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Butler DH, Dunseth ZC, Tepper Y, Erickson-Gini T, Bar-Oz G, Shahack-Gross R. Byzantine-Early Islamic resource management detected through micro-geoarchaeological investigations of trash mounds (Negev, Israel). PLoS One 2020; 15:e0239227. [PMID: 33052912 PMCID: PMC7556535 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239227] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2020] [Accepted: 09/01/2020] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Sustainable resource management is of central importance among agrarian societies in marginal drylands. In the Negev Desert, Israel, research on agropastoral resource management during Late Antiquity emphasizes intramural settlement contexts and landscape features. The importance of hinterland trash deposits as diachronic archives of resource use and disposal has been overlooked until recently. Without these data, assessments of community-scale responses to societal, economic, and environmental disruption and reconfiguration remain incomplete. In this study, micro-geoarchaeological investigations were conducted on trash mound features at the Byzantine—Early Islamic sites of Shivta, Elusa, and Nesanna to track spatiotemporal trends in the use and disposal of critical agropastoral resources. Refuse derived sediment deposits were characterized using stratigraphy, micro-remains (i.e., livestock dung spherulites, wood ash pseudomorphs, and plant phytoliths), and mineralogy by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Our investigations detected a turning point in the management of herbivore livestock dung, a vital resource in the Negev. We propose that the scarcity of raw dung proxies in the studied deposits relates to the use of this resource as fuel and agricultural fertilizer. Refuse deposits contained dung ash, indicating the widespread use of dung as a sustainable fuel. Sharply contrasting this, raw dung was dumped and incinerated outside the village of Nessana. We discuss how this local shift in dung management corresponds with a growing emphasis on sedentised herding spurred by newly pressed taxation and declining market-oriented agriculture. Our work is among the first to deal with the role of waste management and its significance to economic strategies and urban development during the late Roman Imperial Period and Late Antiquity. The findings contribute to highlighting top-down societal and economic pressures, rather than environmental degradation, as key factors involved in the ruralisation of the Negev agricultural heartland toward the close of Late Antiquity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Don H Butler
- Laboratory for Sedimentary Archaeology, Department of Maritime Civilizations, Recanati Institute of Maritime Studies, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Zachary C Dunseth
- Laboratory for Sedimentary Archaeology, Department of Maritime Civilizations, Recanati Institute of Maritime Studies, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.,Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Yotam Tepper
- Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.,Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | | | - Guy Bar-Oz
- Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Ruth Shahack-Gross
- Laboratory for Sedimentary Archaeology, Department of Maritime Civilizations, Recanati Institute of Maritime Studies, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
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The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020; 117:19780-19791. [PMID: 32719145 PMCID: PMC7443973 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1922200117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival-subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries.
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Mediterranean precipitation isoscape preserved in bone collagen δ 2H. Sci Rep 2020; 10:8579. [PMID: 32444789 PMCID: PMC7244594 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-65407-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2019] [Accepted: 05/04/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
The prehistory of the Mediterranean region has long been a subject of considerable interest, particularly the links between human groups and regions of origin. We utilize the spatial variation in the δ2H and δ18O values of precipitation (isoscapes) to develop proxies for geographic locations of fauna and humans. Bone collagen hydrogen isotope ratios (δ2H) in cattle (and to a lesser extent, ovicaprids) across the Mediterranean reflect the isotopic differences observed in rainfall (but δ18O values do not). We conclude that δ2H in herbivore bone collagen can be used as a geolocation tracer and for palaeoenvironmental studies such as tracing past isotopic variations in the global hydrological cycle. In contrast, human bone δ2H values are relatively tightly grouped and highly distinct from precipitation δ2H values, likely due to human-specific food practices and environmental modifications. Given the inter-species variability in δ2H, care should be taken in the species selected for study.
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