Byzantine—Early Islamic resource management detected through micro-geoarchaeological investigations of trash mounds (Negev, Israel)

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, microremains (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

The Avdat in Late Antiquity Project: uncovering the Early Islamic phases of a Byzantine town in the Negev Highlands

“…The emerging extended chronology enriches ongoing debate surrounding the fate of Negev Highland settlement in the Early Islamic period, especially that regarding continuities and discontinuities of site use between the Byzantine, Umayyad and Abbasid periods (e.g. Magness 2003;Avni 2008;Butler et al 2020).…”

“…Ongoing archaeobotanical and archaeozoological analyses will refine our understanding of local economic activity over time, particularly with regard to viticulture (Fuks et al 2020(Fuks et al , 2021. Geoarchaeological analyses for stratigraphic characterisation of sediments and chronological fine-tuning via additional radiocarbon dating (Butler et al 2020)-including of post-Abbasid strata-are expected to provide highresolution documentation of Avdat's urban and post-urban phases. These combined analyses will help to identify the various groups active at the site during and after the Byzantine-Early Islamic transition.…”

Microarchaeological approach to underwater stratigraphy of submerged settlements: A case study of Atlit‐Yam Pre‐Pottery Neolithic site, off the Carmel Coast, Israel

“…Phytolith quantification followed Katz et al (2010), after burning the sediments in a furnace for 4 h at 550°C to remove organic matter masking phytoliths (Butler et al, 2020). A Nikon…”

“…Phytolith quantification followed Katz et al (2010), after burning the sediments in a furnace for 4 h at 550°C to remove organic matter masking phytoliths (Butler et al, 2020). A Nikon Eclipse 50i POL at ×200 magnification was used to quantify phytoliths in 16 fields of view on each slide.…”

Did the Byzantine Negev settlements exhaust the surrounding environment? : a response to "Environment and horticulture in the Byzantine Negev Desert, Israel: sustainability, prosperity and enigmatic decline"

“…Furthermore, if one were to base their main conclusion on over-exploitation, there must be an explanation in the article on how this process came about. Since the establishment of these settlements in the 3 rd century CE, the Romans and Byzantines succeeded in converting desert lands into fertile agricultural lands which produced a stable economy entirely based on their agricultural exports for 350 years (Butler et al 2020;Langgut et al 2021). Therefore, an over-exploitation of the environment in the 6 th or 7 th century CE is puzzling at best.…”