Articles by Kamal Aldin Niknami

A huge irrigation project is being conducted in the Iranian western border and satellite investigation of the area was initially performed in order to identify archaeological settlement sites before they were threatened by the so-called Garmsiri water project. Because of the diverse geography and the inherited critical war conditions such as mined lands, the investigation of ancient sites in this region is not easy; therefore, satellite-based methods can play an important role in the detection and documentation of archaeological sites. The main hypothesis of this study is that all settlements have internal and external characteristics allowing to detect the presence of archaeological sites. The identification of a series of these characteristics in a spatial area will lead to the discovery of archaeological sites. Three general methods which this study utilizes to identify the location of the site include: 1) Identification using satellite images; 2) Identification using the predictive model based on GIS; 3) Integration of satellite images data applying the prediction model. Thereby, those points having a series of internal and external characteristics related to settlement sites were introduced as potential ancient sites. In the field survey, 57 points were confirmed as settlement sites. The perspective of this study helps archaeologists to explore the surface and subsurface remnants of ancient sites without conventional field-walking survey.

The advent of new technologies has had a profound impact on the evolution of archaeological methodological approaches, allowing archaeologists to refine traditional assessments about the nature of past human societies and to expand their theoretical horizons. GIS-based technologies are among the new technologies aimed at reconstructing spatial-related aspects of past human communities. The paper illustrates the use of some ArcGIS tools supplemented with satellite low resolution images to produce a layered workable archaeological map suitable for analyzing specific issues such as ancient cultural ecology and landscape reconstruction. Integrated satellite imagery and GIS analyses are applied to reconstruct spatial distribution patterns of the Chalcolithic period in Central Zagros as seen from the Sarfirouzabad valley adjacent to Mahidasht inter-mountainous plain, near Kermanshah, Iran. The search for considerable changes in the settlement distribution patterns relating to the ecological attributes is one of the aims of the paper, using GIS-based methods such as Thiessen polygons analysis, site-point spatial distribution analysis and buffer analysis. The results are discussed through categories covering distribution of Chalcolithic sites over the different environs of the study area, spatial distribution of pottery styles, and spatial models of Chalcolithic distribution patterns.

The Lake Urmia survey project carried out from 2004 to 2006 in north-western Iran was aimed at obtaining a reliable overview of the occurrence of archaeological sites as well as to identify the spatial pattern of such sites across the area. This paper explores archaeological approaches to regional scale in dynamic landscape. Regional interpretation and the spatial statistical methods used to describe sites distribution, orientation, and pattern are often most reliant on point data. This paper also demonstrates how point pattern analysis offers quantitative information to the spatial process modeling of the natural and cultural landscape, which will aid at establishing a baseline from which other attributes of higher measurements for archaeological elements can be confidently mapped, described and modeled within a GIS. Point pattern analysis of archaeological sites has involved the advantages of visualization and iteration offered by a GIS. Therefore the significance of this study is three-fold. 1) it applies spatial analysis within a GIS to the understanding of archaeological site distributions. 2) it uses quantitative methods that are now available within a GIS to assess inferences concerning the survey data collected from the study area. Finally, this study offers insight into a methodology that is suitable to the spatial examination of more complicated surface data in landscape archaeology concept.

Archaeological scatters on the landscape present us with spatially patterned materials and features. Linking these spatial patterns to proximate aspects of scatter structure formation, and, ultimately, to understand the effect of land use systems in which landscape taphonomy occurred is one goal for landscape degradation analysis. While in the literature there has been a growing awareness of the pattern recognition problems posed by surface artifact distributions, due to the destruction or alteration of accompanying contextual information by landscape taphonomy processes, no substantive results have appeared in Iran. Analytical techniques for the description, classification and quantitative analysis of surface data remain poorly developed here and have often been incorrectly used and interpreted. The main concern of this paper is to investigate and interpret the effects of land use patterns on the distribution of surface artifacts. The discussion focuses on providing a quantitative model which constitutes an analytical framework integrating methods and theory. This project uses an example provided by the archaeological survey project undertaken at Garrangu River Basin from 1992 onwards in Northwestern Iran. As a case study, land use dynamics of an archaeological landscape were measured through the study period, and Markov Chain models were used to project observed changes of artifact distributional structures over a 50 year period.

The increase in human population, economic development projects and the rapid expansion of inhabited areas in Iran are in conflict with the need to protect natural and cultural landscapes. Unfortunately, the natural and cultural heritage sites are the victims of these demands and they are increasingly being threatened by the growing population and their economic demands and land use before an archaeological study can be conducted. It is important to know that formulation of research policy and implementation of sound conservation-oriented management tools based on the proper research strategies could contribute toward arresting the problems while securing the existence of invaluable natural and cultural sites. A cultural landscape is, by definition, the sum of various kinds of landforms. The probabilities are that the cultural elements of a landscape may change dramatically through time as the surrounding landscape and land use patterns change. Since cultural landscape structure and change are fundamental determinants of land use, the approaches used in landscape management which emphasize environmental and cultural landscape homogeneity, offer some useful application in a holistic analysis of landscapes. This approach explicitly links archaeological studies of landscape with various land use patterns that may have affected cultural heritage structures. This paper attempts to make a contribution toward application of the above concept to cultural landscape. In addition the paper discusses the potential of an assessment method using statistics based on findings from a case study in Iran.