Plant Remains from Rothenberg’s Excavations in Timna: Smelters’ Food and Cultic Offerings at the Turn of the First Millennium BCE

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, two copper-smelting sites (Sites 2 and 30) and a cultic place (the ‘Hathor Shrine’, Site 200) were excavated by Beno Rothenberg’s ‘Arabah Expedition’ in the Timna Valley. They yielded rich archaeobotanical assemblages, most of which were never published. These data provide a rare opportunity to reconstruct plant food aspects of the daily lives of copper smelters. In this study, we were able to locate and identify some 10,000 plant remains, dated to the final phase of the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age (the 13th–9th centuries BCE). Most of the finds are fruits (grape, date, fig and olive). We suggest that this evidence represents dried or pickled fruits, consumed by the smelters throughout the day due to their calorie-rich value and ease of use. Plant-based food preparation was probably carried out elsewhere, in ephemeral tent encampments. In addition, the shrine’s plant assemblage, which includes the same species found in the smelting camps, suggests that the metalworkers used their food as an offering to the goddess Hathor (and possibly also to other deities).

Keywords:

• Archaeobotany
• Fruits
• Food plants
• Copper production
• Timna Valley
• Late Bronze Age
• Iron Age

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Naama Sukenik (Israel Antiquities Authority) for her help in locating the finds from Rothenberg’s excavations at Site 30, Deborah Sweeney (Tel Aviv University) for her advice, Yaakov Langsam and Y. Muravich (Bar-Ilan University) for the SEM photographs, Omri Yagel (Tel Aviv University) for the map, Itamar Ben-Ezra for preparing the map for publication, and Hana Dan-Daube (Bar-Ilan University) for her technical help. For their helpful suggestions during the review process, we thank Dafna Langgut (Tel Aviv University) and the anonymous referees. Michal David would like to acknowledge the support of the ‘Doctoral Fellowships of Excellence Students’ of Bar-Ilan University and the ‘Rotenstreich Scholarships for Outstanding PhD Students in the Humanities’ of the Council for Higher Education. This study was partially supported by Israel Science Foundation Grant No. 551/18 to E.Weiss, E. Drori and A. Karasik and Grant Nos. 1880/17 and 408/22 to Erez Ben-Yosef.

Notes

1 Despite this, we include here the assemblage of Site 2, since the current study deals with plant remains from Rothenberg’s excavations. It is our hope that future ¹⁴C dating will resolve the contextual and taphonomic uncertainty.

2 Although Rothenberg collected plant remains by hand-picking, which might cause the loss of archaeobotanical data, two soil samples from the 2009 excavation exhibited the same results (see Table S1 in the online supplement).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michal David

Michal David: The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel and the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Mordechai Kislev

Mordechai Kislev: The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Yoel Melamed

Yoel Melamed: The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Erez Ben-Yosef

Erez Ben-Yosef: The Jakob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Ehud Weiss

Ehud Weiss: The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel