Impact of Anthropogenic Activities on Woodland in Northern Syria (4th–2nd Mill. BC): Evidence from Charcoal Assemblages and Oak Measurements

ABSTRACT

In this paper charcoals from the Syrian sites Tell Mozan and Tell Jerablus are investigated to understand the impact of 4th to 2nd millennium BC settlement on the vegetation. Charcoals from these sites have been identified and oak fragments have been measured for their maximal diameter and annual ring widths. Our results show that while oak had reached its maximal expansion in the Mid-Holocene, and vegetation in the Euphrates Valley was lusher than today, strong anthropogenic impact on the vegetation was occurring, probably already prior to the Late Chalcolithic period. Due to potentially enormous herds of sheep and goat, and possibly large-scale agriculture with perhaps some understory cropping, oak was growing very slowly, to the degree that it must often have had a shrub-like appearance. People did not apply systematic oak woodland management practices, such as coppicing or pollarding. They used dung as an additional fuel, probably to cover for shortages in wood resources. The land appears to have been used both intensively and extensively to a degree that was not sustainable in the long term. This, combined with aridity impact on the oak, probably led to a decrease in oak proportion at Mozan in the Middle Bronze Age.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthracology
• Uruk period
• Early Bronze Age
• Middle Bronze Age
• northern Syria

Acknowledgements

This research has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No. 802424, award holder Dr. Dan Lawrence. Many thanks are due to Dr. Jane Gaastra for critically commenting on a former draft of this manuscript and to Dr. Anne Wissing for providing contextual information of Mozan samples.

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Katleen Deckers

Katleen Deckers is researcher and “Private Docent” at the Institute for Archaeological Science at the University of Tübingen. Katleen studied archaeology at the University of Leuven and completed her PhD on Cypriot geoarchaeology at the University of Edinburgh in 2002. Katleen´s research focus lays on understanding former interactions between people and their environment in the Near East. For this, she has applied a wide range of methodologies, including charcoal analysis, dendro-isotopy, geoarchaeology, remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, and thermoluminescence screening.

Federico Polisca

Federico Polisca undertook an M.Sc. in Archaeological Sciences at the University of Padova. During his studies, he spent one year at the University of Tübingen, where he became involved with the project we are reporting on. He is specialized in geoarchaeology focusing on paleoenvironmental reconstructions and archaeological soil and sediment micromorphology. He is currently doing his PhD at the University of Padova as part of the ERC-Consolidator project “Geo-archaeology of Daily Practices (GEODAP)”.

Simone Riehl

Simone Riehl is the head of the archaeobotanical work group at the Institute for Archaeological Science and researcher in the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP) at the University of Tübingen. She studied early prehistory, geology, botany, archaeobotany and climatology at the Universities of Basel, Tübingen, Sheffield and Madison-Wisconsin. She teaches archaeobotany and environmental archaeology. Her projects cover the emergence and development of agriculture in the ancient Near East using achaeobotanical and stable isotope geochemistry.

Michelle de Gruchy

Michelle de Gruchy is a postdoctoral research assistant on the Climate, Landscape, Settlement and Society (CLaSS) Project: Exploring Human-Environmental Interaction in the Ancient Near East at Durham University. Her research interests include landscape archaeology, Late Prehistory of the Middle East, quantitative route analysis/pedestrian and traffic modelling, hollow ways, GIS and remote sensing.

Dan Lawrence

Dan Lawrence is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. He specialises in Landscape Archaeology, with a focus on the Near East and Central Asia during the Holocene. He currently runs two major research projects. The Semiyarka Urban Survey, funded by the British Academy, is investigating the site and surroundings of Semiyarka in Kazakhstan, a 140 hectare Bronze Age City. The Climate, Landscapes, Settlement and Society (CLaSS) project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant, examines the relationship between complex human societies and climate change over the last 8,000 years. He directs the Durham Archaeology Informatics Laboratory, a research hub dedicated to Landscape Archaeology, GIS and remote sensing and computational approaches to the archaeological record.