Abstract
ABSTRACTVarious archaeological and historical evidence shows that the marginal area of the Negev desert of southern Israel enjoyed great agricultural prosperity in the Byzantine period (4th–7th centuries CE). Among the different types of agricultural installations are pigeon towers, which were built near the fields to produce fertilizer to enrich the nutrient-poor desert soils. Such extensive specialized agriculture practice was much less applied in the Negev in the successive Early Islamic period in the mid-7th century. Here we recoveredin situpigeon bones from five pigeon towers in the Negev, applied multiple characterization methods (FTIR, grinding curve, and C/N ratio) to estimate the preservation of bones, and achieved absolute dating for the abandonment of the towers. The obtained dates indicate rapid decline of agricultural activities in the second half of the 6th century CE and beginning of the 7th century. These findings, together with other evidence for Byzantine decline of agricultural hinterland and urban dysfunction of the settlements, suggest that the farming activities in the Negev declined in the Late Byzantine period (550–640 CE) and support the hypothesis that climatic-driven causes were the main trigger for the eventual cultural-societal decline of the Negev region.
Highlights
The cultural landscape around the Byzantine sites of the Negev desert of southern Israel (4th– 7th centuries Calibrated date (CE)) preserves abundant evidence for intensive farming activities in arid region, including dams, cisterns, wine presses and agricultural installations
We recovered in situ pigeon bones from five pigeon towers in the Negev, applied multiple characterization methods (FTIR, grinding curve, and C/N ratio) to estimate the preservation of bones, and achieved absolute dating for the abandonment of the towers
The degree of crystallinity of carbonate hydroxyapatite characterized by the Infrared splitting factor and the grinding curve, the high collagen percentage, and the typical percentage carbon of the collagen, all show very well-preserved bone collagen in the eight pigeon bone samples from all five pigeon towers in this study
Summary
The cultural landscape around the Byzantine sites of the Negev desert of southern Israel (4th– 7th centuries CE) preserves abundant evidence for intensive farming activities in arid region, including dams, cisterns, wine presses and agricultural installations. These remains are vivid evidence to the sophisticated farming technologies exploited in Late Antiquity within an environmentally marginal, challenging arid environment. Decline was noted in the agricultural hinterlands of the villages of Shivta and Sa’adon, as evident from the abandonment of several pigeon towers at the end of the Byzantine period (Hirschfeld and Tepper 2006; Ramsay et al 2016; Tepper et al 2018b). Multi-disciplinary archaeological investigations of trash management organizations in the nearby Byzantine city of Elusa showed that major urban decline had occurred already a century before the Islamic transitions (Bar-Oz et al 2019)
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