- Award ID(s):
- 1850259
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10401863
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2328-9554
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 259 to 284
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Martinón-Torres, Marcos ; Torrence, Robin (Ed.)This study employs an array of quantitative methods to analyze village agricultural practices during a time of regional urban abandonment at the end of the Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant. Coordinated cluster and canonical discriminant analyses of stratified archaeobotanical assemblages from the village of Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, Jordan support a detailed portrait of changing crop management at a sedentary agrarian community during Early Bronze IV, a period marked by widespread mobile pastoralism. Our quantified analyses of carbonized plant remains are augmented with stable isotope composition data for major cultigens to offer an innovative perspective on Early Bronze IV agrarian life in the northern Jordan Valley. Seeds from seven occupation phases spanning the time period from about 2500 to 2200 cal BC indicate increasing primary reliance on Hordeum vulgare (hulled barley), and only modest cultivation of wheat, mostly Triticum dicoccum (emmer) over this time span. Constrained incremental sum of squares (CONISS) cluster analysis and canonical discriminate analysis (CDA) illustrate significant shifts in crop cultivation, and possibly related animal management, including a major transition at about 2375 cal BC. Our analyses further highlight the most important plant taxa that contributed to these shifts. Cultivated crops, wild species and chaff are more ubiquitous in the earlier phases at Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, while percentages of H. vulgare and ubiquities of Lens culinaris (lentil) increase in the later phases. Lower seed densities, weed ubiquities and chaff to cereal ratios suggest more distant crop processing after about 2375 cal BC. Values of Δ13C for the major cereals, which provide a proxy for water availability, indicate dry farming of barley and preferential watering of wheat. This study proposes that a suite of changes occurred between the earlier and later phases at Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, which portray generally diminished, more remote crop production, possibly amid greater drought stress, leading to village abandonment. We illustrate a multi-faceted analytical approach suitable for interpretation of comparable archaeobotanical evidence and inference of agrarian dynamics elsewhere in prehistory.more » « less
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Materials and Methods Dental enamel from 31 individuals interred in three different Early Bronze Age charnel houses (A56, A22, A55) at Bab adh‐Dhra', Jordan were analyzed for strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope values.
Results Strontium isotope ratios (range: 0.70793–0.70842) possessed medians that did not differ statistically from one another, but had ranges that exhibited significant differences in variance. Carbon isotope values (
= −13.2 ± 0.5‰, 1σ) were not significantly different. Discussion General similarities in human isotopic signatures between EB II–III charnel houses A22 and A55 suggest that their activities were likely similar to one another and agree with findings from excavated domestic spaces with little archaeological evidence for economic, social, or political differentiation. More variable strontium isotope ratios and lower carbon isotope values from A22 could reflect a greater involvement with pastoralist practices or regional trade, including the consumption of more13C‐depleted foods, while those in A55 may have led a more sedentary lifestyle with greater involvement in cultivating orchard crops. All charnel houses contained nonlocal individuals likely originating from other Dead Sea Plain sites with no EB II–III cemeteries of their own, supporting the idea that extended kin groups throughout the region returned to Bab adh‐Dhra' to bury their dead.
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