Reflections on survey and surveillance in the archaeology of Western Asia

The settlement archaeology pioneered by Robert McCormick Adams extended the scope of archaeological investigations to a regional scale, an approach that has been continued in recent years in landscape archaeology. An array of new technologies for recognizing, visualizing, and analyzing data has considerably expanded the possibilities for documenting and presenting the remains of ancient settlements and land use. Relatively unexamined, however, are the broader implications accompanying these large-scale perspectives, including the extensive use of remote sensing technologies. In this paper, we consider a number of the political and ethical issues raised by these perspectives and scales. We suggest that an extension of the goals of regional-based approaches can bring with it new insights into the politics as well as the economic and ecological problems associated with archaeological research that implicate modern landscapes and their inhabitants.