Archaeobotany at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak): Aspects of Food Production in Early Urban and Diasporic Early Transcaucasian Communities of the Levant

Abstract

ABSTRACT Archaeobotanical material from excavations at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak) provides insight into Early Bronze Age urbanisation in the Southern Levant and differences in food choices between Levantine and diasporic Early Transcaucasian communities. In the pre-urban period of the Early Bronze 1B (3350-3100 BC), comparative analysis of cereals and crop processing by-products indicates that food production was managed by individual households in a village type economy. The site dramatically changed in the Early Bronze II urbanisation period (3100–2850 BC). Household food production appeared stable throughout, however, there is evidence for beginnings of centralised storage of agricultural resources in the urban period at Tel Bet Yerah. During the Early Bronze III (2850–2500 BC), the site’s urban organisation collapsed and migrant settlers bearing Khirbet Kerak Ware occupied abandoned sections of the site alongside local inhabitants. Comparison of crops and weed flora identifies that the two groups potentially cultivated and processed some of their crops separately and that the crop choices of the Khirbet Kerak Ware community maintained connections to northern Early Transcaucasian Culture culinary traditions.