A recipe for disaster: emerging urbanism and unsustainable plant economies at Early Bronze Age Ras an-Numayra, Jordan

Abstract

The intensification of agriculture as farming communities grew in size did not always produce a successful and sustainable economic base. At Ras an-Numayra on the Dead Sea Plain, a small farming community of the late fourth millennium BC developed a specialised plant economy dependent on cereals, grapes and flax. Irrigation in this arid environment led to increased soil salinity while recurrent cultivation of flax may have introduced the fungal pathogen responsible for flax wilt. Faced with declining yields, the farmers may have further intensified their irrigation and cultivation schedules, only to exacerbate the underlying problems. Thus specialised crop production increased both agricultural risk and vulnerability to catastrophe, and Ras an-Numayra, unlike other sites in the region, was abandoned after a relatively short occupation.

Exotic foods reveal contact between South Asia and the Near East during the second millennium BCE

“…Moreover, date palm seeds and leaves have been previously recovered from Late Bronze II burials at Megiddo (81). Microfossil remains of both crops have been previously identified in the Bronze Age Levant (82)(83)(84), and here we identified both wheat and date palm phytoliths, as well as wheat proteins, including a major wheat gluten.…”

Bronze age fuel use and its implications for agrarian landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean

“…For example, while Ni'aj and Hayyat produce comparable seed densities and seed frequencies by vegetation categories, the relative importance of orchard crops and cereals shifts from emphasis on Vitis and Hordeum at Ni'aj to Olea and Triticum at subsequently inhabited Hayyat (Fall et al 2002). A similar distinction is apparent between the emphasis on grape and barley cultivation at Bab edh-Dhra', Wadi Fidan 4 and Ras an-Numayra (McCreery 1980(McCreery , 2003Meadows 2001;Cartwright 2003;White et al 2014) in comparison to greater evidence for olive, wheat and legumes at the better watered Bronze Age towns of Megiddo, Beth Shean and Tell Abu al-Kharaz (Borojevic 2006;Fischer & Holden 2008;Mazar & Rotem 2009). Collectively, these results document a transition from more arid adapted farming at Early Bronze Age settlements (especially those like Ni'aj dating to the Early Bronze IV collapse) to a preference for less drought tolerant cultigens by Middle Bronze Age communities (including Hayyat).…”

Sheep and wheat domestication in southwest Asia: a meta-trajectory of intensification and loss

“…A powerful combination of southwest Asian plant and animal domesticates emerged in the Neolithic—an “agricultural package”—of which wheat and sheep are exemplary. Increasing evidence suggests that even after initial domestication, cultivation and livestock rearing developed by numerous and diverse pathways, including much trial and error ( White et al, 2014 ; Honeychurch and Makarewicz, 2016 ). Although agriculture and pastoralism involve a significant focus on select few species compared with the many dozens utilized by hunter-gatherers, the success of southwest Asian food production may nonetheless be attributed to different forms of diversity inherent in the Neolithic package.…”

“…By the end of the southwest Asian Neolithic, all the major wheat types described above were under cultivation in Eurasia, with wide inter-regional diversity ( Fuller et al, 2018 ). Domesticated emmer wheat (along with barley) became a staple of the Early Bronze Age Levantine city-states (e.g., Hopf, 1983 ), although its cultivation in some early agricultural settlements of the period was unsustainable and unsuccessful ( White et al, 2014 ). Among later empires, in 7th c. BCE Assyrian Israel a regional production strategy apparently involved wheat grown in Judea to feed residents of Ashkelon, freeing land closer to the ports for Mediterranean-export viticulture ( Faust and Weiss, 2005 ).…”