Land and water use in the Upper Tigris Region of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Assyrians, who took their place in history as an organized civilization consisting of merchant families from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, became a regional state as a political and political formation in the second half of the 14th century BC, and an imperial power during a period of approximately 320 years from the 10th century to the last quarter of the 7th century BC. It is known as an empire that deeply affected the history of the Near East with its imperialist expansion policies. Land and water use or landscape archeology constitutes a privileged field within the diversity of subjects in the rich cultural texture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which emerged as a hegemonic power in a very wide geography covering a large part of the Near East. The Upper Tigris Region, characterized as a region rich in natural resources and of dominant strategic importance within the framework of the expansion policies of the Assyrian Empire, has been the focus point of military expeditions since the Middle Assyrian Period. Starting from this period, within the dynamics of transformation in the region, some fortified structures began to be built in order to control the fertile lands and raw material resources, and there were efforts to expand through military expeditions, looting, tax and tribute collection attempts. Especially in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which was known for its strict rules and the real architecture of the transformation was Assurnasirpal II. It can be seen that the landscape was structured thanks to the imperialist policies implemented by Assurnasirpal to ensure permanence in this region. Due to data provided by written sources, archaeological excavations and surveys, the integration process of the provincial Upper Tigris Region into the imperialist superstructure of Assyria indicates the use of land and water. In order to benefit from the resources of the region, a dispersed settlement model at close distances to each other, consisting of state centers, fortified cities, castles, towns, villages, farms and kapru known as production units, which are the basic elements of the cultural landscape, has become the basis of the processual development of the transformation of the natural environment into a cultural landscape depending on land and water use. The hierarchical order within the settlement model, which shows that the rich natural resources of the Upper Tigris Region, fertile agricultural lands as well as the strategic spatial role that holds the interregional transportation traffic are benefited from, the development and change dynamics that present the reflections of the structuring process in the region within the framework of Assyria's land and water use, the created cultural landscape characterizes the dominant elements in its transformation. This dissertation's overview of the complex relationships of the cultural landscape and the processes that shaped the physical geography within the framework of the structuring activities of the Neo-Assyrian Empire regarding land and water use in the region, enriched with detailed current data on social and economic life, provides approaches that will contribute to the literature on the settlement model of the Neo-Assyrian Period in the 1st millennium BC.