Gift of the Orontes Fluvial landscapes of northwest Syria in late antiquity

NW Syria was one of the key areas of the Late Roman Near East. First, the capital of the civil diocese of Oriens, Antioch, was located there. Second, the region was a nodal point for communications with the wider empire by land and sea; it connected Mesopotamia, Palestine and Arabia with Anatolia and the imperial capital at Constantinople, the imperial heartlands, and international trade routes across the Mediterranean. The ways in which the Orontes river contributed to this region are often overlooked. Many assume that because the Orontes ran through Antioch it must have been used for transport, or that the river provided water for agriculture, but the exact nature of the river as a water system, and how it might have been used for transport or irrigation, or how it might have influenced settlement, are only now being investigated. This article provides an overview of recent research to contextualise these questions within the span of late antiquity (A.D. 300-700).