East, gave to humankind: the formation of the first towns in history, which took place in southern Mesopotamia, south of Baghdad, in the crucial centuries of the second half of the 4th millennium BC, in the alluvial valleys of Euphrates and Tigris. In the same centuries, the first territorial state of the planet, the Kingdom of Egypt Pharaohs, was shaping itself in the Nile Valley. The surveys in sectors of Lower Mesopotamia, which made history for the amount of new information they provided, started in 1965, by Robert McC. Adams in the region of the Diyala, a left tributary reaching the Tigris in the region of Baghdad. Afterwards, they went on in the central region of the alluvium of Babylonia, always led by the same American scholar, and were finally accomplished with similar researches in the region of ancient Uruk, believed to be the first town in history, jointly led by R. McC. Adams and Hans J. Nissen. The surveys in the Uruk region allowed to study the dialectic relation between the surrounding rural environment, and Uruk development, at beginning, in the formation periods, and later on, in the phases of consolidation of urban life: in the late phases of Obeyd before the Protourban period of Uruk, rural settlements were quite large, but not exceeding 10 ha, quite homogenous in size and uniform in their location. This is a situation of the rural settlements of the Uruk catchment, which was considered as being between ca. 60 by 30 km in size, remains oddly constant during the Protourban period, when Uruk dramatically grows, in surface, and hosts a population estimated between 40,000 and 50,000 persons. Thus, the formation of the urban center of Uruk, apparently didn't weaken the surrounding rural milieu for several centuries, between ca. 3600 and 3100 BC. Oddly, when Uruk was already a well developed town, with its fortified walls, which a tradition attributed to the mythical hero Gilgamesh, and it's huge two monumental centers, the Uruk catchment started to become progressively poorer, with a progressive afflux of population towards the great urban center. This trend will continue during the so- called Early Dynastic Period, between 2900 and 2350 BC. As often happens in the interpretation of population fluctuation over the territory the explanation for this phenomenon is problematic: were people from the villages progressively attracted towards the town, a typical urbanization phenomenon? Or was it a phenomenon of dialectic between urban centre, and rural catchment at an organizational and administrative level? It was probably rightly proposed that the depletion of the rural area, and the slow disappearance of smaller settlements of similar size, was a consequence of a new organization of the territory, made by the urban elite of Uruk, leading to a pyramidal organization, with a progressive hierarchization of settlements, aiming at a rationalization of the administration of the rural area in favor of the urban center. On the other hand, in a larger area of the alluvial plain, between Baghdad and Basra, the progressive depopulation of rural centers, particularity during the initial and central phases of Early Dynastic between 2900 and 2500 BC, were certainly related with the birth of new urban centers, like Shuruppak, Umma, Larsa, Bad Tibira. These towns were born as a consequence of the classical well known phenomenon of urbanization, the afflux of population from country to town. Two many reasons may be considered, to be at the origin of this phenomenon, which led to the creation of the first towns of history: on the one hand, economic factors, like the attraction of specialized work forms, typical of urban centers, and unknown in rural centers, and, on the other hand, social factors, like the importance of the security offered by the towns surrounded by walls, in situations of growing conflict, and therefore of wars among the city-states. The surveys made over large areas of Southern Mesopotamia revealed, unexpectedly, that the territorial dynamics of the centuries of the first towns formation, were quite likely different even in geographic territories quite close to one another. So, for instance, the urban center of ancient Eridu was apparently created in an initial phase of the Protourban Period, for the extended rural colonization of the Chalcolithic Period, whereas nearby Ur was apparently created only in the years around 3000 BC, more slowly, and without important alterations of the settlement situation of the rural background. These situations look quite peculiar of the land of Sumer, the southernmost part of Lower Mesopotamia; on the other hand, the situation, at least in the north-eastern part of the land of Akkad, the northern region of Lower Mesopotamia, appears quite different. In fact, in the region of the river Diyala, the rural settlements of chalcolithic origin grow in number and size during the whole Protourban Period, and for a large part of the Early Dynastic period, along lines which are those of the ancient canals, and at quite regular distances from one another. These topographic increases, which contrast the decrease of rural centers in the land of Sumer during the same centuries, may be probably explained taking into account the different urban development of this area of the Land of Akkad, where there were no large urban centers, but only smaller towns, not exceeding 30 ha, in the probably pervasive administrative articulation, pivoting on the ancient rural centers. These observations about the different territorial reality of different areas of Lower Mesopotamia in the centuries of the so-called “First Urbanization”, clearly shows that in Babylonia, where the first towns of history developed, there were not univocal processes of town formation. On the contrary, even in areas quite close to one another, and certainly quite homogenous as concerned environmental conditions, the aggregation, diffusion, and hierarchization processes unexpectedly followed quite different, and sometimes clearly contradictory trajectories. The reasons for these differences must still be made clear and are object of interpretations, which are also quite differentiated. In fact, in global archaeology, the plurality of explications for the evidences provided by field archaeology, coming from excavations as well as from surveys, descends from the plurality of methodological approaches used in the name of the advocated contamination of archaeology with a wide range of different humanistic disciplines, which, as already maintained, is typical of contemporary archaeology.
