Frontier land and rural settlement in the upper Tigris river valley (south-eastern Turkey) from Roman to Byzantine age (second-sixth centuries CE)

Southeastern Anatolia was one of the regions in which the Roman and Eastern empires fought for centuries for supremacy. In the fourth century CE, the Roman/Sasanian border shifted from the Euphrates River to the Tigris River: the upper Tigris River valley was thus embedded in the Eastern Roman frontier between the Roman and Sasanian empires. Changes in settlement patterns during the Late Antique period seem to confirm the limit of Roman control to the area West of the Batman River, one of the tributaries of the Tigris River in its upper course. The integration of new and legacy archaeological data available for this borderland may help in better understanding of local rural landscape and enable an analysis of the relationship between imperialism and the organization of borderlands.