Massive settlement activity characterizes the arid Negev Highlands during the Intermediate Bronze Age (ca. 2500(ca. -1950. However, the underlying subsistence basis of this population is poorly understood. Recent microarchaeological work at Iron Age sites in the Negev Highlands has shown the potential for recovering direct evidence for subsistence practices through analysis of the microscopic plant remains in degraded animal dung. Following these methods, this paper reports new macro-and microarchaeological results of two sites near Mashabe Sade: a central Intermediate Bronze Age site, and for comparison, an ephemeral site in the immediate vicinity. At the central site, dated to the Intermediate Bronze Age by pottery and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL), evidence is absent for any sort of food production. In contrast, identification of ancient livestock dung at the ephemeral site suggests that it was sustained by animal husbandryyet the OSL results suggest these degraded dung deposits date to the Iron Age. Taken together, the Intermediate Bronze Age results from Mashabe Sade bolster arguments suggesting that central sites were supported mainly by trade and other alternative subsistence practices. Keywords Mashabe Sade, Negev Highlands, Intermediate Bronze Age, MicroarchaeologyAfter nearly a century of research, the Intermediate Bronze Age is still an enigmatic period in the settlement history of the southern Levant. Traditionally dated to ca. 2300-2000 BCE (e.g., Palumbo 2001), the Intermediate Bronze Age is characterized by the cessation of * Co-directors of the Negev Highlands Project. urban activity throughout the region, and a unique wave of settlement in the arid zones, especially the Negev Highlands. The impetus behind this dramatic settlement oscillation is unclear, though scholars have variously associated the phenomenon with changing political (e.g., Kochavi 1967), demographic (e.g., Kenyon 1951;Prag 1985), socio-economic (e.g., Dever 1980), and climatic conditions (e.g., Rosen 1987; Frumkin 2009).Until very recently, debate over the nature of the Intermediate Bronze Age had mellowed into a general consensus that the period was characterized in the north of modern Israel by a shift from urban life to rural agro-pastoralism (Finkelstein 1995: 88), and in the Negev, to subsistence practices characterized by animal husbandry and opportunistic agriculture (Dever 1985;Cohen 1999;Palumbo 2001). Hoards of copper ingots found at sites throughout the southern Levant, and the recent discovery of an Intermediate Bronze Age copper production centre in Wadi Faynan, suggest that a developed copper trade economy supported the Negev settlement system Recently, an analysis of radiocarbon determinations from secure archaeological contexts redated the Intermediate Bronze Age to ca. 2500-1950 BCE (Regev et al. 2012. This changes the equation between the Intermediate Bronze Age and Egyptian history and hence forces a re-evaluation of the Intermediate Bronze Age in general, and the role of Negev settlement systems wi...
Colluvial deposits, as the correlate sediments of human-induced soil erosion, depict an excellent archive of land use and landscape history as indicators of human–environment interactions. This study establishes a chronostratigraphy of colluvial deposits and reconstructs past land use dynamics in the Swabian Jura, the Baar and the Black Forest in SW Germany. In the agriculturally favourable Baar area multiple main phases of colluvial deposition, and thus intensified land use, can be identified from the Neolithic to the Modern times. In the unfavourable Swabian Jura increased colluvial deposition began later compared to the more favourable areas in the Baar. The same holds true for the unfavourable areas of the Black Forest, but intensified land use can only be reconstructed for the Middle Ages and Early Modern times instead of for the Bronze and Iron Age as in the Swabian Jura. Land use intensity and settlement dynamics represented by thick, multilayered colluvial deposits increase in the Baar and the Black Forest during the Middle Ages. In between those phases of geomorphodynamic activity and colluviation, stable phases occur, interpreted as phases with sustainable land use or without human presence.
In antiquity, the development of techniques to collect and store water was fundamental to sustain life in arid regions. One way to overcome the problem of water supply in the desert was to construct water reservoirs and cisterns which collect surface runoff during rare rain events. Indeed, open reservoirs and rock‐cut cisterns are widely spread over the arid zone of the Negev Highlands. They were an important component of human activity in the area. Today, they can serve as sedimentary archives for archaeological and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. To shed more light on this valuable archive, the chronology of an ancient stone‐lined, open reservoir was established by optically stimulated luminescence dating. By determining the age of the deposition of sediments associated with the reservoir, it was possible to constrain its construction (8th–11th centuries C.E.), duration of use (up to ca. 15th century C.E.), and final refilling (from the 15th century C.E. to the modern era). These results indicate that most human activity related to the reservoir occurred between the 8th‐to‐11th and the 15th centuries C.E., when permanent settlements are not recorded archaeologically in the region, suggesting that the studied water reservoir was primarily utilized by pastoral nomads.
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