Arboriculture and Viticulture as Investment in the Early Islamic Levant: An Archaeobotanical and Historical Investigation of the Site of Ashkelon
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Kathleen M. Forste in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article combines historical and archaeological evidence to investigate the role arboriculture played in the agricultural economy in the southern Levant as centers of production moved away from rural agricultural estates and focused instead on urban centers. Integrating this evidence with archaeobotanical data from Early Islamic deposits at the archaeological site of Ashkelon, located on the southern Mediterranean coast of modern-day Israel, I conclude that people specialized in arboriculture as a means to supply the needs of both subsistence and craft economies in this city, encapsulating the intensification of agricultural production in this period.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
al-Muqaddasī. 1886. Description of Syria, Including Palestine. Trans. by Guy Le Strange. London: Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society.
-
al-Muqaddasī. 2001. The Best Discoveries for Knowledge of the Regions: A Translation of Aḥsan Al-Taqāsīm Fī Maʿrifat Al-Aqālīm. Trans. by B. Collins. Reading, England: Garnet Publishing.
-
Al-Yaʿqūbī. 1967. Kitāb Al-Buldān. Trans. by M.J. de Goeje. Leiden: Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 7, Brill.
-
Allen, Mitchell. 2008. Regional Settlement History: Regional Archaeological Survey. In Ashkelon 1: Introduction and Overview (1985–2006), ed. L.E. Stager, J.D. Schloen, and D.M. Master. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns: 21–66.
-
Amichay, Oriya, Doron Ben-Ami, Yana Tchekhanovets, Ruth Shahack-Gross, Daniel Fuks, and Ehud Weiss. 2019. A Bazaar Assemblage: Reconstructing Consumption, Production and Trade from Mineralised Seeds in Abbasid Jerusalem. Antiquity 93/367: 199–217.
-
Amichay, Oriya, and Ehud Weiss. 2020. The Archaeobotanical Remains. In Jerusalem: Excavations in the Tyropoeon Valley (Givati Parking Lot), Volume II: The Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods, Part 2: Strata IV–I: The Early Islamic Period, ed. Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority: 645–701.
-
Avner, Uzi, and Jodi Magness. 1998. Early Islamic Settlement in the Southern Negev. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 310: 39–57.
-
Avni, Gideon. 2014. The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Ayalon, Etan, Rafael Frankel, and Amon Kloner, ed. 2009. Oil and Wine Presses in Israel from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods. Oxford: BAR International Series 1972. Archaeopress.
-
Boehm, Ryan, Daniel M. Master, and Robyn Le Blanc. 2016. The Basilica, Bouleuterion, and Civic Center of Ashkelon. American Journal of Archaeology 120/2: 271–324.
-
Bouby, Laurent, and Marie-Pierre Ruas. 2014. Adding Diversity. Between Occasional Food and Speculative Productions: Diversity of Fruit Uses, Diversity of Practices Regarding Fruit Tree Cultivation. In Plants and People: Choices and Diversity through Time, ed. Alexandre Chevalier, Elena Marinova, and Leonor Peña-Chocarro. Oxford: Oxbow Books: 141–149.
-
Bouchaud, Charlène. 2014. Gestion et Utilisation Des Combustibles Végétaux Dans Les Structures Thermales : Études Carpologiques et Anthracologiques de Cinq Thermes Des Époques Byzantines et Omeyyades Au Proche-Orient. In Balaneia. 25 Siècles de Bain Collectif En Orient. Proche-Orient, Egypte et Péninsule Arabique, ed. M.-F. Boussac, S. Denoix, Th. Fournet, and B. Redon. La Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale: 595–609.
-
Bouchaud, Charlène. 2015. Agrarian Legacies and Innovations in the Nabataean Territory. ArcheoSciences, no. 39: 103–124.
-
Bouchaud, Charlène, Isabelle Sachet, and Nathalie Delhopital. 2011. Les bois et les fruits des tombeaux nabatéens de Madâʾin Sâlih/Hégra (Arabie Saoudite): Les provenances des végétaux et leur utilisation en contexte funéraire. Anthropobotanica 1/11: 3–21.
-
Bouchaud, Charlène, Christiane Jacuat, and Danièle Martinoli. 2017. Landscape Use and Fruit Cultivation in Petra (Jordan) from Early Nabataean to Byzantine Times (2nd Century BC–5th Century AD). Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 26: 223–244.
-
Bouchaud, Charlène, Hervé Monchot, François Villeneuve, Piotr Makowski, and Ana Marrast. 2018. Agro-Pastoral Productions and Landscape Evolution during Antiquity and Islamic Periods (AD 1st–12th Centuries) at Dharih (Jordan). Journal of Islamic Archaeology 5/1: 39–70.
-
Dalby, Andrew. 2011. Geoponika: Farm Work. A Modern Translation of the Roman and Byzantine Farming Handbook. London, UK: Prospect Books.
-
Decker, Michael J. 2009. Tilling the Hateful Earth: Agricultural Production and Trade in the Late Antique East. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Decker, Michael J. 2013. The End of the Holy Land Wine Trade. Strata: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 31: 103–117.
-
Erickson-Gini, T. 2012. Nabataean Agriculture: Myth and Reality. Journal of Arid Environments 86: 50–54.
-
Fahn, Abraham, Ella Werker, and Pieter Baas. 1986. Wood Anatomy and Identification of Trees and Shrubs from Israel and Adjacent Regions. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
-
Fischer, Moshe, and Itamar Taxel. 2014. Yavneh-Yam in the Byzantine-Early Islamic Transition: The Archaeological Remains and Their Socio-Political Implications. Israel Exploration Journal 64/2: 212–242.
-
Fitzwilliam-Hall, A.H. 2010. Abū ’l-Khayr Ash-Shajjār Al-Ishbīlī / 11th Century. Translation of Kitāb Al-Filāḥa. The Filāḥa Texts Project. http://www.filaha.org/khayr_final_translation_revised.html.
-
Forste, Kathleen M., and John M. Marston. 2019. Plant Remains. In Ashkelon 8: The Islamic and Crusader Periods, ed. Tracy Hoffman. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns: 649–669.
-
Forste, Kathleen M., John M. Marston, and Tracy Hoffman. 2022. Urban Agricultural Economy of the Early Islamic Southern Levant: A Case Study of Ashkelon. 31: 623–642.
-
Foxhall, Lin. 2007. Olive Culivation in Ancient Greece: Seeking the Ancient Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Fuks, Daniel, Guy Bar-Oz, Yotam Tepper, Tali Erickson-Gini, Dafna Langgut, Lior Weissbrod, and Ehud Weiss. 2020. The Rise and Fall of Viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands Reconstructed from Archaeobotanical and Ceramic Data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117/33: 19780–19791.
-
Fuller, Dorian Q., and Chris J. Stevens. 2019. Between Domestication and Civilization: The Role of Agriculture and Arboriculture in the Emergence of the First Urban Societies. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 28/3: 263–282.
-
Gadot, Yuval, Yelena Elgart-Sharon, Nitsan Ben-Melech, Uri Davidovich, Gideon Avni, Yoav Avni, and Naomi Porat. 2018. OSL Dating of Pre-Terraced and Terraced Landscape: Land Transformation in Jerusalem’s Rural Hinterland. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 21 (August): 575–583.
-
Gallagher, Daphne E. 2014. Formation Processes of the Macrobotanical Record. In Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany, edited by John M. Marston, Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner. Boulder: University Press of Colorado: 19–34.
-
Gil, Moshe. 1992. A History of Palestine, 634–1099. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Goldschmidt, Eliezer E. 2013. The Evolution of Fruit Tree Productivity: A Review. Economic Botany 67/1: 51–62.
-
Gros-Balthazard, Muriel, and Jonathan M. Flowers. 2021. A Brief History of the Origin of Domesticated Date Palms. In The Date Palm Genome, Vol. 1: Phylogeny, Biodiversity and Mapping, Compendium of Plant Genomes, edited by Jameel M. Al-Khayri, Dennis V. Johnson, and S. Mohan Jain. Cham, Switzerland: Springer: 55–74.
-
Hakim, Besim S. 2001. Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Construction and Design Rules from Sixth-Century Palestine. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60/1: 4–25.
-
Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko. 2006. Last Pagans of Iraq. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
-
Hodges, Richard, and David Whitehouse. 1983. Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
-
Hoffman, Tracy. 2004. Ascalon on the Levantine Coast. In Changing Social Identity with the Spead of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Donald Whitcomb. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago: 25–49.
-
Hoffman, Tracy, ed. 2019. Ashkelon 8: The Islamic and Crusader Periods. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns.
-
Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
-
Huster, Yaakov. 2015. Survey of Settlement Patterns by Period. In Ashkelon 5: The Land Behind Ashkelon, ed. Lawrence E. Stager, Daniel M. Master, and J. David Schloen. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns: 13–88.
-
Huster, Yaakov, Daniel M. Master, George A. Pierce, and Michael D. Press. 2015. Ashkelon 5: The Land behind Ashkelon. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
-
Israel, Yigal, and Tali Erickson-Gini. 2013. Remains from the Hellenistic Through the Byzantine Periods at the ‘Third Mile Estate’, Ashqelon. ʿAtiqot 74: 167–222.
-
Karagiorgou, Olga. 2009. Mapping Trade by the Amphora. In Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries. The Archaeology of Local, Regional, and International Exchange, Oxford, March 2004., ed. Marlia Mundell Mango. London: Routledge: 37–58.
-
Khurradādhbih, Ibn. 1967. Kitāb Al-Masālik Wa’l-Mamālik. Edited by M.J. de Goeje. Leiden: Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 6, Brill.
-
Kraemer, Casper J. 1958. Excavations at Nessana, Volume 3: Non-Literary Papyri. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Lahham, Karim, and Simon Fitzwilliam-Hall. 2014. Ibn Waḥshīyah, Al-Filāḥah Al-Nabaṭīyah, ‘Nabataean Agriculture.’ The Filāḥa Texts Project Website. http://www.filaha.org/author_Ibn_wahshiyah.html.
-
Langgut, Dafna, Yotam Tepper, Mordechay Benzaquen, Tali Erickson-Gini, and Guy Bar-Oz. 2021. Environment and Horticulture in the Byzantine Negev Desert, Israel: Sustainability, Prosperity and Enigmatic Decline. Quaternary International 593: 160–177.
-
Limier, Bertrand, Sarah Ivorra, Laurent Bouby, Isabel Figueiral, Lucie Chabal, Manon Cabanis, Mohammed Ater, et al. 2018. Documenting the History of the Grapevine and Viticulture: A Quantitative Eco-Anatomical Perspective Applied to Modern and Archaeological Charcoal. Journal of Archaeological Science 100: 45–61.
-
Liphschitz, Nili. 2007. Timber in Ancient Israel. Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.
-
Liphschitz, Nili, and Gideon Biger. 1995. The Timber Trade in Ancient Palestine. Tel Aviv 22/1: 121–127.
-
Lucas, Gavin. 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Magness, Jodi. 2003. The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
-
Marston, John M. 2011. Archaeological Markers of Agricultural Risk Management. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30/2: 190–205.
-
Marston, John M. 2014. Ratios and Simple Statistics in Paleoethnobotanical Analysis: Data Exploration and Hypothesis Testing. In Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany, ed. John M. Marston, Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner. Boulder: University Press of Colorado: 163–179.
-
Masarwa, Yumna. 2011. Transforming the Mediterranean from a Highway into a Frontier: The Coastal Cities of Palestine During the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods. In Le Proche-Orient de Justinien Aux Abbassides: Peuplement et Dynamiques Spatiales, ed. M. Debié Borrut, A. Papaconstantinou, Dominique Pieri, and Jean-Pierre Sodini. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers: 149–167.
-
Matthews, John. 2006. The Journey of Theophanes: Travel, Business, and Daily Life in the Roman East. New Haven: Yale University Press.
-
Mayerson, Philip. 1962. The Ancient Agricultural Regime of Nessana and the Central Negev. In Excavations at Nessana, Volume 1, ed. H. Dunscombe Colt. London: Colt Archaeological Institute: 211–269.
-
Mayerson, Philip. 1985. The Wine and Vineyards of Gaza in the Byzantine Period. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 257: 75–80.
-
Mayerson, Philip. 1992. The Gaza ‘Wine’ Jar (Gazition) and the ‘Lost’ Ashkelon Jar (Ashkalonion). Israel Exploration Journal 42/1–2: 76–80.
-
Mayerson, Philip. 1993. The Use of Ascalon Wine in the Medical Writers of the Fourth to the Seventh Centuries. Israel Exploration Journal 43: 169–173.
-
Nabhan, Gary Paul. 2007. Agrobiodiversity Change in a Saharan Desert Oasis, 1919–2006: Historic Shifts in Tasiwit (Berber) and Bediuin Crop Inventories of Siwa, Egypt. Economic Botany 61/1: 31–43.
-
Nabhan, Gary Paul. 2013. Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons from Desert Farmers on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.
-
Patrich, Joseph. 2011. Caesarea in Transition: The Archaeological Evidence from the Southwest Zone (Areas CC, KK, NN). In Studies in the Archaeology and History of Caesarea Maritima: Caput Judaeae, Metropolis Palestinae. Leiden, Boston: Brill: 141–166.
-
Pearsall, Deborah M. 2015. Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures. 3rd ed. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
-
Pelling, Ruth. 2005. Garamantian Agriculture and Its Significance in a Wider North African Context: The Evidence of the Plant Remains from the Fazzan Project. The Journal of North African Studies 10/3–4: 397–412.
-
Pelling, Ruth. 2013. The Archaeobotanical Remains. In The Archaeology of Fazzān. Volume 4, Survey and Excavations at Old Jarma (Ancient Garama) Carried out by C.M. Daniels (1962–69) and the Fazzān Project (1997–2001), ed. D.J. Mattingly. Tripoli, London: Department of Antiquities and Society of Libyan Studies: 473–494.
-
Popper, Virginia S. 1988. Selecting Quantitative Measurements in Paleoethnobotany. In Current Paleoethnobotany: Analytical Methods and Cultural Interpretation of Archaeological Plant Remains, ed. Christine A. Hastorf and Virginia S. Popper. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 53–71.
-
Ramsay, Jennifer. 2013. Plant Remains. In Humayma Excavation Project, 2: Nabatean Campground and Necropolis, Byzantine Churches, and Early Islamic Domestic Structures, ed. John Peter Oleson and Robert Schick. Boston: The American Schools of Oriental Research: 351–380.
-
Ramsay, Jennifer. 2017. Human Population Increase and Its Effects on the Arid Landscape of Southern Jordan: An Archaeobotanical Study. In The Socio-Economic History and Material Culture of the Roman and Byzantine Near East: Essays in Honor of S. Thomas Parker, ed. Walter D. Ward. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press: 349–383.
-
Ramsay, Jennifer, and Leigh Ann Bedal. 2015. Garden Variety Seeds? Botanical Remains from the Petra Garden and Pool Complex. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 24/5: 621–634.
-
Ramsay, Jennifer, and Kenneth Holum. 2015. An Archaeobotanical Analysis of the Islamic Period Occupation at Caesarea Maritima, Israel. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 24/6: 655–671.
-
Ramsay, Jennifer, and Andrew M. Smith. 2013. Desert Agriculture at Bir Madhkur: The First Archaeobotanical Evidence to Support the Timing and Scale of Agriculture during the Late Roman/Byzantine Period in the Hinterland of Petra. Journal of Arid Environments 99: 51–63.
-
Ramsay, Jennifer, Yotam Tepper, Mina Weinstein-Evron, Sophia Aharonovich, Nili Liphschitz, Nimrod Marom, and Guy Bar-Oz. 2016. For the Birds—An Environmental Archaeological Analysis of Byzantine Pigeon Towers at Shivta (Negev Desert, Israel). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 9: 718–727.
-
Reynolds, Paul. 2014. Late Roman Amphora 1. Roman Amphorae: A Digital Resource. https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/amphora_ahrb_2005/details.cfm?id=236&CFID=a38379a2-6e37-4ee5-8aef-dea1235eff11&CFTOKEN=0.
-
Rosen-Ayalon, Myriam. 2006. Islamic Art and Archaeology in Palestine. London and New York: Routledge.
-
Rosen, Arlene Miller. 2007. Civilizing Climate: Social Responses to Climate Change in the Ancient Near East. New York: AltaMira Press.
-
Rowan, Erica. 2015. Olive Oil Pressing Waste as a Fuel Source in Antiquity. American Journal of Archaeology 119/4: 465.
-
Ruggles, D. Fairchild. 2008. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
-
Safrai, Zeʾev. 1994. The Economy of Roman Palestine. London and New York: Routledge.
-
Saliou, Catherine. 2007. De La Maison à La Ville: Le Traité de Julien d’Ascalon. In From Antioch to Alexandria:Studies in Domestic Architecture during the Roman and Byzantine Periods, ed. K. Galor and T. Waliszewski. Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw: 169–178.
-
Samuel, Delwen. 2001. Archaeobotanical Evidence and Analysis. In Peuplement Rural et Améngemenats Hydroagricoles Dans La Moyenne Vallée de l’Euphrate Fin VII– XIX Siècle, ed. Sophie Berthier. Damascus: Institut Français de Damas: 347–481.
-
Sarris, Peter. 2004. The Origins of the Manorial Economy: New Insights from Late Antiquity. The English Historical Review 119/481: 279–311.
-
Schick, Robert. 1998. Palestine in the Early Islamic Period: Luxuriant Legacy. Near Eastern Archaeology 61/2: 74–108.
-
Schiffer, Michael B. 1987. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
-
Schloen, J. David. 2006. British and Israeli Excavations. In Ashkelon 1: Introduction and Overview (1985–2006), ed. Lawrence E. Stager, J. David Schloen, and Daniel M. Master. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns: 153–164.
-
Schweingruber, Fritz Hans. 1990. Anatomy of European Woods. Edited by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research. Bern, Stuttgart: Haupt.
-
Sharon, Moshe. 1995. An Arabic Inscription Engraved with Crusader Shields. ʿAtiqot 26: 61–86.
-
Sheehan, Oliver, Joseph Watts, Russell D Gray, and Quentin D Atkinson. 2018. Coevolution of Landesque Capital Intensive Agriculture and Sociopolitical Hierarchy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115/14: 3628–3633.
-
Shopov, Aleksander. 2021. Grafting in Sixteenth-Century Mamluk and Ottoman Agriculture and Literature. In History and Society During the Mamluk Period (1250–1517), ed. Bethany J. Walker and Abdelkader Al Ghouz. Gottingen, Germany: Bonn University Press, V&R unipress: 381–406.
-
Sijpesteijn, Petra M. 2009. Landholding Patterns in Early Islamic Egypt. Journal of Agrarian Change 9/1: 120–133.
-
Sijpesteijn, Petra M. 2014. Making the Public Private: A Delivery of Palestinian Oil in Third/Ninth-Century Egypt. Studia Orientalia Electronica 2: 74–91.
-
Smith, Wendy. 1998. Fuel for Thought: Archaeobotanical Evidence for the Use of Alternatives to Wood Fuel in Late Antique North Africa. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 11 (2): 191–205.
-
Stager, Lawrence E., and J. David Schloen. 2008. Introduction: Ashkelon and Its Inhabitants. In Ashkelon 1: Introduction and Overview (1985–2006), ed. Lawrence E. Stager, J. David Schloen, and Daniel M. Master. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns: 3–10.
-
Strabo. 1930. Geography, Books 15–16, Loeb Classical Library 241. Trans. by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Taxel, Itamar. 2018. Early Islamic Palestine: Toward a More Fine-Tuned Recognition of Settlement Patterns and Land Uses in Town and Country. Journal of Islamic Archaeology 5/2: 153–180.
-
Taxel, Itamar, Dorit Sivan, Revital Bookman, and Joel Roskin. 2018. An Early Islamic Inter-Settlement Agroecosystem in the Coastal Sand of the Yavneh Dunefield, Israel. Journal of Field Archaeology 43/7: 551–569.
-
Tengberg, Margareta. 2012a. Fruit-Growing. In A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, ed. D.T. Potts. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing.
-
Tengberg, Margareta. 2012b. Beginnings and Early History of Date Palm Garden Cultivation in the Middle East. Journal of Arid Environments 86: 139–147.
-
Terral, Jean Frédéric, Vincent Bonhomme, Clémence Pagnoux, Sarah Ivorra, Claire Newton, Laure Paradis, Mohammed Ater, et al. 2021. The Shape Diversity of Olive Stones Resulting from Domestication and Diversification Unveils Traits of the Oldest Known 6500-Years-Old Table Olives from Hishuley Carmel Site (Israel). Agronomy 11: 1–18.
-
Tholbecq, Laurent. 2013. The Hinterland of Petra (Jordan) and the Jabal Shara during the Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine Periods. In Men on the Rocks. The Formation of Nabataean Petra, (2–4 December 2011: Berlin), ed. M. Mouton and S.S.G. Schmid. Berlin: Logos Verlag: 295–312.
-
Townsend, C.C., and Evan Guest. 1985. Flora of Iraq: Volume 8. Monocotyledones (Excluding Gramineae). Baghdad: Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Iraq.
-
Townsend, C.C., Evan Guest, and Ali Al-Rawi. 1966. Flora of Iraq: Volume 2. Pteridophyta—Spermatophyta (Rosales). Baghdad: Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Iraq.
-
van der Veen, Marijke. 1999. The Economic Value of Chaff and Straw in Arid and Temperate Zones. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 8: 211–224.
-
van der Veen, Marijke. 2007. Formation Processes of Desiccated and Carbonized Plant Remains—the Identification of Routine Practice. Journal of Archaeological Science 34/6: 968–990.
-
Walker, Bethany J. 2021. Peasants, Rural Economy, and Cash Crops in Medieval Islam. In Markets and Exchanges in Pre-modern and Traditional Societies, ed. Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia. Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow Books: 91–113.
-
Walker, Bethany J., Yuval Gadot, Yelena Elgart-Sharon, and Omer Zeʾevi. 2020. Agricultural Terracing and Rural Revival in Late Medieval Palestine. In Proceedings of the 10th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Volume 2, ed. Adelheid Otto, Michael Herles, and Kai Kaniuth. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag: 651–662.
-
Walmsley, Alan G. 2012. Regional Exchange and the Role of the Shop in Byzantine and Early Islamic Syria-Palestine. An Archaeological View. In Trade and Markets in Byzantium, ed. Cécile Morrisson. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: 311–330.
-
Walsh, Carey Ellen. 2000. The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
-
Watson, Andrew M. 1983. Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Weiss, Ehud. 2015. “Beginnings of Fruit Growing in the Old World”—Two Generations Later. Israel Journal of Plant Science 62/1–2: 75–85.
-
Whitcomb, Donald, and Hamdan Taha. 2013. Khirbat Al-Mafjar and Its Place in the Archaeological Heritage of Palestine. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 1/1: 54–65.
-
White, Chantel E., and Naomi F. Miller. 2018. The Archaeobotany of Grape and Wine in Hittite Anatolia. Die Welt des Oriens 48: 209–224.
-
White, Chantel E., and China P. Shelton. 2014. Recovering Macrobotanical Remains: Current Methods and Techniques. In Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany, ed. John M. Marston, Jade D’Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner. Boulder: University Press of Colorado: 95–114.
-
Wickham, Chris. 2005. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Zohary, Daniel, Maria Hopf, and Ehud Weiss. 2012. Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Domesticated Plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Zohary, Daniel, and Pinhas Spiegel-Roy. 1975. Beginnings of Fruit Growing in the Old World. Science 187/4174: 319–327.
-
Zohary, Michael. 1966. Flora Palaestina: Part One, Text. Equisetaceae to Moringaceae. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 887 | 141 | 17 |
| Full Text Views | 243 | 9 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 451 | 30 | 0 |
Arboriculture and Viticulture as Investment in the Early Islamic Levant: An Archaeobotanical and Historical Investigation of the Site of Ashkelon
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Kathleen M. Forste in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article combines historical and archaeological evidence to investigate the role arboriculture played in the agricultural economy in the southern Levant as centers of production moved away from rural agricultural estates and focused instead on urban centers. Integrating this evidence with archaeobotanical data from Early Islamic deposits at the archaeological site of Ashkelon, located on the southern Mediterranean coast of modern-day Israel, I conclude that people specialized in arboriculture as a means to supply the needs of both subsistence and craft economies in this city, encapsulating the intensification of agricultural production in this period.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 887 | 141 | 17 |
| Full Text Views | 243 | 9 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 451 | 30 | 0 |
