‘Impressions’ of the Mamluk agricultural economy. Archaeobotanical evidence from clay ovens (ṭābūn) at Tall Hisban (Jordan) (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 11,700 – 8250 cal. B.P.) marks an era of monumental social and economic development in Southwest Asia. The beginnings of cultivation transformed subsistence practices in the region, reflecting both changes in human diet and the activities of collecting, preparing, and consuming plant foods. Archaeobotanical studies have provided critical evidence of the physiological processes of plant domestication, yet so far have rarely shed light on the specific tasks associated with early agriculture in the southern Levant. The site of el-Hemmeh, located in central Jordan, offers a unique perspective on the development of agriculture as it is one of the few archaeological sites occupied during both the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (ca. 11,700 – 10,500 cal. B.P.) and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (ca. 9250-8700 cal. B.P.) periods. This dissertation presents macrobotanical evidence collected from el-Hemmeh using a novel flotation tank design to recover charred plant remains from a total of 15 PPNA contexts and 32 Late PPNB contexts. These plant remains are pertinent to understanding the mechanisms of early Neolithic plant domestication and the local environmental setting in which cultivation occurred at el-Hemmeh. The assemblage provides evidence of the purposeful cultivation of predomesticated barley during both the PPNA and Late PPNB periods, as well as fully domesticated emmer wheat during the Late PPNB. Many of the weedy, opportunistic plant species found in the PPNA deposits are edible or useful medicinally and may have been collected as secondary food sources alongside cultivated plants. Additionally, ripped cereal chaff and large numbers of broken grains provide evidence of routine cereal processing tasks, including harvesting, threshing, dehusking, and intensive grain grinding during the Late PPNB. This research answers calls by archaeologists to identify the ways in which large-scale economic changes of the Neolithic are reflected at the local level through an examination of context-by-context patterns in macrobotanical data reflecting plant processing, cooking, and discard activities at el-Hemmeh.
2012
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 11,700 – 8250 cal. B.P.) marks an era of monumental social and economic development in Southwest Asia. The beginnings of cultivation transformed subsistence practices in the region, reflecting both changes in human diet and the activities of collecting, preparing, and consuming plant foods. Archaeobotanical studies have provided critical evidence of the physiological processes of plant domestication, yet so far have rarely shed light on the specific tasks associated with early agriculture in the southern Levant. The site of el-Hemmeh, located in central Jordan, offers a unique perspective on the development of agriculture as it is one of the few archaeological sites occupied during both the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (ca. 11,700 – 10,500 cal. B.P.) and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (ca. 9250-8700 cal. B.P.) periods. This dissertation presents macrobotanical evidence collected from el-Hemmeh using a novel flotation tank design to recover charred plant remains from a total of 15 PPNA contexts and 32 Late PPNB contexts. These plant remains are pertinent to understanding the mechanisms of early Neolithic plant domestication and the local environmental setting in which cultivation occurred at el-Hemmeh. The assemblage provides evidence of the purposeful cultivation of predomesticated barley during both the PPNA and Late PPNB periods, as well as fully domesticated emmer wheat during the Late PPNB. Many of the weedy, opportunistic plant species found in the PPNA deposits are edible or useful medicinally and may have been collected as secondary food sources alongside cultivated plants. Additionally, ripped cereal chaff and large numbers of broken grains provide evidence of routine cereal processing tasks, including harvesting, threshing, dehusking, and intensive grain grinding during the Late PPNB. This research answers calls by archaeologists to identify the ways in which large-scale economic changes of the Neolithic are reflected at the local level through an examination of context-by-context patterns in macrobotanical data reflecting plant processing, cooking, and discard activities at el-Hemmeh.
Telling Seeds: Archaeobotanical Investigations at Tall al-‘Umayri, Jordan
This study examines and interprets the archaeobotanical assemblage recovered from the site of Tall al-‘Umayri during the 2006 and 2008 excavation seasons that range in date from the Early Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period (approximately 3000 bce to 100 bce) and include a catastrophic destruction in the Iron Age. Analysis of the material considers evidence for patterns of local consumption and agricultural production, which suggest a rich agricultural system. Plant remains identified aid in the reconstruction of the anthropogenic landscape surrounding the site, variation in domestic life between households and changes in subsistence patterns through time.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2023
Archaeological plant remains are key data in the identification of the material consequences of imperial interventions in past local lifeways. In this paper, the spatial and stratigraphic analysis of plant remains preserved in a hypothesized kitchen context from the archaeological site of Dhiban, Jordan, is presented in detail. This context is dated to ca. A.D. 570-640 based on 16 AMS dates, a time when the Dhiban community was part of and located at the eastern edge of the Byzantine empire. Analysis of over 130 point-provenienced flotation samples reveals a local emphasis on the agricultural production of wheat, peas, and grape, in spite of the challenges of water management in a semi-arid landscape. Comparison with other nearby and contemporaneous sites indicates that while all grew a similar suite of crops, their frequencies vary, possibly indicating a community of agricultural practice specializing in different foodstuffs or crops.
*Please contact me if you would like a copy of the thesis* The countryside of northeastern Jordan is comparatively little studied in contrast to urban sites. At rural settlements, analysis of primarily military architecture and churches has been undertaken, along with excavation at a few sites; however, the ceramics are sparsely published and important historical developments remain in question. In this thesis, new archaeological and ceramic data from the largest site in the region, Umm el-Jimal, is used to characterise important historical and social developments and to challenge previous assumptions. The first quantified ceramic dataset from the region allows for socio-economic analysis, pinpointing important sources and transitions in pottery supply over time. The site, methodology and aims are introduced in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 provide essential historical background and highlight key themes in the study of rural and urban settlement. The stratigraphy of the excavations is interpreted in Chapter 4. Ceramic studies in the region are critically evaluated in Chapter 5, followed by a detailed description of the wares/fabrics from Umm el-Jimal. Quantification, as discussed above, follows in Chapter 6. The results of a small ceramic survey in northeast Jordan, undertaken due to a lack of comparative corpora, are presented in Chapter 7. Finally, in Chapter 8, data from Umm el-Jimal and the survey is considered alongside the important themes identified in early chapters, resulting in a reassessment of key phases and transitions at rural sites, and a critical look at the use of ceramic data in recent Levantine research. It is argued that ceramics from rural sites are an essential element in the study of production and exchange, and that data from Umm el-Jimal strongly contributes to current theories of economic developments.
2018
I J. Perer. ron eta/.: The Origins and D~velopmenr of Agrlculwrc in 1/u: Wtlch aJ.IJa.rii Reg/(Jfl region. This enbancM the research)lOteotial of nology at TDAS 102 and 2 12 were co lored by lhc site, especially in combination with ownerlhc survey rcsul15 in 1999-2000 (MacDonald eJ ous ~rcbitc:auml remnantS. well-preserved or-a/. 2000, 2001) and previous work in lhc W:idl ga,dcs. and over 2m of cultural de)lOSits. Recog-aJ-I;fasii (O lszewski 2000). . In the fonner, the Ionizing !his potential , the Jordanian government cal selling was idcnlified as n lacustrine envipurcbnsed lhc ~-ite and now employs security ronmcnt (Moumani el aJ. 2003) with the P"'"" pcrwnnel 10 protect it. Their presence has sui>ence or some He.lwan retouched luoates. Similar stantit~ly diminished d i>turbances at Kbirbm combinations found in the Wndl al-J;Iasu indinl-l;fnnuru1m fro rn cultivation, bulldo7.ing, and cated on Early Natufian o:cupation. Thus, it vandalism. was expected that an Early Natufian occupation Our rationale for expanding investigations would characterize the WMI al-~yr mateof the agricultural transition outside the WiidJ rials as weU. However, two radiocarbon dates all)asii proper-nod into tile wider catchment from TBAS 102. both around 11,000 bp (uncalizone-was grounded in po-evious research. Sur-brated) (Thble 1), indicate 1111 enrly U.te Natuvey and excavation projeciS within the Wlidl aJ. lion occupation (Neeley in press). These dates ~lnsii have identified several Early Nntufian site.~ tit well with the calibrated dates for the Natu• such as Tabaqn, Yulil al-~Jasii, a nd WHS 1021, fian found in Bar-Yosef (2000) and Aurencllc et but no Late Nutu6an shes (Byrd and Colledge al. (200 1). Furthcrmot-e, the typotecbnologict~ 1991 ; Olsze..,& ld et al. 1994; Olszewski and Hill cbaractcrislics of both assemblnges are eonsis• 1997). Typo-tcehnological analyse.~ or the mate-tent with the expectations for a Late Natu6nn rials from the Wadi al-Qu$ayr region suggested occupation. In tbe larger picture of west-t-et1ttal the possibility for Late Nutufian occupation. Jordan, these two sites appear to bl: ll1e 6rst l,.ntc i'herefore we chose to expand the research area NatUfian occupations ideoriJied within tJ1e Wadi in hope of catching the tcnninal Epipaleolitbic
A 2500-year historical ecology of agricultural production under empire in Dhiban, Jordan
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2018
Archaeological plant remains have played a limited role in understanding how pre-modern imperial interventions affected the lives of communities incorporated into their political networks. The analysis of paleoethno-botanical data collected from a multi-year excavation project in Dhiban, Jordan, illustrates how the high-resolution and systematic sampling of archaeological plant remains within a historical ecological framework can provide new insights into long-term changes in agricultural practice in the context of shifts in non-local imperial interventions. The analysis of over 200 archaeological sediment samples representing nearly 2500 years of in-habitation reveal shifts in the relative abundances of particular crops correlating to separate moments of imperial intervention, in particular during the Byzantine (ca. 330-635 CE) and Mamluk (ca. 1250-1450 CE) empires .
2010
I J. Perer. ron eta/.: The Origins and D~velopmenr of Agrlculwrc in 1/u: Wtlch aJ.IJa.rii Reg/(Jfl region. This enbancM the research)lOteotial of nology at TDAS 102 and 2 12 were co lored by lhc site, especially in combination with ownerlhc survey rcsul15 in 1999-2000 (MacDonald eJ ous ~rcbitc:auml remnantS. well-preserved or-a/. 2000, 2001) and previous work in lhc W:idl ga,dcs. and over 2m of cultural de)lOSits. Recog-aJ-I;fasii (O lszewski 2000). . In the fonner, the Ionizing !his potential , the Jordanian government cal selling was idcnlified as n lacustrine envipurcbnsed lhc ~-ite and now employs security ronmcnt (Moumani el aJ. 2003) with the P"'"" pcrwnnel 10 protect it. Their presence has sui>ence or some He.lwan retouched luoates. Similar stantit~ly diminished d i>turbances at Kbirbm combinations found in the Wndl al-J;Iasu indinl-l;fnnuru1m fro rn cultivation, bulldo7.ing, and cated on Early Natufian o:cupation. Thus, it vandalism. was expected that an Early Natufian occupation Our rationale for expanding investigations would characterize the WMI al-~yr mateof the agricultural transition outside the WiidJ rials as weU. However, two radiocarbon dates all)asii proper-nod into tile wider catchment from TBAS 102. both around 11,000 bp (uncalizone-was grounded in po-evious research. Sur-brated) (Thble 1), indicate 1111 enrly U.te Natuvey and excavation projeciS within the Wlidl aJ. lion occupation (Neeley in press). These dates ~lnsii have identified several Early Nntufian site.~ tit well with the calibrated dates for the Natu• such as Tabaqn, Yulil al-~Jasii, a nd WHS 1021, fian found in Bar-Yosef (2000) and Aurencllc et but no Late Nutu6an shes (Byrd and Colledge al. (200 1). Furthcrmot-e, the typotecbnologict~ 1991 ; Olsze..,& ld et al. 1994; Olszewski and Hill cbaractcrislics of both assemblnges are eonsis• 1997). Typo-tcehnological analyse.~ or the mate-tent with the expectations for a Late Natu6nn rials from the Wadi al-Qu$ayr region suggested occupation. In tbe larger picture of west-t-et1ttal the possibility for Late Nutufian occupation. Jordan, these two sites appear to bl: ll1e 6rst l,.ntc i'herefore we chose to expand the research area NatUfian occupations ideoriJied within tJ1e Wadi in hope of catching the tcnninal Epipaleolitbic
Excavation at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Village of Ain Ghazal (Jordan), 1983
… der Deutschen Orient- …, 1985
... Sickle blade. ; Arrowhead. ; Spearhead. ; Fauna. ; Ovicaprid. ; Flora. ; Plant. ; Emmer wheat. ; Einkorn. ; Cereal. ; Leguminous plants. ; Tree. ... Habitat, type. ; Maison. ; Industrie osseuse, chronologie. ; Art. ; Statuette. ; Argile. ; Pierre. ; Plâtre. ; Iconographie. ; Anthropomorphe. ; Femme ...