Excavations at Tell Es-Sweyhat, Syria, Volume 1: On the Margin of the Euphrates: Settlement and Land Use at Tell Es-Sweyhat and in the Upper Lake Assad Area, Syria

The present publication is the first and concluding final report by Tony J. Wilkinson of Thomas A. Holland''s archaeological rescue expedition to Tell es-Sweyhat in northern Syria; the second report by Holland deals with the excavated finds from the main site. Wilkinson''s study forms part of a long-term research strategy that is aimed at examining the growth of towns, rural settlements, and the rural landscape over much of the last ten thousand years. Emphasis is upon the retrieval of information from surface surveys, and at the same time, the integration of cultural change within both the local environmental context and long-term environmental change. It must be emphasized that the surveys under discussion, collectively called the Sweyhat Survey, were small and rather detailed studies of some 60 sq. km of land around Tell es-Sweyhat, Syria, including thirty sites on the east bank of the Euphrates River; the surveys were conducted in 1974, 1991, and 1992. The survey area is nested within a broader "area of interest" that comprises the area of the upper Lake Assad salvage project.