Cultivating the Hills and the Sands: A Comparative Archaeobotanical Investigation of Early Islamic Agriculture in Palestine

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how agricultural choices were driven by political, social and environmental conditions in Palestine during the Early Islamic period (c. 636–1099 CE) through the analysis of charred archaeobotanical assemblages from three archaeological sites in the southern Levant. These sites – the coastal urban centres of Ashkelon and Caesarea Maritima, and the large inland village of Neby Zakaria – are situated in different environmental settings and had distinct socioeconomic functions. Data on categories of economic plants (cereals, chaff, pulses, fruits and nuts) are aggregated from all time periods represented at each site to understand general patterns of crop presence and are examined diachronically. These data show that the production and consumption of plant resources were affected more by a settlement’s socioeconomic function than by its environmental setting; in this case, urban centres specialised in perennial arboriculture and viticulture, and villages specialised in annual cultivation of cereals and pulses. Furthermore, these data suggest that there is no clear divide between cities as consumers or conduits of trade and villages as producers of agricultural products in this part of Palestine in the Early Islamic period, but this pattern needs to be tested with archaeobotanical investigations of additional sites.

KEYWORDS:

• Archaeobotany
• agricultural economy
• Early Islamic period
• Palestine
• perennial arboriculture
• annual agriculture

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank project directors Daniel Master, the late Larry Stager, the late Ken Holum, and Avrahram Tendler, and the excavation teams at the sites. Thanks also to Andrea Berlin, Bethany Walker, Joanna Davidson and Alan Sullivan who read earlier versions of this draft. Finally, thanks to Joel Roskin and Itamar Taxel for the invitation to share this research, and to the two reviewers whose cogent edits improved this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by American Society for Overseas Research, Boston University Archaeology Program, Boston University Graduate Research Abroad Fellowships, Boston University Graduate Student Organization Research Grant, and The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

Notes on contributors

Kathleen M. Forste

Kathleen M. Forste is Anthropological Archaeologist who studies ancient agricultural systems and human–plant relationships through the analysis of archaeobotanical remains, historical sources and environmental data. Her primary interests are in the Byzantine, Early Islamic and Crusader periods in the Levant, and the Islamic era in Iberia.

John M. Marston

John M. Marston is Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Boston University. An environmental archaeologist, he studies the long-term sustainability and spatial distribution of agriculture and land use, with a focus on ancient states and empires in the eastern Mediterranean and western and central Asia.

Jennifer Ramsay

Jennifer Ramsay is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Brockport. Her area of expertise centres on the use of archaeobotany analysis to aid in subsistence reconstruction, defining trade patterns, illuminating environmental change and determining land-use patterns to gain insight into lifeways of past societies. She specialises in the Roman and Late Antique world in the Near East, and has also analysed plant materials from the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, and Crusader periods.

Tracy Hoffman

Tracy Hoffman is Archaeologist who studies daily life and urban development through analyses of excavated material and historical sources. Her primary interests are the Byzantine-Islamic Transition, the Early Islamic and Crusader periods in the Levant.