The present study forms part of the author's long-term research strategy that is aimed at examining the growth of towns, rural settlements, and the rural landscape over much of the last ten thousand years. Emphasis is upon the retrieval of information from surface surveys, and at the same time, the integration of cultural change within both the local environmental context and long-term environmental change. It must be emphasised that the surveys under discussion, collectively called the Sweyhat Survey, were small and rather detailed studies of some 60 sq. km of land around Tell es-Sweyhat, Syria, and the thirty sites therein on the east bank of the Euphrates River; the surveys were conducted in 1974, 1991, and 1992. The survey area is nested within a broader "area of interest," which comprises the area of the upper Lake Tabqa salvage project.