Subsistence practices in an arid environment: a geoarchaeological investigation in an Iron Age site,the Negev Highlands,Israel

The Negev Highlands (southern Israel) is an arid zone characterized by settlement oscillations. One settlement peak occurred in the early Iron Age IIA (late 10th and early 9th centuries BC). The most conspicuous structure in many sites of this period is an oval compound comprised of an internal courtyard surrounded by rooms. Two hypotheses for the function of these oval compounds are that they served as Israelite fortresses which guarded the southern border and routes of the Solomonic kingdom, or that they represent local agro-pastoral groups. In order to gather more information regarding the subsistence practices conducted in these oval compounds, we carried out a small-scale excavation at the site of Atar Haroa. We focused on sediment sampling and used several geoarchaeological, as well as isotopic, techniques in order to identify macroscopic and microscopic remains related to animal husbandry and crop agriculture. The remains identified from the archaeological sediments were compared with modern reference materials collected from abandoned Bedouin camps. The excavation included two half rooms and several test pits in the courtyard of the oval compound, featuring one Iron Age occupation level composed of gray sediments and relatively small amounts of pottery, bones and macro-botanical charred remains. Micromorphological, mineralogical, dung spherulite and isotopic analyses carried out on the gray occupational sediments from the rooms show that they originate from wood ash and dung, both used as fuel. Similar analyses of the gray sediments in the courtyard show that they originate only from degraded livestock dung. Phytolith analyses show that the gray anthropogenic sediments have similar concentrations of phytoliths as in control (yellowish) sediments and in the dung of winter free-grazing desert livestock and lichen-grazing black dwarf Bedouin goats. Phytoliths indicative of cereal crops are completely absent in the archaeological dung remains, indicating that cereal crops were not processed by the site inhabitants. Based on ethnographic and archaeological parallels, and on the presence of grinding stones and absence of sickle blades in the excavated rooms, we infer that the inhabitants at the oval compound at Atar Haroa subsisted on livestock herding and bought or exchanged cereal grains. Our results support the hypothesis that the inhabitants at the oval compound at Atar Haroa were desert-adapted pastoralists, rather than garrisoned soldiers.     

The little ice age in the Scottish Highlands and Islands: Documenting its human impact

This paper examines the Little Ice Age in the Scottish Highlands and Islands and uses documentary evidence to show its impact on the farm economy. It has three sections. The first examines how Highland climate may have changed during the Little Ice Age, and notes that increased storminess was probably as much a factor as lower annual mean temperatures. The second takes the most severe phase of the Little Ice Age, the Maunder Minimum, 1645–1715, and uses rests or eases of rent to show how it stressed the farm economy. The third examines evidence for the abandonment of land during the Maunder Minimum. As well as arguing that we need to see abandonment in its social as well as physical setting, it highlights the role played by the temporary abandonment of land and suggests that such abandonment along the western seaboard probably indicates the impact of increased storminess.     

Somaliland

The changing pattern of land‐use in the Forest of Abernethy, Inverness‐shire in the period AD 1750 to the present is examined, using information from records and a number of maps and surveys. It is shown that the forest has a long history of exploitation for timber and the grazing of livestock, and that by the mid‐eighteenth century a pattern not markedly different from that of the present had already emerged. Evidence for the widespread formation of heathland in Dark Age times, and the fact that almost every part of Abernethy has been felled for timber at least once, modifies the concept of the forest as a “native Pinewood”.     

A note on the excavation of an Ottoman and British Mandate period Bedouin campground at Nahal Be'erotayim West in the Negev desert,Israel

The preliminary results of excavations conducted at Nahal Be'erotayim West, an abandoned Bedouin campground in the Negev desert, Israel, indicate that multiple tents were pitched in this location in different periods and at different times of the year. The recovered artefacts and architecture provide a means to identify gender and seasonality in the archaeological record, respectively. Radiocarbon dates from an ash layer and two hearths offer evidence of intermittent occupation from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century AD, and chronologically diagnostic artefacts also indicate occupations from the late nineteenth to the mid‐twentieth century.     

Heather moorland in the Scottish Highlands: the history of a cultural landscape, 1600–1880

The heather moorland of the Scottish Highlands represents a highly symbolic habitat for the region. Significantly, recent work by ecologists and palaeobotanists has stressed the strong anthropogenic role in its development. Indeed, so vital is the role played by human interference, heather moorland is now seen as a cultural landscape. Yet despite being seen as a cultural landscape, there has hitherto been no attempt to use available documentary evidence to understand how this human interference may have affected its development over recent centuries. This paper examines such evidence, paying particular attention to how human activity contributed to its expansion over the early modern period and to its decline from ca. 1800 onwards, exploring such themes as moor burning, the harvesting of young tree growth, and grazing levels and practices, both before and after the clearances. Particular attention is paid to how the spread of sheep after the clearances contributed to the decline of heather moor and the role that heavy sheep grazing may have played in the deterioration in the quality of Highlands pastures during the mid-nineteenth century.     

Plant microfossils in prehistoric archaeological deposits from Yuku rock shelter,Western Highlands,Papua New Guinea

Plant microfossil analysis was carried out on anthropogenic deposits from Yuku rock shelter, possibly occupied from before 14,200 cal. BP to recent times, in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Elaeocarpus pollen has extremely high percentages throughout. Starch residues of lesser yam (Dioscorea esculenta) and one or more, undifferentiated Dioscorea species were identified, suggesting processing of these taxa since first use of the site. The latter include Dioscorea alata, Dioscorea bulbifera, Dioscorea nummularia and Dioscorea pentaphylla. Pollen and phytoliths of banana (Musa) appear 5200 cal. BP. We cannot differentiate between naturally growing and cultivated yams and bananas. Putative truffle (hypogeous Ascomycotina) spores in the deposits suggest foraging of truffles.     

A very large camel from the upper pleistocene of the Negev desert

Bones of an Upper Pleistocene Camelus have been found in the northwestern Negev, they are of particular interest because they are larger than those of all the Old World camel species since the Plio-Pleistocene, and they are very much larger than the few fossil camels already known from the Middle East. It is suggested that they represent the only C. thomasi yet identified outside Africa.     

Byzantine–Early Islamic agricultural systems in the Negev Highlands: Stages of development as interpreted through OSL dating

Abstract

An extensive survey followed by OSL (optically stimulated luminescence) dating of loess accumulation in agricultural terraces at six Byzantine and Early Islamic sites in the Negev Highlands revealed clear stratigraphic and chronological sequences. Traditionally dated to the 1st–7th centuries a.d., results from the present study demonstrate that the construction and use of largescale agricultural systems took place in the 4th–11th centuries a.d. This new chronology provides the framework for a more precise interpretation of the circumstances of construction and demise of largescale agriculture in the Negev Highlands. The agricultural fields were exploited continuously, yet ancient farmers had to confront the environmental hazards of occasional intensive floods, successive years of drought, and a constant process of loess accumulation and erosion. The constant maintenance and repair of fields necessitated an investment of labor. However, it seems that the expansion of ancient agriculture was part of the natural growth and development of Byzantine settlements in the Negev, and not the outcome of planned government enterprise. The agricultural systems were abandoned in the course of the 11th century a.d. and sporadically reused by pastoral nomads.     

Spatial coupling between spilitization and carbonation of basaltic sills in SW Scottish Highlands: evidence of a mineralogical control of metamorphic fluid flow

In a geochemical and petrological analysis of overprinting episodes of fluid–rock interaction in a well‐studied metabasaltic sill in the SW Scottish Highlands, we show that syn‐deformational access of metamorphic fluids and consequent fluid–rock interaction is at least in part controlled by preexisting mineralogical variations. Lithological and structural channelling of metamorphic fluids along the axis of the Ardrishaig Anticline, SW Scottish Highlands, caused carbonation of metabasaltic sills hosted by metasedimentary rocks of the Argyll Group in the Dalradian Supergroup. Analysis of chemical and mineralogical variability across a metabasaltic sill at Port Cill Maluaig shows that carbonation at greenschist to epidote–amphibolites facies conditions caused by infiltration of H₂O‐CO₂ fluids was controlled by mineralogical variations, which were present before carbonation occurred. This variability probably reflects chemical and mineralogical changes imparted on the sill during premetamorphic spilitization. Calculation of precarbonation mineral modes reveals heterogeneous spatial distributions of epidote, amphibole, chlorite and epidote. This reflects both premetamorphic spilitization and prograde greenschist facies metamorphism prior to fluid flow. Spilitization caused albitization of primary plagioclase and spatially heterogeneous growth of epidote ± calcic amphibole ± chlorite ± quartz ± calcite. Greenschist facies metamorphism caused breakdown of primary pyroxene and continued, but spatially more homogeneous, growth of amphibole + chlorite ± quartz. These processes formed diffuse epidote‐rich patches or semi‐continuous layers. These might represent precursors of epidote segregations, which are better developed elsewhere in the SW Scottish Highlands. Chemical and field analyses of epidote reveal the evidence of local volume fluctuations associated with these concentrations of epidote. Transient permeability enhancement associated with these changes may have permitted higher fluid fluxes and therefore more extensive carbonation. This deflected metamorphic fluid such that its flow direction became more layer parallel, limiting propagation of the reaction front into the sill interior.     

Iron IIA slag-tempered pottery in the Negev Highlands,Israel

The article presents results of a petrographic investigation of pottery from Iron IIA settlements in the Negev Highlands in southern Israel. It focuses on a group of almost exclusively handmade wares that are tempered with crushed slag. The polarizing and electron microscopes explicitly identify these inclusions as copper smelting slag. Based on the slag as well as certain rock inclusions, the slag-tempered wares can be sourced to the copper districts in the Wadi Arabah, and hence for the first time provide a link between the Negev Highlands and the Arabah copper production centers in the period under review. More specifically, they demonstrate direct involvement of at least part of the pastoral-nomadic Negev Highlands population in the copper extraction system.