scholarly journals Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Shahack-Gross ◽  
Israel Finkelstein
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Diversion ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Ceramic Petrography ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Early Islamic

Microarchaeological methods, especially those focused on geoarchaeology and radiocarbon dating, have revolutionized the manner in which the Iron Age settlement peak in the Negev Highlands is interpreted. We review here results from field and laboratory studies conducted at two Iron Age sites (Atar Haroa and Nahal Boqer) compared to one Byzantine/Early Islamic site (Wadi el-Mustayer)—all located near Sede Boqer. We present our methodology, which is based on small-scale but detailed excavations, study of sediments, and identification of livestock dung remains and their utility as indicators of past subsistence practices. To this we add meticulous 14C dating, ceramic petrography, and identification of botanic and zoological remains. We conclude that subsistence during the Iron Age included tending livestock but did not include agriculture. We further propose that the long-distance trade of copper from the Arabah Valley under Egyptian auspices and possibly the trading of cinnamon, dates, and other Arabian/Indian commodities were the driving force in the initiation (and later decline) of the Iron Age settlement system. We hypothesize that the agricultural settlement peak during the Byzantine/Early Islamic period was also influenced by an imperial power from outside of the Negev and that large-scale agriculture was enabled due to the adoption of new agricultural techniques, including terracing of ephemeral streams along with water diversion systems and possibly water storage facilities such as advanced cisterns. Future studies are expected to shed additional light on the complexity of settlement oscillations in the Negev Highlands region in key periods such as the Early and Intermediate Bronze Ages.

Islamic Glass in the Making

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Schibille
Keyword(s):  
Glass Industry ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Plant Ash ◽  
Islamic Glass

The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the history of Islamic glassmaking to trace the developments in the production, trade and consumption of vitreous materials between the eighth and twelfth centuries and to separate the norm from the exception. It proposes compositional discriminants to distinguish regional production groups, and provides insights into the organisation of the glass industry and commerce during the early Islamic period. The interdisciplinary approach leads to a holistic understanding of the development of Islamic glass; assemblages from the early Islamic period in Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, Greater Syria and Iberia are evaluated, and placed in the larger geopolitical context. In doing so, this book fills a gap in the present literature and advances a large-scale approach to the history of Islamic glass.

scholarly journals Dating of Iron Age Agriculture in the Negev Highlands: A Response to Shahack-Gross and Finkelstein

Radiocarbon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1233-1239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik J Bruins ◽  
Johannes van der Plicht
Keyword(s):  
Thin Section ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Herd Management ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic

AbstractIn this response to the reply by Shahack-Gross and Finkelstein (2017), we present additional data of our research at Horvat Haluqim. This includes phytolith percentages and multicellular phytolith stomata in a thin section of a layer in Terraced Field 12, dated by radiocarbon (14C) to the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age. We also show thin-section evidence of aggrading sediment laminations in this terraced field. A new 14C date is given of the Early Islamic Period in Terraced Field 7, as differences in terrace wall architecture are highlighted. We revisit the interpretation by Shahack-Gross and Finkelstein in relation to herd management. Our 14C dates attest that terrace agriculture based on runoff/floodwater irrigation occurred in the Negev Highlands during several periods, including the Iron Age.

Subsistence economy in the Negev Highlands: the Iron Age and the Byzantine/Early Islamic period

Levant ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Shahack-Gross ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
Dan Cabanes ◽  
Ofir Katz ◽  
Israel Finkelstein
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Subsistence Economy ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic

scholarly journals The Feeding of the five Hundred Thousand: Cities and Agriculture in Early Islamic Mesopotamia

Iraq ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 177-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Productivity ◽  
Rural Settlement ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Agricultural Economy ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
River Transport ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Early Islamic

This paper discusses the impact of the foundation of major cities in Mesopotamia in the early Islamic period (c. 636-900 CE) and their impact on the agricultural economy and rural settlement in the area. It considers the potential agricultural productivity of the area, the availability of river transport, the fiscal structure of the early Islamic state and the way in which it created demand for foodstuffs, and the development of the qaṭīca as a form of landholding which provided security of tenure and hence the encouragement of long-term investment in agricultural infrastructure.

scholarly journals NEW INSIGHTS ON THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMICS SHAPING SOUTHERN MESOPOTAMIA: FROM THE PRE-UBAID TO THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD

Iraq ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 23-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Altaweel ◽  
Anke Marsh ◽  
Jaafar Jotheri ◽  
Carrie Hritz ◽  
Dominik Fleitmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Early Holocene ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Southern Iraq

Recent fieldwork and archival sedimentary materials from southern Iraq have revealed new insights into the environment that shaped southern Mesopotamia from the pre-Ubaid (early Holocene) until the early Islamic period. These data have been combined with northern Iraqi speleothem, or stalagmite, data that have revealed relevant palaeoclimate information. The new results are investigated in light of textual sources and satellite remote sensing work. It is evident that areas south of Baghdad, and to the region of Uruk, were already potentially habitable between the eleventh and early eighth millennia B.C., suggesting there were settlements in southern Iraq prior to the Ubaid. Date palms, the earliest recorded for Iraq, are evident before 10,000 B.C., and oak trees are evident south of Baghdad in the early Holocene but disappeared after the mid-sixth millennium B.C. New climate results suggest increased aridity after the end of the fourth millennium B.C. For the third millennium B.C. to first millennium A.D., a negative relationship between grain and date palm cultivation in Nippur is evident, suggesting shifting cultivation emphasising one of these crops at any given time in parts of the city. The Shatt en-Nil was also likely used as a channel for most of Nippur's historical occupation from the third millennium B.C. to the first millennium A.D. In the early to mid-first millennium A.D., around the time of the Sasanian period, a major increase in irrigation is evident in plant remains, likely reflecting large-scale irrigation expansion in the Nippur region. The first millennium B.C. to first millennium A.D. reflects a relatively dry period with periodic increased rainfall. Sedimentary results suggest the Nahrawan, prior to it becoming a well-known canal, formed an ancient branch of the Tigris, while the region just south of Baghdad, around Dalmaj, was near or part of an ancient confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Egypt ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Point Of Departure

This volume deals with the possibility of glimpsing pre-modern and early modern Egyptian scribes, the people who actually produced ancient documents, through the ways in which they organized and wrote those documents. Breaking with the traditional conception of variation in scribal texts as ‘free’ or indicative of ‘corruption’, this volume reconceptualizes scribal variation in pre-modern Egypt from the point of view of contemporary historical sociolinguistics, seeing scribes as agents embedded in particular geographical, temporal, and sociocultural environments. This volume comprises a set of studies of scribal variation, beginning from the well-established domain of scribal variation in pre-modern English as a methodological point of departure, and proceeding to studies of scribal variation spanning thousands of years, from Pharaonic to Late Antique and Islamic Egypt. This volume introduces to Egyptology concepts such as scribal communities, networks, and repertoires, and applies them to a variety of phenomena, including features of lexicon, grammar, orthography, palaeography, layout, and format.

Maritime trade in early Islamic-period glass: New evidence from the Maʻagan Mikhael B shipwreck

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 102903
Author(s):  
Eyal Natan ◽  
Yael Gorin-Rosen ◽  
Agnese Benzonelli ◽  
Deborah Cvikel
Keyword(s):  
Maritime Trade ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Early Islamic

USE OF THE GALAXY AS A TOOL FOR SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL ORIENTATION DURING THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD AND UP TO THE 15TH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Andreas Eckart
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
The Other ◽  
Temporal Orientation ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic

AbstractWe study to what extent the Milky Way was used as an orientation tool at the beginning of the Islamic period covering the 8th to the 15th century, with a focus on the first half of that era. We compare the texts of three authors from three different periods and give detailed comments on their astronomical and traditional content. The text of al-Marzūqī summarises the information on the Milky Way put forward by the astronomer and geographer ʾAbū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī. The text makes it clear that in some areas the Milky Way could be used as a geographical guide to determine the approximate direction toward a region on Earth or the direction of prayer. In the 15th century, the famous navigator Aḥmad b. Māǧid describes the Milky Way in his nautical instructions. He frequently demonstrates that the Milky Way serves as a guidance aid to find constellations and stars that are useful for precise navigation on land and at sea. On the other hand, Ibn Qutayba quotes in his description of the Milky Way a saying from the famous Bedouin poet Ḏū al-Rumma, which is also mentioned by al-Marzūqī. In this saying the Milky Way is used to indicate the hot summer times in which travelling the desert was particularly difficult. Hence, the Milky Way was useful for orientation in space and time and was used for agricultural and navigational purposes.

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