Nabataean agriculture: Myth and reality

Erickson-Gini, Tali

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2012.02.018

Cited by 23 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Furthermore, in extreme floods, runoff harvested in these terraces would be protected from becoming drained to the downstream Wadi Shaharut. Structural characteristics of these terraces are similar to those of many agricultural runoff harvesting infrastructures that were located in many ephemeral stream channels across southern Israel and dated to the Byzantine Age (fourth to seventh century AD) [21][22][23]. As elsewhere, agricultural utilization of Byzantine runoff harvesting infrastructures during later ages is very probable [22,23].…”

Section: Indicators Of Ancient To Recent-past Runoff Agriculturementioning

confidence: 60%

Ancient to Recent-Past Runoff Harvesting Agriculture in Recharge Playas of the Hyper-Arid Southern Israel

Stavi

Shem-Tov

Ragolsky

et al. 2017

Water

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Recharge playas are prevalent throughout the hyper-arid southern Negev and Arava Valley of Israel. While some of these playas are terminal, others were found to be not absolutely terminal, allowing, under extreme floods, the outlet of water from their beds to a draining, ephemeral channel. Indicators for ancient to recent-past agricultural practicing were recorded for two playas. In one of them, this included the archaeological remains of seven Byzantine-Age stone terraces across the playa bed, indicating ancient runoff harvesting agriculture. In another playa, the agricultural indicator included observations by key informants who reported the cropping of barley and wheat by Bedouin populations until the mid-1990s. This was supported by rare bibliographic sources, reporting the cropping of cereals at this site by Bedouins during the 1930s and 1940s. Agro-hydrological assessments of seven playas and their catchments were conducted, revealing a marginal agronomic potential under the current climatic conditions and only for a small number of them. The results highlight the profound environmental know-how of local populations that inhabited this harsh region. Furthermore, the results coincide with previous studies, which have reported drier climatic conditions at present compared to those in ancient times, and even compared to those during the mid-1990s.

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Section: Indicators Of Ancient To Recent-past Runoff Agriculturementioning

confidence: 60%

Ancient to Recent-Past Runoff Harvesting Agriculture in Recharge Playas of the Hyper-Arid Southern Israel

Stavi

Shem-Tov

Ragolsky

et al. 2017

Water

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“…taxes, particularly those levied against farmlands and produce [85,90]. Christian pilgrimage through Nessana also came to a halt, and trade networks in the region were crumbling [19,20,[92][93][94][95]. These circumstances reasonably contributed to reducing the value and/or need for commercial produce.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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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

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“…It revealed several sequential dwellings including four rooms of one large Nabataean building constructed in the first century CE, a Roman Nabataean house with a stairway leading to an upper story dated to the late second through early third centuries CE, and several residential buildings constructed in the late third century CE that continued to be occupied until their destruction by earthquake in the early fifth century CE. The faunal assemblages from these different phases were pooled and are interpreted as representing consumption in a Romanized community of Nabataean descent, which subsisted from the Late Roman period onwards on agriculture and trade 56 .…”

Section: Sites and Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zooarchaeology of the social and economic upheavals in the Late Antique-Early Islamic sequence of the Negev Desert

Marom

Meiri

Tepper

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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The Byzantine – Islamic transition (7 th –8 th centuries CE) in the desert-edge Palaestina Tertia is examined using faunal remains recovered from archaeological sites in the Negev. Archaeozoological analyses suggest sharp differences between Late Byzantine and Early Islamic animal economies, especially in herding patterns and the exploitation of wildlife resources. These differences are suggested to reflect both cultural and land ownership changes following the Arab conquest, against the backdrop of climatic change. The archaeozoological record thereby provides independent evidence to the rise and fall of societal complexity in this marginal region.

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Nabataean agriculture: Myth and reality

Cited by 23 publications

References 18 publications

Ancient to Recent-Past Runoff Harvesting Agriculture in Recharge Playas of the Hyper-Arid Southern Israel

Ancient to Recent-Past Runoff Harvesting Agriculture in Recharge Playas of the Hyper-Arid Southern Israel

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

Zooarchaeology of the social and economic upheavals in the Late Antique-Early Islamic sequence of the Negev Desert

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