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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.

SUBMITTER: Fuks D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7443973 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Fuks Daniel D Bar-Oz Guy G Tepper Yotam Y Erickson-Gini Tali T Langgut Dafna D Weissbrod Lior L Weiss Ehud E

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20200727 33

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 pro ...[more]

PMID: 32719145

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Project description:This work explores the use of multispectral imaging (MSI) techniques applied to the investigation of Late Antique (c. 250-800 AD) textiles found in Egypt. Although the use of these techniques is well-established in the study of polychrome surfaces, they have only been sparingly and often unsystematically applied to the investigation of textiles. The aim of this work is therefore to bridge this gap by showing how this non-invasive, relatively inexpensive and portable methodology can be used to map the photoluminescence and reflective characteristics of textiles under different wavelengths of light, and to provide qualitative and holistic insights into the chemical nature of the materials that compose them. Standardised acquisition and post-processing methods were applied to produce visible-reflected (VIS), ultraviolet-induced visible luminescence (UVL), infrared-reflected (IRR), infrared-reflected false colour (IRRFC), ultraviolet-reflected (UVR) and ultraviolet-reflected false colour (UVRFC) images that provided preliminary indications of the colourants used and their spatial distribution. This proved to be an important aid in planning more targeted and effective sampling strategies and facilitated comparisons between objects. Visible-induced visible luminescence (VIVL) and multiband-reflected (MBR) imaging were also explored for the first time with application to textiles, demonstrating their potential in mapping red and blue colourants respectively. The physical properties observed from all of these images were then related to the more detailed information provided by complementary non-invasive techniques, such as fibre optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), and micro-invasive approaches, such as high-performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Guidelines towards the interpretation of complex MSI images and a discussion of the potential and limitations of relating multispectral data to chemical properties are presented. An important result of this work is the delineation of a protocol, which combines optical microscopy (OM), MSI, FORS and HPLC-MS and shows a high degree of potential, not only for the investigation of Late Antique textiles but for textiles in museum and historic collections generally.

Dataset Information

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

Publications

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

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