Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Agricultural Intensification and Sustainable Practice under Empire at Dhiban, Jordan: A Reconstruction from Paleoethnobotanical Evidence

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the National Science Foundation, Mr. Alan Farahani will collaborate with an international team for one season of archaeological excavation on the Dhiban Plateau, located in west-central Jordan, and ten months of laboratory analysis. The research effort comprises specialists in archaeology and environmental studies drawn from universities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, to explore the long-term sustainability of agricultural intensification under shifting political interventions at Dhiban. The settlement receives less rainfall than is required for stable rain-fed farming, and lies at least 6km from stable water sources. Nevertheless, large fortification walls, cisterns, irrigation structures, and agricultural terrace walls indicate that communities have flourished despite these environmental challenges for over 1,000 years. This project will empirically track evolving trends in agricultural strategies in this semi-arid zone by contrasting the Roman and Byzantine (ca 100 - 650 CE) and Middle Islamic (ca 1250 - 1500 CE) periods. The results of this research will provide insight into human-environment interactions for historical cycles greater than those obtainable by direct obvervation techniques. The study will also contribute to broader knowledge concerning sustainability in challenging environments in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Roman and Byzantine political intervention in this area has been argued to usher in explosive settlement growth, unprecedented exploitation of natural resources, and industrial production of tradable goods such as ceramic vessels; yet most research has relied on documentary sources or regional-scale archaeological survey. Using the methods of paleoethnobotany, Alan Farahani will collect and examine the botanical residues of past agricultural practices to procure a high-resolution dataset which will reveal the long-term maintenance of community-level subsistence systems that supported this critical shift in the economic and social organization of society. Several paleoenvironmental indicators will be utilized to assess whether the sustained intensification of agricultural production may have also spurred environmental change as a result of increasing exploitation of local vegetative and soil resources. Comparison with data already collected for the later Middle Islamic period will highlight the long-term viability of these strategies in the same resource-landscape but by two distinct political entities separated in time. The excavation season and subsequent laboratory work has several goals: 1) Expand excavation of Roman / Byzantine cultural levels identified in prior research seasons; 2) Extensive sampling of all deposits on-site for archaeological botanical remains; and 3) Laboratory analysis of the collected samples over a period of ten months using multiple techniques. Combining this information with additional faunal, geological, architectural, and artifactual evidence collected by specialist colleagues will provide a data-rich and nuanced understanding of economic, social, and agricultural changes through time at Dhiban. Likewise, the study builds upon current analytical procedures in environmental archaeology. Finally, the project trains US students in field and laboratory methods, and fosters international collaboration in a scientific setting.