The processes of long-term urbanization in southern Mesopotamia are still insufficiently investigated, even though recent studies using large datasets and focusing on neighboring regions have paved the way to understanding the critical role of multiple variables in the shaping of settlement strategies by ancient human societies, among which climate change played an important role. In this paper, we tackle these issues by analyzing, within the new FloodPlains Web GIS project, a conspicuous amount of archaeological evidence collected over the past decades at approximately 5000 sites in southern Mesopotamia. We have measured modifications over time in a variety of demographic proxies generated through probabilistic approaches: our results show that the rapid climate changes, especially those that occurred around 5.2, 4.2, and 3.2 ka BP, may have contributed—in addition to other socioeconomic factors—to triggering the main urban and demographic cycles in southern Mesopotamia and that each cycle is characterized by specific settlement strategies in terms of the distribution and the dimension of the urban centers.

尽管最近使用大型数据集并关注邻近地区的研究为理解多个变量在古代人类社会定居策略的形成中的关键作用铺平了道路，但美索不达米亚南部的长期城市化过程仍然没有得到充分的研究。其中气候变化发挥了重要作用。在本文中，我们通过在新的 FloodPlains Web GIS 项目中分析过去几十年在美索不达米亚南部约 5000 个地点收集的大量考古证据来解决这些问题。我们测量了通过概率方法生成的各种人口代理随时间的变化：我们的结果表明，除了其他社会经济因素外，快速的气候变化，尤其是在距今 5.2、4.2 和 3.2 ka BP 左右发生的气候变化，可能也起到了一定的作用。 ——触发美索不达米亚南部的主要城市和人口周期，每个周期都以城市中心的分布和规模方面的具体定居策略为特征。