The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data

Abstract

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival-subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries.

Keywords: Byzantine Empire; Negev; archaeobotany; economic archaeology; protoglobalization.

Fig. 1.

Map showing the study sites in their Mediterranean context.

Fig. 2.

Aerial map of Shivta and vicinity, showing the site, trash mounds, and salient agricultural features. This archaeological landscape is typical of Late Antique Negev villages.

Fig. 3.

Trash mounds on the immediate outskirts of Elusa (A), Shivta (B), and Nessana (E), and inside Shivta (C and D). (E) Image credit: Ari Levy (University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel).

Fig. 4.

Grape pips (A), barley grains (B), and wheat grains (C) represent the three most numerous and ubiquitous crop plants in the Negev middens.

Fig. 5.

Gaza jar (A) and bag-shaped jar (B). Sherds of these functional types are the most numerous and ubiquitous ceramic finds in the Negev middens. Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. (A) Image credit: Davida Eisenberg-Degen (Israel Antiquities Authority, Omer, Israel). (B) Image credit: Itamar Taxel (Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem, Israel) and Oren Tal (Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel).

Fig. 6.

The mosaic of Kissufim near Gaza, depicting Orbikon the camel driver, captures the overland transport of the products of viticulture in the region during Late Antiquity. Artifactual remnants of the two main components of Orbikon’s load—grapes and Gaza jars—further illuminate this phenomenon. Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Mosaic image credit: The Israel Museum Jerusalem, by Elie Posner. Gaza jar image credit: Davida Eisenberg-Degen (Israel Antiquities Authority, Omer, Israel).

Fig. 7.

Grape pedicels (A) and wheat rachis fragments (B) are among the many grape and cereal plant parts that attest to local production and processing of these crops.

Fig. 8.

The rise and fall of Negev viticulture: grape pip and Gaza jar (GJ) proportions in the Byzantine (Byz) period.