Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni
Episode: "Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East" (UP of Colorado, 2025)
Date: September 4, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni discussing her forthcoming book, Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East. Set in the early first millennium BCE, the conversation explores the dynamics between the lesser-known Urartu and the famed Neo-Assyrian Empire across what is now Turkey, Armenia, and Iran. The episode redefines what we think we know about ancient imperial power, highlighting the non-urban, highland empire of Urartu in contrast to the urban, centralized Assyria, and examining how landscapes and fortification networks shaped imperial control, warfare, and lived human experience.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introducing Urartu: "The Most Important Empire You've Never Heard Of."

• Self-Introduction & Project Origins
  • Dr. Earley-Spadoni explains her background as an archaeologist and historian, focused on warfare, society, and political organization in the ancient Middle East.
  • She directs the Kurd Khaberstan Project in northern Iraq.
• What Was Urartu?
  • Urartu, rival of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was a major power in the early first millennium BCE.
  • Significance: “Urartu matters historically because…they and Assyria weren’t just rivals. They were part of a large twin imperial system. And you really can’t understand one without understanding the other.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 03:27)
  • Urartu was a non-urban empire; its power manifested through a landscape dotted with mountain fortresses, not large urban centers.

2. Intellectual Journey and Research Breakthrough

• Discovery and Reassessment
  • Her doctoral work used GIS-based visibility analysis on Urartian fortresses.
  • Challenge to previous scholarship: Unlike the widespread belief that Urartian conquest totally reordered the landscape, findings revealed Urartu often incorporated existing local systems, sometimes leaving no archaeological trace of upheaval.
• Expansion of Inquiry
  • “If conquest wasn’t always radically transformative, then what was happening?” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 07:34)
  • Broadened the study to compare both Urartu and Assyria, and observe earlier precedents for fortified landscapes.

3. Imperial Comparison: Urartu and Assyria

• Warfare and Imperial Logic
  • Assyria: Urban, bureaucratic, centralized, expansionist; war campaigns every summer; depicted in art as psychological warfare ("cities burning, ladders against walls… It’s psychological warfare carved in stone" - 12:22).
  • Urartu: United in mountainous terrain, non-urban, power distributed across fortress networks.
  • Both shared imperial ambition (“Two kings of the universe in close proximity… for the Urartians, warfare was not just about resisting Assyria; it was about competing with them.” – 13:35)
• Geographic and Economic Factors
  • Mountain passes and seasonality shaped Urartu’s defensive system; both empires relied heavily on tribute, resettlement, and extracting resources from conquered lands.

4. Defining "Fortified Landscapes"

• Conceptual Expansion
  • “Landscape” encompasses physical terrain, human-made structures, and cultural meaning (16:14–19:31).
  • Example: A mountain pass becomes a controlled space through fortification, transforming geography into politics.
• Fortress Networks
  • Interlinked fortresses, connected visually (using lines of sight) and functionally for communication and control.
  • “Around Lake Savan, 15 Urartian sites form 39 lines of sight... communication was built into the terrain itself.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 17:30)
  • Redundancy in fortress visibility foreshadows modern communication networks.

5. Urartian Fortress Variability and Evolution

• Physical and Cultural Characteristics
  • Built on dramatic, elevated, and strategic sites.
  • Monumental construction: massive stone foundations with mudbrick upper works; temples (Susi temples) at the core, dedicated to chief deity Haldi.
  • “They were dramatic places… not just defensive works, they were monuments.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 20:13)
• Diversity Over Time
  • Initial fortresses were small, adapted to local topography, reused earlier sites; regional variety, especially in Armenia.
  • Only in the 7th century BCE, under King Rusa son of Argishti, did standardization and monumentality peak—but briefly.
  • Later monumental fortresses (e.g., Ionis, Bostam, Karmir Blur) prove short-lived; soon destroyed by fire, signaling volatility and the fragility of imperial control.

6. The Absence of Urbanism in Urartu

• No True Cities
  • “There is nothing that has been excavated from Urartu that I would understand as urban in that sense.” (28:21)
  • Most fortresses quite small; lower towns appeared only in the late 7th century and remained non-urban and sparsely settled.
  • Contrasts sharply with Assyrian urban capitals.
• Strategic Advantage
  • Lack of centralized urban targets made Urartu resilient to Assyrian assault: wealth and power spread widely, limiting the rewards for conquest.

7. Empire Without Cities: Governance and Power

• Decentralized Control
  • Empirical analogy: “Assyria as Gondor, Urartu as Rohan.” (31:42)
  • Fortresses as nodes for military, administrative, and religious authority; extensive network enabling distant communication and surveillance (confirmed in Assyrian sources).
  • “Urartu wasn’t a failed version of Assyria. It was something distinct and very powerful.” (33:59)

8. Comparing Urartu to the Mongol Empire

• Commonalities in Anti-Urban Empire
  • Both Urartu and the Mongols challenge city-centric imperial paradigms (35:07–40:00).
  • Strong mobile elements, non-urban ethos, extensive use of regional fortification networks.
  • Adaptation to environment: Mongols in the steppe, Urartu in the mountains.
  • “It shows us that empires don’t have to be urban, that you can build a vast state without capitals by leaning more heavily on networks of other structures.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 39:24)

9. Lived Experience and "Traumascapes"

• The Human Cost of Imperial Warfare
  • Archaeology reveals poignant episodes: e.g., the destruction of Hassanlu fortress (~800 BCE), where over 100 victims were found, including a looter clutching a gold bowl (40:24–45:03).
  • "Traumascape": landscapes scarred by violence, which ancient people experienced as haunted both physically and spiritually.
  • “To step into a destroyed city was to walk among the dead.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 43:59)
  • Emphasizes the importance of not simply celebrating imperial ‘accomplishment’ but understanding their profound social and emotional toll.

10. Ideologies of Warfare and Imperial Mentality

• Constructing the ‘Other’
  • Empires justified violence by defining outsiders (barbarians) as less human.
  • “States will often define themselves on the basis of hostile others, people who are different outside of their borders.” (46:35)
• Agonistic Masculinity
  • Kingship built on displays of personal martial prowess.
  • Notable: one Urartian king’s comic desperation to boast of his horse’s jumping ability in lieu of military victories (49:10).
• Universal Domination
  • Both empires claimed titles like “King of the Four Quarters”—an ideology demanding endless expansion and warfare.

11. Unexpected Discoveries: Ancient Intelligence Services

• The Assyrian "CIA"
  • The Neo-Assyrian Empire operated an extensive intelligence network with the Crown Prince at its head, managing regional informants.
  • Surviving letters detail spy reports, rival intelligence, and even double agents in buffer states (50:54–53:50).
  • “These were true intelligence-gathering operations with real spies… you can reconstruct the organization of this vast spy enterprise.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 51:06)
  • Obsessive surveillance of Urartu extended to religious divination: priests read animal entrails to predict Urartian intentions.

12. Current and Future Research

• Continued Work
  • Dr. Earley-Spadoni now directs excavations at Kurd Khaberstan (northern Iraq), probing the Middle Bronze Age—again unexpectedly uncovering evidence of siege warfare and mass casualties.
  • “Archaeology surprises you and the impacts of ancient warfare appear likely to remain a persistent through line in my research.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 55:38)

Memorable Quotes

• On Landscape and Imperial Control: “War didn’t just happen on the land, it also changed how the land itself was understood and experienced.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 19:24)
• On Human Cost: “We might think of this sort of [destroyed] landscape as a traumascape... places often described as haunted, not just by lives lost but by the cultural weight that lingers in the space.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 41:28)
• On Ideology: “To be a king, you had to be a warrior… Assyrian kings, for example, didn’t just send their generals on military campaign. They personally led campaigns.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 48:08)
• On Surprises in Research: “The Assyrians, during the Neo-Assyrian period… basically had a CIA… These were true intelligence gathering operations with real spies.” (Dr. Earley-Spadoni, 50:56)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Urartu Overview: 01:06–04:16
• Project Origins & Insights: 04:16–09:27
• Urartu vs. Assyria: 09:27–15:43
• Defining Landscapes: 15:43–19:31
• Fortresses & Architectural Variability: 19:31–28:04
• Urbanism & Control: 28:04–34:43
• Mongol Comparison: 35:07–40:00
• Lived Experience & Traumascapes: 40:00–45:03
• Ideologies of War: 45:41–50:30
• Intelligence Networks: 50:54–53:50
• Current Research: 54:17–55:54

Closing Thoughts

This conversation fundamentally reframes how listeners might view ancient empires, highlighting the diversity of imperial models, the power of landscapes, and the nuanced realities of life and death within ancient networks of conquest. Dr. Earley-Spadoni's Landscapes of Warfare opens new avenues for understanding how terrain, ideology, and trauma are intertwined in the making—and the memory—of empires.