A 2500-year Historical Ecology of Agricultural Production under Empire in Dhiban, Jordan

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-4-2018

Publication Title

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

First page number:

1

Last page number:

19

Abstract

Archaeological plant remains have played a limited role in understanding how pre-modern imperial interventions affected the lives of communities incorporated into their political networks. The analysis of paleoethnobotanical data collected from a multi-year excavation project in Dhiban, Jordan, illustrates how the high-resolution and systematic sampling of archaeological plant remains within a historical ecological framework can provide new insights into long-term changes in agricultural practice in the context of shifts in non-local imperial interventions. The analysis of over 200 archaeological sediment samples representing nearly 2500 years of inhabitation reveal shifts in the relative abundances of particular crops correlating to separate moments of imperial intervention, in particular during the Byzantine (ca. 330–635 CE) and Mamluk (ca. 1250–1450 CE) empires.

Keywords

Historical ecology; Paleoethnobotany; Agroecology; Agricultural intensification; Empires; Jordan; Southwest Asia

Disciplines

Archaeological Anthropology

Language

English

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