A glimpse of an ancient agricultural ecosystem based on remains of micromammals in the Byzantine Negev Desert

Abstract

It is widely believed that Byzantine agriculture in the Negev Desert (fourth to seventh century Common Era; CE), with widespread construction of terraces and dams, altered local landscapes. However, no direct evidence in archaeological sites yet exists to test this assumption. We uncovered large amounts of small mammalian remains (rodents and insectivores) within agricultural installations built near fields, providing a new line of evidence for reconstructing anthropogenic impact on local habitats. Abandonment layers furnished high abundances of remains, whereas much smaller numbers were retrieved from the period of human use of the structures. Digestion marks are present in low frequencies (20% of long bones and teeth), with a light degree of impact, which indicate the role of owls (e.g. Tyto alba) as the principal means of accumulation. The most common taxa—gerbils (Gerbillus spp.) and jirds (Meriones spp.)—occur in nearly equal frequencies, which do not correspond with any modern Negev communities, where gerbils predominate in sandy low-precipitation environments and jirds in loessial, higher-precipitation ones. Although low-level climate change cannot be ruled out, the results suggest that Byzantine agriculture allowed jirds to colonize sandy anthropogenic habitats with other gerbilids and commensal mice and rats.

Climate stability and societal decline on the margins of the Byzantine empire in the Negev Desert

“…The water flow in the drainage channels was higher than it is today 14 , but the plant biomass production was constrained to these low-lying topographies. The wadis are where the pigeons from Shivta obtained their agricultural feed (cf Marom et al 71 , Ramsay et al 28 , Ramsay and Tepper 27 ), where higher populations of jirds (Meriones) identified in the micro-faunal assemblage from Sa'adon developed (cf Fried et al 29 , Tepper et al 72 ). This is where sheep and goats from Elusa, Nessana and Shivta obtained their C 3 vegetation during the dry summer months.…”

“…Fried et al 29 found the micro-faunal assemblage of dovecote remains from the archaeological site of Sa'adon to be comparable to a modern micro-faunal assemblage from a desert region with higher levels of precipitation than modern-day Sa'adon. Based on this finding, they argue that a more productive agricultural system altered the surrounding environment to a degree that has not been seen until the 20 th century.…”

Commensal Rats and Humans: Integrating Rodent Phylogeography and Zooarchaeology to Highlight Connections between Human Societies

“…They may also provide minimal dates for commensalism, for example, placing the origins of house mice at c.13 000 BC in the Levant. [ 35 ] Regular presence of a given small mammal species in anthropogenic contexts may indicate colonization of a commensal niche, where understanding of deposit formation rules out other explanations, such as raptor activity in disused buildings [ 58 ] or exploitation as human food. [ 59 ] Firmer evidence comes with dispersal beyond the species’ native range, while presence/absence in particular site types may provide evidence for the degree of anthrodependency.…”

The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data

“…This includes annual restoration and reconstruction of check dams damaged by heavy flash floods; removal of stones along wadi slopes to enhance rainwater runoff and its diversion into human-made conduits; and construction of dovecotes followed by seasonal removal and distribution of enormous quantities of pigeon droppings in fields ( 36 , 38 – 41 ). Massive anthropogenic transformation of this arid landscape would have inevitably caused various ecological feedback effects reverberating through the entire ecosystem, as exemplified by changes in the presence of wild/synanthropic species ( 42 , 43 ). By tracing decadal- to centennial-scale fluctuations in one of the main agricultural outputs of this system—grapes—we gain crucial insights into its long-term stability and the issue of sustainable production.…”