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Iron Age Agriculture − A Critical Rejoinder to “Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: the Impact of Microarchaeological Methods”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2017

Hendrik J Bruins  and
Johannes van der Plicht
Hendrik J Bruins*
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Bona Terra Department ‘Man in the Desert’, Sede Boker Campus 84990, Israel
Johannes van der Plicht
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, Centre for Isotope Research, Groningen, The Netherlands University of Leiden, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden, The Netherlands
*
*Corresponding author. Email: hjbruins@bgu.ac.il.
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Abstract

Shahack-Gross and Finkelstein (2015) further developed their theory, based on microarchaeology, that there was no agriculture in the Negev Highlands during the Iron Age. We critically evaluate their article in this rejoinder and propose that their conclusion is an example of overinterpretation from a small amount of indirect data. Based on phytoliths in two courtyards and a few rooms, i.e. structures not related to farming, they construed the absence of agriculture during the Iron Age in an area of 2000 km2. We present new radiocarbon, macroarchaeological, and microarchaeological data of Horvat Haluqim, showing that agriculture in the Negev Highlands based on runoff/floodwater capture and related terrace wall construction did not begin with the Roman–Byzantine period. Terrace agriculture in the Negev is older and includes also the Iron Age.

Keywords

Negev Desertterrace agricultureAMS datingIron Agemicroarchaeology
Type
Review Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
© 2017 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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