The Origins of Terracing in the Southern Levant and Patch Cultivation/Box Fields

Abstract

This paper looks at various suggestions relating to what incipient and early forms of terracing might have looked like, and goes on to suggest that some of the earliest terraces in the southern Levant may have emerged from horticultural practices, and more specifically the cultivation of olive trees within sunken patches of soil on rocky hillslopes (referred to as "patch cultivation" or "box fields"). This phenomenon may be traced back to the Chalcolithic period (4 th millennium B.C.E), if not to earlier times.

A history of olive and grape cultivation in Southwest Asia using charcoal and seed remains

“…The exploitation of marginal lands for arboriculture seems to have been even more pronounced for grape, since some of the early sites with grape in the Levant were in areas that received very little rainfall ( Fig 16d–16f ), needing irrigation to allow cultivation. Terracing may also have played a role here [ 94 ], enabling both extensification and intensification of production.…”

European agricultural terraces and lynchets: from archaeological theory to heritage management

“…Archaeological research into terraces in Europe has several different geographical and cultural origins and pathways. Globally, interest in the origins of agricultural terracing begins in the midtwentieth century (Gibson 2017), but the first attempt to trace the origins of terracing was made by W. J. Perry in 1916(Perry 1916.…”

“…Subsequent excavation, sediment-based dating and analytical work will further this spatial and historical framework. The application of techniques, particularly optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), has driven a resurgence of interest in terraces (Gibson 2015;Gibson and Lewis 2017;Gadot et al 2016;Kinnaird et al 2017;Brown et al 2021) and offers for the first time an archaeologically independent way of documenting the life-histories of terraces and lynchets (Dennell 1982).…”

“…Archaeological research into terraces in Europe has several different geographical and cultural origins and pathways. Globally, interest in the origins of agricultural terracing begins in the mid-twentieth century (Gibson 2017 ), but the first attempt to trace the origins of terracing was made by W. J. Perry in 1916 (Perry 1916 ). In the first half of the twentieth century, research was episodic, resulting in a few early publications on Lebanon (Lewis 1953 ), North Africa (Despois 1956 ), and the general Mediterranean (Gaussen 1927 ; Despois 1956 ).…”