Seeds of Civilization: Bronze Age Rural Economy and Ecology in...

Seeds of Civilization: Bronze Age RuralEconomy and Ecology in the

Southern LevantPatricia L. Fall,* Lee Lines,** and Steven E. Falconer***

*Department of Geography, Arizona State University

**Department of Environmental Studies, Rollins College

***Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University

This paper considers the economic and environmental impacts of emerging regional commerce thataccompanied the rise and collapse of early Near Eastern urbanism. We integrate regional data onsettlement and vegetation with detailed evidence of rural agriculture from two Bronze Age villagesin the Jordan Valley. This approach is explicitly rural, in light of the largely rural character ofLevantine civilization, and in response to more orthodox analytical perspectives focused on the firstcities. Long-standing interest in the advent of agriculture now reveals that intensive localizeddepletion of woodland resources followed the aggregation of sedentary agrarian communities in theeighth through sixth millennia B.C., while the development of specialized pastoralism establishedone potential source of more extensive, subsequent defoliation. We argue, however, that regionalhuman impacts on Levantine vegetation were triggered only with the genesis of Bronze Age citiesand urbanized economies in the third and second millennia B.C. Thereafter, these regional impactsmolded an ever-shifting mosaic of anthropogenic and natural landscapes. Rank-size analysisillustrates the modestly integrated, largely rural nature of Bronze Age settlement in the southernLevant. In this context, Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat provide appropriate examples of theresilient agrarian villages that persisted through the dramatic collapse and rebirth of early Levantinecities. Excavated plant remains and animal bones show that their inhabitants responded to thedevelopment of Bronze Age urbanism with a shift toward increased management of taxa with greatermarket potential, tempered by some retention of local economic autonomy. Shifts to greater sheephusbandry and, most significantly, cultivation of orchard crops like olives, figs, and grapes, signal asecond wave of economic innovation that fundamentally altered the agricultural strategies of villagefarmers and their exploitation of the surrounding countryside. Thus the mixed cultural and naturallandscapes that have supported long-term agriculture in the Levant reflect a legacy of discontinuouschanges in rural economy and ecology in response to the waxing and waning of urbanized societyand regional mercantile exchange. Key Words: agricultural intensification, Bronze Age, environmentalimpacts, Near East, orchard cultivation, southern Levant, urbanism.

Southwestern Asia is particularly noteworthyas a heartland of early urbanized civiliza-tion. From the ancient Near East comes

much of our understanding of the rise of the firstcities and state-level governments, monumentalarchitecture, formal religious institutions, writ-ing, and mathematics. Despite the fact that thevast majority (80–90 percent) of preindustrializedpopulations, in the Near East and elsewhere, ledagrarian lifestyles and lived in rural communities(Mann 1986), only minimal attention has beendirected to detailed studies of rural communitieswithin the fabric of urbanized societies (Eickel-

mann 1989:55; Schwartz and Falconer 1994:1;Butzer 1996). The traditional analytical orienta-tion toward early urbanism is “from the topdown,” captured most bluntly by OswaldSpengler’s generalization that “world history isthe history of city people” (1923:106). A commonworking assumption of this perspective holds thatrelatively homogeneous farming communities inthe countryside compliantly supplied tax reve-nues, conscripted labor, and surplus foodstuffs formore dynamic and centrally important cities in-habited by merchants, craftsmen, bureaucrats,and urban elites (e.g., Redman 1978:215–16).

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88(1), 1998, pp. 107–125©1998 by Association of American GeographersPublished by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.

As a result of this urban bias, we are equippedcurrently with only a rudimentary comprehen-sion of village economies and their fundamentalroles in the coalescence or collapse of early civi-lizations (Schwartz and Falconer 1994). Manyearly civilizations, like those of the southern Le-vant (i.e., the region of modern Israel, Palestine,and Jordan), reveal greater long-term continuityin rural settlement and land use than in urbandevelopment (Falconer 1994). In such contextsmarked by dramatically discontinuous urbanism,villages may provide our best evidence of long-term economic organization. In fact, geographicalresearch has a strong tradition focused on ruralagrarian systems within larger political economies(Bassett 1988; Zimmerer 1991, 1993). Agricul-tural systems incorporating both subsistencefarming and surplus-oriented production havebeen documented in a number of comparablesettings, most notably in the New World tropics(Whitmore and Turner 1992; Denevan 1996).Thus rural investigations of early civilization pro-vide an avenue of inquiry that is both particularlyappropriate for the ancient southern Levant andmore widely applicable to a variety of geographicresearch settings in both the past and present.

Our research revolves around the question ofhow field studies of agrarian economy and ecologycan illuminate the roles of rural communities inlarger trajectories of urban growth and collapse.We ask more specifically how small farming vil-lages in the southern Levant contributed andresponded to the rise and fall of cities during theBronze Age, this region’s first major period ofurbanism. We argue that our perspective “fromthe bottom up” is especially well suited to thesouthern Levant amid its long legacy of sedentaryagriculture, urban-rural dynamics, and their eco-logical consequences. The extent to which weoffer new insights on rural economy and ecologymay stem from this study’s Levantine focus. Thelarger value of such investigations, however, alsolies in their potential applicability to other regionsor time periods.

Our alternative approach to the developmentof early civilizations begins with an overview ofearly agriculture, human settlement, and theirecological impacts on the ancient Near Easternlandscape. Rank-size analyses then contrast thecentral importance of dramatically large Mesopo-tamian cities that were intimately linked to theirsurrounding hinterlands, with the less integrated,more commonly rural settlement of the southernLevant. Our rank-size depictions also highlight

the persistent foundation of villages that underlaythe waxing and waning of early Levantine urban-ism. Most important, we offer a unique compari-son of rural agrarian behavior during thepervasive abandonment and sudden rejuvena-tion of this region’s Bronze Age cities (ca.2300–1500 B.C.).

Unlike prior studies of the ancient Near East,we draw from broad rank-size perspectives onearly urbanism (Falconer and Savage 1995) toidentify the hierarchical characteristics of Levan-tine settlement systems, thereby providing a re-gional backdrop for a case study of Tell Abuen-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat, two Bronze Age vil-lages in the Jordan Valley. Ni‘aj, occupied duringthe abandonment of cities throughout the south-ern Levant in Early Bronze IV, and Hayyat, inhab-ited during the subsequent development ofMiddle Bronze Age cities and urbanized society,provide data that span the dramatic rebirth ofLevantine cities and permit an assessment of ruralresponses to the highly variable fortunes and in-fluences of early city life.

Our central hypothesis derives from the tradi-tional expectation that cities dictated urban-ruralrelations in most, if not all, early urbanized civili-zations. Accordingly, traditional approaches ex-pect that rural economy and ecology will reflectthe oscillating influences of urban communitiesthrough time. If these expectations hold for earlycivilization in the southern Levant, we shouldgenerate several interrelated results: (1) rank-sizepatterns of Bronze Age settlement should becomparable to those for the other best-knowncases of initial urbanism in the Near East (e.g.,Mesopotamia) from which most traditional inter-pretations of this region’s early urban societieshave been drawn (e.g., Adams 1981); (2) evi-dence from Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj, which was occu-pied during an interval of city abandonment, andTell el-Hayyat, inhabited during the subsequentapex of early urbanism, should reveal fundamen-tally disjunct patterns of crop and herd manage-ment; (3) data from both villages spanning thecollapse and redevelopment of Levantine urban-ism should document increasing rural participa-tion in regional economies and ecologicalimpacts.

This exploration of Bronze Age rural life usesrank-size analysis to assess the first expectation ofthe null hypothesis presented above by describingthe interregional settlement distinctions betweenthe largely rural southern Levant and ancientMesopotamia, a heartland of cities. Rank-size

108 Fall, Lines, and Falconer

analysis subsequently reflects structural changesin Levantine coastal settlement between the ur-ban nadir of the Early Bronze IV Period (ca.2300–2000 B.C.) and its later apex in the MiddleBronze Age (ca. 2000–1500 B.C.)

Our investigation then focuses on plant andanimal management as they are reflected inevidence excavated from Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj andTell el-Hayyat. Although previous discussionsof Tell el-Hayyat have considered evidence ofritual behavior (Magness-Gardiner and Fal-coner 1994) and selected aspects of householdsubsistence (Falconer 1995), this paper marksthe first detailed synthesis of rural economy andecology at both communities, which were in-habited during a remarkable process of regionalreurbanization.

Our analyses of regional settlement and ruraleconomy do not readily conform to the expecta-tions of our central hypothesis. The results thatdepart from these expectations, especially thelarger implications of crop production (especiallyorchard cultivation; see Lines 1995) and animalmanagement, allow us to contribute a more so-phisticated appreciation of how small agrariancommunities responded to the rise and collapseof early urbanized civilization in the southernLevant and elsewhere.

Setting the Stage: AgrarianSettlement and Society in theSouthern Levant

Near Eastern agrarian life developed on a land-scape molded by a long legacy of human impact.

Much of its environmental degradation has beenascribed to the gradually increasing aggregationof town and city populations, and their corre-spondingly enhanced reliance on agriculture andpastoralism (Miller 1991). Repeated cycles of sta-bility and perturbation, however, have led to thecoevolution of productive agricultural systemsand sustainable anthropogenic environmentsthat have supported rural and urban societies forthousands of years (Butzer 1996). Near Easternurbanism, notable for its early genesis and grandscale, is equally notorious for its repeated episodesof dramatic rise and collapse. When dissected ingreater detail, the course of human impact ac-cordingly has been neither continuous nor direc-tional. Lengthy spans of stability for theMediterranean landscape were punctuated byshorter episodes of mismanagement, often fol-lowed by ecological recovery (Butzer 1996). Thefollowing chronological overview summarizes thelong-term economic and political circumstancesthat fueled the advent, collapse, and rebirth ofBronze Age Levantine urbanism, which this studyappraises from a rural vantage point.

Although the first cities in the Near East werenot established until the late fourth and earlythird millennia B.C. (Postgate 1994:22–35), thefirst aggregated communities arose in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period shortly before 7000 B.C.(Rollefson et al. 1992) (Table 1). These earlycommunities laid the foundation for the rise ofsocial, political, and economic centers in the re-gion. Aggregated communities, such as ‘AinGhazal and Jericho (Figure 1), grew rapidly tolarge size with thousands of inhabitants, and thencollapsed dramatically around 6000 B.C.(Rollefson et al. 1992).

Table 1. Archaeological Chronology for the Southern Levant, Incorporating the Settlement Sequence atTell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat

Approx. Duration Regional Settlement atCultural Period (yrs. B.C.) Settlement Ni‘aj and Hayyat

Late Bronze 1500–1200 Urban recessionMiddle Bronze IIC 1650–1500 Height of urbanism Hayyat Phase 2Middle Bronze IIB 1800–1650 Height of urbanism Hayyat Phase 3Middle Bronze IIA 1900–1800 Cities redevelop Hayyat Phase 4Middle Bronze IIA 2000–1900 Cities reappear Hayyat Phase 5Early Bronze IV 2300–2000 Urban collapse Ni‘aj Upper PhaseEarly Bronze II–III 2900–2300 First citiesEarly Bronze I 3200–2900 Village-level farmingChalcolithic 4500–3200 Village-level farmingPottery Neolithic 6000–4500 Village-level farmingPre-Pottery Neolithic 8000–6000 First farming towns

Seeds of Civilization 109

The inhabitants of these Neolithic communi-ties implemented new economic strategies, espe-cially the cultivation of cereals and legumes (vanZeist 1988), and the domestication of goats andsheep (Helmer 1989; Rodrigue 1992). As thepopulation of Neolithic towns expanded andtheir croplands grew, seasonal and permanentherding camps were established in their ever moredistant pasturage, setting the stage for specializedmobile pastoralism (Köhler-Rollefson 1992). Lo-calized resource depletion due to harvesting offuelwood and construction timbers, as well asrepeated house plastering, generated resource de-mands for these early towns that rapidly couldhave exceeded the productive capacity of theirimmediate environments (Köhler-Rollefson1988; Köhler-Rollefson and Rollefson 1990;Rollefson et al. 1992). Archaeological data from‘Ain Ghazal suggest that this Neolithic town, and

perhaps many of its contemporaries, eventuallywere abandoned in the wake of interrelated en-vironmental impacts that began with intense lo-calized deforestation (Köhler-Rollefson andRollefson 1990), and subsequently became am-plified by extensive herding (Köhler-Rollefson1992). Strikingly, aggregated towns did not reap-pear on the Near Eastern landscape for almostthree millennia.

Following the abandonment of Pre-PotteryNeolithic aggregated towns, more modest village-level settlements characterized the southern Le-vant through the Pottery Neolithic, Chalcolithic,and Early Bronze I periods (ca. 6000–2900 B.C.)(Joffe 1993; Levy 1995). The subsequent devel-opment of urbanized society during the Early andMiddle Bronze ages marked the florescence ofcivilization, associated with the Canaanites of theOld Testament. The success of Canaanite urban-

Figure 1. Prehistoric sites in the southern Levant. (a) Location of lake basins, which provide paleoecological recordsof past vegetation, and of prehistoric communities, which provide data on ancient agrarian economy. (b) Enlargementof inset details the locations of Tell el-Hayyat, Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj, and other Bronze Age settlements in the JordanValley.


ism oscillated dramatically, however, through thethird and second millennia B.C. (Table 1).

The initial urbanism of Early Bronze II–III (ca.2900–2300 B.C.) paralleled the rise of the Egyp-tian state during Dynasties I–VI (Kantor1992:17–21; Stager 1992:40–41). Shortly there-after, Egypt entered the First Intermediate Period,during which centralized authority collapsed andregional economic ties were attenuated (Stager1992:41). The southern Levant simultaneouslyexperienced near-wholesale abandonment oftowns and cities during Early Bronze IV (ca.2300–2000 B.C.) (Dever 1995). In striking con-trast to those in preceding and subsequent peri-ods, Early Bronze IV settlements were small, ofteninhabited seasonally, and located at the arid mar-gins of the southern Levant. The most influentialexplanatory model for Early Bronze IV societyposits a largely pastoralized economy involvingnonsedentary populations who moved seasonallybetween lowland winter camps around the desertfringes of the southern Levant and upland sum-mer pasturage in the hills of Palestine andTransjordan (Dever 1995). But recent excava-tions of Early Bronze IV villages (e.g., KhirbetIskander [Richard 1986] and Tell Umm Hammad[Helms 1986]) show that a significant sedentaryrural population also persisted through the aban-donment of Levantine towns and cities. Tell Abuen-Ni‘aj, which was first inhabited at the begin-ning of the Early Bronze IV Period and abandonedat its end, provides our most substantial body ofevidence for a year-round farming communityduring this interval most commonly interpretedin terms of nonsedentary pastoralized society.

Canaanite cities were rapidly reestablished,and expanded in size and number during thesubsequent Middle Bronze Age (Falconer 1994;Ilan 1995). The beginning of this urban heydaycoincided with the reemergence of state-levelauthority and far-flung economic influence ofMiddle Kingdom Egypt. Middle Bronze IIAstands as a developmental prelude to the heightof Canaanite urbanism in Middle Bronze II B andIIC. The Egyptian Execration Texts reflect theemergence of vaguely defined Levantine “city-states” with a modicum of political authority dur-ing these periods (Posener 1971:541, 555). Thehamlet of Tell el-Hayyat was founded at the be-ginning of Middle Bronze II A and occupied con-tinuously for approximately five hundred yearsuntil the end of Middle Bronze II C, when it wasabandoned. Farming villages like Hayyat typicallypopulated the hinterlands around the Levant’s

towns and cities. Following political and militaryupheavals at the end of the Middle Bronze Age,Canaanite cities declined in number and sizeduring the urban recession of the Late BronzeAge (Gonen 1984). Middle Bronze Age urbanismis particularly noteworthy because during MiddleBronze II B and C, the southern Levant’s citiesand regional population grew to levels unsur-passed until the Roman and Byzantine periodsmore than a millennium later (i.e., first centuryB.C.–seventh century A.D.; Broshi 1979).

Despite the severity of local forest-resourceexploitation by Neolithic villagers, the Levantinehill country probably still featured large tracts ofoak/pistachio woodland at the advent of BronzeAge cities in the third millennium B.C. (Gophnaet al. 1986; Liphschitz et al. 1989). Roughly fivethousand years after the Neolithic domesticationof cereals and legumes, a second wave of agricul-tural innovation, featuring intensive orchard cul-tivation, became pronounced during the thirdand second millennia B.C. (Miller 1991). As aconsequence, lowlands and river valleys, like thelands around Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat, became checkered with annual subsis-tence crops, while perennial fruit-bearing treesand vines encroached on the rockier slopes ofneighboring uplands (Stager 1985). Despite thepotential for localized Neolithic deforestation, pa-lynological analysis of lake cores from the Sea ofGalilee and the Dead Sea show that regional im-pacts on forests and woodlands emerged clearlyonly in the wake of Bronze Age urbanism (e.g.,Baruch 1990). Thus the major impetus for theanthropogenic vegetation so characteristic of theEastern Mediterranean stems from Bronze Ageagricultural intensification—especially for theexport of wine, olive oil, and dried fruit—to serveemerging urban markets, including Egypt and itstrading partners (Stager 1985; Ben-Tor 1986).

Rank-Size Perspectives onEarly Urbanism

The earliest Near Eastern cities depended, tovarying extents, on agricultural surpluses pro-vided by farmers and herders in the countryside.Agrarian populations, in turn, received the mixedblessings provided by ruling elites, religious insti-tutions, professional bureaucrats, and mercantilespecialists (Wirth 1938; Childe 1950; Redfield1953; Weber 1958). Urban-rural relations tendedto be hierarchical, such that more institutional


decisions and directives were issued from largercommunities. Therefore, relative settlement sizesoften reflect the nature of interactions betweencommunities in ancient regional economic sys-tems (e.g., Johnson 1977, 1980).

Rank-size analyses provide empirically-baseddescriptive portraits of settlement hierarchiesthat are most informative when settlement sys-tems are compared between regions or over timewithin a single region. According to the “rank-size rule,” the size of any nth-ranked place in asettlement system may be predicted by dividingthe size of the largest place by n, such that therank and population of these cities describe alog-normal distribution when plotted logarithmi-cally (Zipf 1949). Applying the “Principle of LeastEffort,” Zipf attributed the rank-size rule to theinteraction of the opposing economic forces of“diversification” and “unification” (1949:352). Inthis study, and in most other analyses of prehis-toric data, these forces are undocumented andelude reliable quantification. In such circum-stances, a special case of the rank-size equationcommonly is applied, in which these forces areassumed to have been equal (see critical discus-sions in Moore 1959; Dziewonski 1972; Richard-son 1973; Kowalewski 1982).

Log-normal distributions in accordance withthe rank-size rule “appear to be typical of largercountries with a long tradition of urbanism, whichare politically and economically complex” (Berry1961:582). Since preindustrial settlement sys-tems rarely follow the predictions of the rank-sizerule, however, their economic interpretationcommonly derives from the manner and degreeto which rank-size distributions depart from log-normal (e.g., Johnson 1977, 1980; Adams 1981;Paynter 1983; Falconer and Savage 1995). Thesedepartures are molded by a variety of factorsregarding community interactions within the sys-tem under analysis. These factors include the“closure” of the settlement system (i.e., the de-gree to which interactions are bounded within asystem) and the “interdependence” or “integra-tion” of communities (i.e., the relative frequencyof interaction between communities in a system)(Vapnarsky 1968; Johnson 1980).

We apply rank-size analysis to assess the gen-eral structure of ancient settlement in lowerMesopotamia and the southern Levant, includ-ing the Jordan Valley, where Tell Abu en-Ni‘ajand Tell el-Hayyat are located. We contrastthese two regions because (1) they encompassthe arenas of early Near Eastern urbanism that

have been surveyed most comprehensively, and(2) reconstructions of early urbanism derivedfromthegreaterNearEast(especiallyMesopota-mia) heavily influence many interpretations ofBronze Age society in the southern Levant. TheMesopotamian settlement data analyzed hereare drawn from the Warka and Nippur-Adabsurveys directed by Robert Adams, which cov-ered approximately 6250 km2 in southern Iraq(Adams and Nissen 1972; Adams 1981). Wefocus on the sizes reported for sites occupiedduring the Early Dynastic I Period (ca.2900–2600 B.C.), the first peak of urban devel-opment in lower Mesopotamia.

Levantine settlement data are gleaned froma variety of surveys in Israel and western Jordanthat encompass an aggregate area of 15,000km2 (see Ibrahim et al. 1976, 1988; Broshi andGophna 1986; Gophna and Portugali 1988).Likewise, we feature site sizes for the southernLevant’s urban apex, Middle Bronze II B–C, aswell as evidence from the urban collapse ofEarly Bronze IV. Site locations, sizes, and peri-ods of occupation were determined using pe-destr ian and vehicular reconnaissancemethods (see discussion in Falconer and Sav-age 1995). For both regions we consider theentire inventory of sites reported for the periodsof interest.

During the late fourth and early third millen-nia B.C., the world’s first large fortified citiesemerged on the plains of southern Mesopota-mia as an apparent prototype for subsequentdevelopment of urbanism elsewhere in theNear East. Regional surveys directed by Adams(Figure 2) show that by the Early Dynastic IPeriod (ca. 2900–2600 B.C.), the city of ancientUruk emerged as an anomalously large me-tropolis with a population of “no less than40,000 to 50,000 inhabitants” (Adams1981:85) that was almost an order of magni-tude larger than the region’s second-rankedcity (Figure 3).

Rank-size distributions featuring such a dis-tinct “primate city” (following Jefferson 1939;Morse 1962; Mehta 1964; Linsky 1965), asso-ciated with smaller settlements that adhereroughly to the rank-size rule, may be attributedto conditions of low system closure and highinterdependence between communities (Vap-narsky 1968). Indeed, Uruk stood at the centerof a far-flung network of economic and politicalinteraction with neighboring regions (Algaze1989). Uruk’s primate size was achieved


through the rapid absorption of rural popula-tions from its immediate hinterlands, reflectingthepronouncedintegrationofUrukwithanarrayof supporting cities, towns, and villages in lowerMesopotamia(Adams1981:60–94).

Interestingly, the Levant’s urban zenithstands in stark contrast to that of Mesopotamia.Canaanite cities, which very rarely exceeded afew thousand inhabitants (Falconer 1994), de-scribe “convex” rank-size distributions in whichlarge settlements are smaller, and small settle-ments are larger, than predicted by the rank-s i z e ru l e ( Johnson 1977 :497) . Suchdistributions, which are increasingly difficult toobserve in the modern world, tend to charac-terize underdeveloped regions with high clo-sure and low interdependence (Vapnarsky1968; Johnson 1980). Ancient Levantine set-tlement patterns repeatedly produce convexrank-size distributions, even during the urban

zenith of Middle Bronze II B–C, implying onlymodest regional interdependence through theBronze Age (Falconer and Savage 1995) (Figure3).

Some coastal settlement patterns providemore specific insights on the structure ofBronze Age urban and rural settlement. Forexample, the modest collection of small seden-tary Early Bronze IV settlements along the Le-vantine coastal plain exhibits a vaguely convexrank-size distribution that implies a lack of in-terdependence among its local communities,which is not surprising for this period of urbancollapse (Figure 4). Intriguingly, Middle BronzeAge data suggest the superimposition of a fewcities and towns on a convex lower rank-sizecurve that closely resembles the distribution ofEarly Bronze IV villages. The similarities be-tween these lower curves imply the persistenceof rural settlement through the collapse and

Figure 2. Settlement survey regions. (a) The Warka and Nippur-Adab surveys in Lower Mesopotamia. (b) A varietyof surveys in the southern Levant. See Adams (1981:figures 12, 13), Adams and Nissen (1972:maps 1A–4B), Ibrahim,et al. (1976, 1988); Broshi and Gophna (1986); Gophna and Portugali (1988); Falconer and Savage (1995).


rejuvenation of Levantine urbanism (Falconerand Savage 1995). The coastal cities atop theMiddle Bronze II B–C curve apparently devel-oped in response to the external stimulus ofMediterranean maritime commerce (e.g., be-tween Egypt and the cities of coastal Syria),which had disappeared during Early Bronze IVbut recovered during the Middle Bronze Age(Gerstenblith 1983; Falconer 1994; Falconerand Savage 1995).

These rank-size analyses do not adhere tothe first expectation of our general workinghypothesis. Instead, they effectively contrastthe rapid growth of massive cities and primatesettlement systems on the broad lower Mesopo-tamian Plain with the development of urbanismin the Southern Levant on a more tightly de-fined stage, a much smaller scale, and with less

apparent integration between central and pe-ripheral communities.

Field Investigations in theJordan Valley

The rural basis for early civilization in thesouthern Levant is illustrated in a detailed casestudy of economy and ecology at the Bronze Agevillages of Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat,located in the Jordan Valley, Jordan. These siteswere chosen for investigation for two reasons.First, they span a dramatic transition from perva-sively nonurbanized society to the rapid rebirthand florescence of Canaanite urbanism. Tell Abuen-Ni‘aj was occupied ca. 2300–2000 B.C. duringthe pervasive abandonment of Levantine towns

Figure 3. Rank-size settlement distributions for majorurban periods in Mesopotamia and the southern Le-vant. Data for the Early Dynastic I Period (ca.2900–2600 B.C.) of Mesopotamia shows a primaterank-size distribution typical of “hyper-urbanized” set-tlement systems, based on a sample of 98 surveyed sites.Data for the Levantine Middle Bronze II B–C Period(ca. 1800–1500 B.C.) produces a convex distributionof 219 site sizes, which is characteristic of a less inte-grated, more rural settlement system. Each representsthe apex of early urban development in their respectiveregion. Sources: data from Adams (1981:table 7) Ibra-him et al. (1976, 1988); Broshi and Gophna (1986);Gophna and Portugali (1988).

Figure 4. Rank-size distributions for Bronze Age set-tlement on the Levantine coastal plain. Early BronzeIV is marked by urban collapse, while Middle Bronze IIB–C signals its subsequent redevelopment. The MiddleBronze II B–C curve includes 59 sites, which describea primate distribution of cities and towns superimposedon a convex lower element of rural villages. This lowerelement is similar to the Early Bronze IV distributioncomprised of 16 sites. Sources: data from Broshi andGophna (1986); Gophna and Portugali (1988).


and cities in the Early Bronze IV period. Sub-sequently, Tell el-Hayyat was inhabited ca.2000–1500 B.C. during the heyday of MiddleBronze Age urbanism. Despite the pronouncedwaxing and waning of Canaanite cities, village lifepersisted across this transition, as exemplified atNi‘aj and Hayyat. Given their persistence in theface of urban collapse, villages like these providethe most appropriate venues for inferring thelong-term economic and ecological foundationsfor the development of Levantine civilization.Second, Ni‘aj and Hayyat are located in primeagricultural land in which permanent agricultureand seasonal sheep and goat herding still flourishtoday. This criterion is crucial here since mostEarly Bronze IV settlements are located aroundthe arid fringes of the Levant where MiddleBronze II sites are virtually absent, and thereforeunavailable for comparison.

Both archaeological sites are located about 240m below sea level in the ghor, the broad agricul-tural terrace above the active stream channel ofthe Jordan River (Figure 1). Tell el-Hayyat, a lowmound (ca. 4 m high), rises from the Holocenealluvium of the ghor, which provides the mostfertile soil in the Levant (Zohary 1982) and hasbeen intensively cultivated throughout the his-tory of the region. Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj lies on Pleis-tocene lacustrine sediments at the terrace edge,overlooking the zor, the active floodplain of theJordan River. The climate of the southern Levantis decidedly Mediterranean with mild, rainy win-ters and long, hot summers. Modern precipitationin the Jordan Valley averages 250 mm per year(Horowitz 1979: fig. 2.31), an amount sufficientfor dry farming. A mean annual temperaturegreater than 20° C (Horowitz 1979:22) permitsyear-round horticulture.

Today, wheat fields generally are rain fed, whileother fields and orchards in the vicinity of Hayyatand Ni‘aj are irrigated from the East Ghor Canal,which diverts water from the Yarmouk River, atributary of the Jordan River (20–30 km north ofthese sites). Although there is no direct evidencefor local Bronze Age canals, irrigation water couldhave been obtained from the Jordan River (1–2km to the west) or from a permanent spring at thefoot of the ancient town of Pella, 7 km to thenortheast (see Figure 1).

Three seasons of excavation at Tell el-Hayyatin 1982, 1983, and 1985 exposed 400 m2 of thetell’s surface (8 percent of the site’s area), whileexcavations in 1985 at Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj covered200 m2 (< 1 percent of the site’s area). The

excavated portion of Hayyat is quite substantialby Near Eastern standards, whereas the exposureat Ni‘aj reflects a single season of fieldwork andwill be expanded in the future. Archaeologicaldeposits at both sites were excavated in 5 × 5 msquares to permit careful documentation and re-covery of refuse discarded by villagers, and itsspatial patterning in households, alleyways, andwork areas. This fragmentary material includesbroken ceramics, stone tools, and the most infor-mative vestiges of village ecology: plant fragmentsand animal bones. These otherwise mundaneremnants provide very eloquent, direct indica-tions of the commodities and foodstuffs producedand consumed routinely by Bronze Age villagers.

All sediments excavated at Hayyat and Ni‘ajwere sieved for animal bones and sampled forplant fragments. In open sites such as these, bonepreservation is usually good, but floral remains arepreserved very rarely unless they have been car-bonized in antiquity. Thus sediment samples werecollected nonrandomly from localities thatclearly contained carbonized seeds and wood orshowed evidence of burning (Fall 1983). Samplesfrom Hayyat (n = 151) and Ni‘aj (n = 30), drawnfrom earthen floors, hearths, tabuns (cookingovens), a kiln, storage pits, and trash deposits,were analyzed for plant remains.

Simple water flotation (Pearsall 1989) was usedto extract more than 10,000 identifiable floralspecimens, including seeds, fruits, and rachis seg-ments, from 852 liters of sediment from Hayyatand 204 liters of sediment from Ni‘aj (mean sam-ple volume for both sites is 5.9 liters). Becausesample volumes differed (ranging between 1 and20 liters each), density ratios (i.e., number offragments/kiloliter of sediment) were computedto standardize the floral data (after Miller 1988;Pearsall 1989). These values do not necessarilyreflect the relative importance of each crop at anygiven time, but they are extremely valuable forinferring differences in plant use through time orbetween the two villages (Pearsall 1989; Miller1988).

All excavated sediments were screenedthrough 0.5 cm mesh screen, permitting the re-covery of more than 36,000 animal bone frag-ments from every excavated context at both sites(Metzger 1984, 1985). Our faunal data are pre-sented as numbers of identified specimens(NISP), which reflect the frequency of bones foreach of several, primarily domesticated, animaltaxa. Variable bone frequencies reflect changinganimal management through the Bronze Age at


Hayyat and Ni‘aj. Because the volumes of someexcavated sediments are not available, bone den-sities are not presented here.

Reconstructing Bronze AgeAgriculture and Environment

Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj embodies a village measuring2.5 ha that revealed 2.5 m of cultural depositswith three major strata of mudbrick architecture,all dating to Early Bronze IV. Traditional MiddleEastern village population densities suggest thatNi‘aj’s population measured between 500 and600 (see Kramer 1982). Tell el-Hayyat containsthe stratified remains of a Middle Bronze Agehamlet measuring 0.5 ha, which housed no morethan 150 inhabitants. It produced 6 strata ofvillage architecture to a total depth of 4.5 m atthe center of the mound (Falconer and Magness-Gardiner 1989). Habitation at Hayyat began verylate in Early Bronze IV and continued withoutinterruption through the end of the MiddleBronze Age. Phases 5–2 provide robust data forvillage life through Middle Bronze II A, II B, andII C. At Ni‘aj, the latest Early Bronze IV stratumcontributes the most substantial data recoveredthus far. In the following discussions, we combineexcavated data from Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tellel-Hayyat that span five major strata and approxi-mately five centuries through the Early BronzeIV–Middle Bronze II sequence (see Table 1).

Prevailing interpretations of Bronze Age soci-ety inspire fundamentally different expectationsfor the faunal and floral evidence from Tell Abuen-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat. We anticipated fau-nal data from Ni’aj to be dominated by sheep andespecially goat, the mainstays of Early Bronze IVmobile herding. Floral remains would featureabundant annual crops, especially cereal grains

and legumes, suggesting the opportunistic sea-sonal agriculture that often accompanies pastor-alism. On the other hand, we expected Tellel-Hayyat to reflect sedentary farming strategiesincorporated within an increasingly urbanized re-gional economy (e.g., see Chernoff 1988). Amonganimal taxa, we expected increased deposition ofsheep, important producers of marketable wool,and cattle, major sources of high-status meat,hides, and traction for pulling plows and carts.Floral evidence should document not only localfood consumption, but a greater emphasis oncultivation of perennial orchard crops that couldbe rendered into transportable secondary prod-ucts. In many significant respects, the agriculturaldata from both sites run contrary to our expecta-tions and thereby open new insights on BronzeAge rural ecology.

Animal Husbandry and Consumption

When summarized, the faunal assemblagesfrom Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat showmany more similarities than differences (Table 2).As with most agrarian communities in the NearEast, the majority of bones represent sheep (Ovisaries) and goat (Capra hircus), which provide verysimilar bone frequencies between these two vil-lages. The relative abundance of cattle (Bos tau-rus) bones is identical at each village, while thefrequency of pig (Sus scrofa) is slightly higher atthe presumed “pastoral” settlement of Ni‘aj.

The pig bone frequencies at both sites areunexpectedly high and significantly greater thanthose for other Near Eastern Bronze Age commu-nities, which commonly produce frequenciesaround 10 percent (e.g., Wapnish and Hesse1988; Horwitz 1989). Low pig frequencies atother sites reflect their relatively high water needsand poor suitability for mobile pastoralism (Hor-witz 1989). In addition to the general faunalsimilarities between Ni‘aj and Hayyat, high pig-bone frequencies provide strong circumstantialevidence that both settlements were sedentaryagrarian communities. The general agriculturalorientation of both villages is underscored by thenear absence of wild taxa, despite the availabilityof migratory birds along the Jordan Valley and fishin the nearby Jordan River.

Although the summary faunal evidence fromthese two villages is very similar, there are severalsignificant trends through the Middle Bronze Agesequence at Tell el-Hayyat that document the

Table 2. Relative Animal Bone Frequencies fromTell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat

Bone Frequencies as Percentage

Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj Tell el-HayyatSpecies (n = 1056) (n = 35,000)

Sheep/goat(Ovis aries/Capra hircus) 60 63

Pig (Sus scrofa) 28 21Cattle (Bos taurus) 11 11Weed taxa 1 5


influences of developing urbanism. In most cases,sheep and goat bones cannot be distinguished,and must be analyzed collectively. However, forthose cases in which sheep and goat can be seg-regated, the ratio of sheep to goat shows anincrease through time (Table 3). Goat bones fromHayyat Phase 5 are slightly more numerous, butby Phase 3, sheep bones are almost three timesmore abundant (Falconer 1995). This trend im-plies increasingly market-oriented animal hus-bandry, since sheep carry more meat and producemore abundant secondary products (especiallywool), which are suitable for transport and ex-change (Sherratt 1981; Davis 1984), whereashardier goats are more indicative of mobile pas-toralism.

In contrast, the other major animal taxa at Tellel-Hayyat reveal a diminishing potential for mar-ket-oriented husbandry, as the relative abun-dance of pig bones increases, while that of cattledecreases (Figure 5). Diminished use of cattlefollows naturally from the shift toward sheepherding noted above. Although cattle may pro-vide marketable goods and serve as importantdraft animals, they are grazers that compete morewith sheep (which both graze and browse), thanwith goats (which prefer browsing) (Redding1984).

Increased pig and diminished cattle husbandryreflect a growing emphasis on household-basedsubsistence at Hayyat (Falconer 1995). Pigs arepoorly suited for regional exchange because theyprovide few secondary products and do not herdreadily to distant pasturage or markets (Wapnishand Hesse 1988; Horwitz and Tchernov 1989).Instead, pig husbandry tended to flourish wheninstitutional controls were relaxed (Zeder 1990)and is highly diagnostic of sedentary householdhusbandry, since swine can subsist as domesticscavengers and may be managed effectively byindividual families (Grigson 1982).

Thus the bone assemblages from Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat reflect mixed strategiesof animal husbandry. High sheep and goat fre-quencies typify Bronze Age herd management,and escalating sheep:goat ratios suggest poten-tially increased regional exchange of animalgoods by the inhabitants of Tell el-Hayyat, asmight be anticipated to accompany MiddleBronze Age urbanization. These expected resultsare tempered, however, by pig-bone frequenciesthat are anomalously high at both sites and growthrough time at Hayyat. These data suggeststrongly that Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj was a sedentaryagrarian village, and that market participation byHayyat was tempered by accentuated household-level animal management and consumption de-spite the regional development of Middle BronzeAge towns and cities.

Plant Cultivation and Exchange

As with their faunal data, Ni‘aj and Hayyat arecharacterized by remarkably similar botanical as-semblages (Table 4). Agricultural crops at bothvillages are grouped into four main categories:cultivated cereals, orchard crops, cultivated leg-umes, and wild species (Table 5). Annual andperennial crops often require very different culti-vation strategies. Cereals and legumes require theplanting of mature seeds but may not entail in-tensive maintenance before producing a harvestof new seeds within several months. Thus the

Table 3. Sheep:Goat Ratios at Tell el-Hayyat,Based on Number of Identifiable Specimens

(NISP) Determined as Ovis or Capraa

Phase Ratios NISP

3 2.73:1 1834 0.83:1 2895 0.56:1 196

aBone counts produce a chi-square statistic (X2 = 57.998, df= 2, p < 0.001) that permits rejection of the null hypothesisthat there is no difference between sheep and goat distributionat Hayyat by phase.

Sheep/Goat Pig Cattle0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

% T

otal

NIS

P

Faunal Remains, Tell el-Hayyat

Phase 5

Phase 4

Phase 3

Figure 5. Relative frequencies of bone-element depo-sition from domestic animals at Tell el-Hayyat, phases5–3. Data provided by M. Metzger. Chi-square statistic(X2 = 183.207, df = 4, p < 0.001; NISP: Phase 5 =2427, Phase 4 = 2802, Phase 3 = 1822), based onnumber of identified specimens (NISP), permits rejec-tion of the null hypothesis that there is no differencein domestic animal-bone distribution by phase.


cultivation of annual crops permits discontinuousseasonal cultivation by mobile populations (Zo-hary and Hopf 1988; LaBianca 1990). In contrast,the cultivation of fruit trees requires more con-tinuous horticultural management and a shiftfrom sexual (i.e., involving seeds) to vegetativereproduction (Liphschitz et al. 1991). Fruit treesrepresent a distinct long-term investment, sincethey do not bear fruit for three to eight years afterplanting and may not reach full productivity forten to twenty years (Stager 1985; Hopkins 1985).

Cereal grains include einkorn (Triticum mono-coccum), emmer (T. dicoccum), bread wheat (T.aestivum/T. compactum), oat (Avena sativa), rye(Secale cereale), and barley in both hulled (Hor-deum vulgare) and naked varieties (H. vulgare var.nudum) (Fall 1983; Lines 1995). All of thesecultivated cereals would have thrived as winter-sown varieties in the Jordan Valley and couldhave been cultivated without irrigation. Hulledbarley, the most common cultivated cereal atboth villages, is four to seven times more abun-dant than the naked form. In traditional agricul-tural systems, hulled varieties of barley arepreferred for animal fodder and brewing beer,while naked forms are favored as food (Zoharyand Hopf 1988). The cultivated legumes foundin these villages include lentil (Lens culinaris), pea(Pisium sativum), chickpea (Cicer arietinum),horsebean (Vicia faba), bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia),and grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) (Fall 1983; Lines1995). Orchard crops feature olive (Oleaeuropea), grape (Vitis vinifera), and fig (Ficuscarica), while the only common uncultivated fruitwas Prosopis, a source of animal fodder (Helbaek1966). All of the weeds, wild grasses, and wildlegumes recovered from Ni‘aj and Hayyat areprevalent in agricultural fields or disturbed areas.Weeds from a variety of genera include Malva,Plantago, Rumex/Polygonum, Galium, Amaranthus,and Chenopodium, among others.

Although the floral assemblages from Ni‘aj andHayyat are generally similar, there are severalsignificant trends through time. Among cerealgrains, density ratios show a predominance ofbarley cultivation at Ni‘aj and during the earlyphases at Hayyat that gives way to similar wheatand barley densities during the latter half of theMiddle Bronze Age (Figure 6). Both wheat andbarley may be eaten as gruel or porridge or bakedinto bread. Barley flour traditionally has beenviewed as an inferior source of bread for the poor(Zohary 1982), since wheat produces clearly su-perior baking flour, particularly when grown in

rich soil, with a climate affording low rainfall anda hot, dry, sunny ripening period (Renfrew 1973).The relative mercantile value of these crops isreflected in the biblical verse: “A quart of wheatfor a denarius, and three quarts of barley for adenarius . . .” (Revelations 6:6). Although all va-rieties of wheat (einkorn, emmer, and breadwheat) are more common at Hayyat, the fre-quency of bread wheat in particular jumps to eighttimes its value at Ni‘aj. The Jordan Valley pro-vides precisely the agricultural characteristics fa-vorable for wheat cultivation, making local breadwheat a potentially valuable commodity for localand, perhaps, regional trade.

The influence of regional exchange on ruralagriculture is most apparent when consideringevidence for fruit cultivation. Of the seven croptaxa—wheat, barley, grape, fig, pomegranate, ol-ive, and date—with which the Old Testamentsays the Land of Israel was blessed, five are fruittrees (Deuteronomy 8:8; Zohary 1982). Ren-dered fruit products provide relatively low bulk,highly storable and transportable commoditiesthat are much better suited for regional exchangethan more perishable, higher bulk annual grainsand legumes.

Olive, arguably the most important fruit treeof the eastern Mediterranean, was valued primar-ily as a producer of oil for eating and cooking,ointments, and fuel for lamps (Zohary 1982).Olive oil, because it could be stored for longperiods, was a valued trade commodity and asymbol of wealth throughout the MediterraneanBasin beginning in the Early Bronze Age (Zoharyand Hopf 1988; Neef 1990).

The grape vine, a similarly versatile orchardtaxon, produced fruits that could be eaten fresh,dried to make raisins, or pressed to render juiceand wine (Zohary 1982). Like olive oil, winecould be sealed in pottery jars, stored and trans-ported, making it suitable for regional exchange(Stager 1985). Although wild grapes were utilized

Table 4. Carbonized Seed Frequencies from TellAbu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat

Seed Frequencies as Percentage

Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj Tell el-Hayyat(n = 2217) (n = 8081)

Cultivated cereals 33 30Orchard crops 13 17Cultivated legumes 3 4Weed taxa 51 49


earlier, the first evidence of cultivated grapescomes from excavations at Early Bronze AgeLachish (Helbaek 1958), Arad (Hopf 1978), Nu-meira (McCreery 1980), and Jericho (Hopf1983).

Cultivated figs, which are particularly rich insugar, could be dried, stored, and eaten yearround. The earliest evidence for fig cultivation inthe Levant dates to the Chalcolithic (Hopf 1983)and the Early Bronze Age (McCreery 1980). Bythe Early Bronze Age, olive, grape, and fig, whichflourish collectively in Mediterranean environ-ments, constituted the main horticultural prod-ucts in areas throughout the Mediterranean basin

that were dependent upon rain-fed agriculture(Zohary and Hopf 1988).

The densities of orchard crop remains at TellAbu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat show the samegeneral pattern identified above for faunal andannual crop data: striking overall similarity, withsome subtle but significant distinctions (Figure7). Major fruit cultigens, all of which requirelong-term cultivation and maintenance, are wellrepresented at both sites, reinforcing our inter-pretation of Ni‘aj as a sedentary agrarian village,rather than a seasonal pastoral encampment.

Among the most informative floral distinc-tions, we note a shifting balance of grape and olive

Table 5. Floral Assemblages for Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat with Main Crop Categories andMajor Crop Taxa Presented as Density Ratios (# of Seeds/kl)

Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj Tell el-Hayyat(204 liters) (852 liters)

Cultivated cereals 3598 2888Wheat 549 898Barley 1971 1300Oat 657 273Rye 422 417

Orchard crops 1407 1574Grape 137 31Olive 25 142Fig 1245 1401

Cultivated legumes 319 373Weed taxa 5544 4649

Figure 6. Density ratios of barley and wheat grainsfrom Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat, phases 5–2.Summarized seed counts for barley and wheat producea chi-square statistic (X2 = 63.23, df = 1, p < 0.001)that permits rejection of the null hypothesis that thereis no difference in barley and wheat distribution be-tween the two villages.

Figure 7. Density ratios of orchard crop remains fromTell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat. Summarized seedcounts for fig, olive, and grape produce a chi-squarestatistic (X2 = 55.68, df = 2, p < 0.001) that permitsrejection of the null hypothesis that there is no differ-ence in orchard crop distribution between the twovillages.


deposition, in which grape seeds are more com-mon at Ni‘aj, while olive becomes more abundantat Hayyat, particularly during phases 4 and 3(Figure 8). Olive trees are perhaps the optimalcultigen for Mediterranean climates, since theythrive with warm, wet winters and hot, dry sum-mers, particularly when planted on well-drainedsoils (Polunin and Huxley 1965; Renfrew 1973).Successful olive cultivation requires extensivelandholdings since each tree has an extensiveroot system that requires a spacing of approxi-mately 10 m between trees (Turrill 1952). Theapparent shift to greater olive cultivation at Tellel-Hayyat represents a serious increase in localagricultural investment. This shift extended wellafter the end of Early Bronze IV into phases 5 and4 at Hayyat, suggesting it was also inspired by themercantile opportunities afforded by developingurbanism.

These floral data clearly reflect sedentary farm-ing strategies at both Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tellel-Hayyat, with a growing emphasis on crops withgreater market potential. The two major horticul-tural shifts, in which wheat became more domi-nant among cereals, and fruit cultivation shiftedfrom grape to olive, are most accentuated withinthe Middle Bronze Age, rather than at the EarlyBronze IV/Middle Bronze Age interface.

Village Agriculture in Overview

This detailed profile of village agriculture inthe Jordan Valley, as summarized in Table 6,provides several fundamental, and sometimes un-expected, insights on Bronze Age rural economyand ecology in the midst of urban collapse andflorescence. Many of our inferences stem fromseveral basic continuities between Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat. For example, the strikingsimilarities in animal management and orchardcultivation at both villages reflect a persistentelement of rural sedentarism that may link theseemingly distinct societies of the “pastoralized”Early Bronze IV period and the urban heyday ofMiddle Bronze II. Yet Ni‘aj and Hayyat also pro-vide their share of distinct contrasts that reflectrural responses to growing urbanism. Severalclear trends of enhanced production of market-able commodities (especially olive oil, breadwheat, and sheep wool) suggest that the farmersof Tell el-Hayyat increasingly adapted their cropcultivation and animal management to meet thedemands of emerging mercantile exchange andconsumption in Middle Bronze Age towns andcities. An equally intriguing, and less expected,trend is marked by a parallel increase in morelocalized plant and animal management (e.g.,especially of pigs and possibly grapes), possibly asa hedge by this hamlet against the potential in-roads of urban economic and political authorities.

In a study of peasant agriculture under Incarule, Zimmerer (1993) also emphasizes the impor-tance of household subsistence cultivation. Sur-plus-oriented production under the Inca statefeatured only a few major crops such as maize,potatoes, and coca; localized subsistence farming,however, supported a wide variety of cultivars(Lathrap 1973; Plowman 1984; Knapp 1991;Zimmerer 1993). Household gardens undoubt-edly also played a similar role in maintainingnative crop diversity in pre -ColumbianMesoamerica (Whitmore and Turner 1992).

At Tell el-Hayyat, the most pronouncedchanges in both faunal and floral data occurbetween phases 4 and 3, and therefore suggestsocial and economic changes between the rebirthof town life in Middle Bronze II A and the culmi-nation of urbanism in Middle Bronze II B and IIC. In this manner, Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tellel-Hayyat illuminate the complex weave of vil-lage agriculture and intercommunity relations atthe foundation of Bronze Age society in thesouthern Levant.

Figure 8. Density ratios of grape and olive seeds fromTell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat, phases 5–2. Seedcounts for grape and olive produce a chi-square statistic(X2 = 63.8, df = 4, p < 0.01) that permits rejection ofthe null hypothesis that there is no difference betweengrape and olive deposition through the sequence atNi‘aj and Hayyat.


Conclusion

Any appreciation of the roots of civilization inthe Near East must not only identify the originsof social revolutions such as agriculture and ur-banism, but comprehend their concomitant ef-fects on the natural environment and theeconomic behaviors of rural villagers who com-prised the vast majority of ancient populations.The communities of Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tellel-Hayyat provide a rare, intimate portrait ofagrarian ecology on an increasingly anthropo-genic landscape during the collapse and develop-ment of early towns and cities. Pre-Columbianstate-level societies exerted comparably powerfulinfluences on the rural environments ofMesoamerica (Denevan 1992; Whitmore andTurner 1992). Aztec and Maya demand for spe-cialized orchard products such as cacao (Theo-broma cacao) and avocado (Persea americana)created extensive agricultural landscapesthroughout the region (Bergman 1969; Turnerand Miksicek 1984; Whitmore and Turner 1992).Amid relatively long-term trajectories of agrarianand environmental change, rural communitiesoften demonstrate remarkable resilience (e.g.,Adams 1978), making them ideal vantage pointsfor detailed reconstructions of the economy andecology that lay at the root of early civilizations.

At Ni‘aj and Hayyat, striking overall similari-ties in crop cultivation and animal managementreflect the persistence of sedentary agriculture,despite the varying fortunes of urban centers, thathas escaped serious attention previously. Ni‘ajexemplifies the importance of sedentary commu-nities and the persistence of orchard cultivationduring the urban collapse and regional “pastorali-zation” of Early Bronze IV, while Hayyat demon-strates several striking trends that accompany therejuvenation of Middle Bronze Age cities. Thefarmers of Hayyat increasingly exploited far-

reaching mercantile opportunities afforded by ur-ban markets, as signaled by clear shifts to greatersheep husbandry and, most significantly, accen-tuated cultivation of marketable orchard cropslike olives, figs, and grapes. They clearly alsoaccentuated some aspects of economic auton-omy, notably pig husbandry, which may be inter-preted as a strategy to avoid excessive mercantiledependence.

On the eve of Spanish contact inMesoamerica, rural villages similarly integratedsurplus-oriented tree cropping with diversified,household-level subsistence farming. Householdorchard-gardens supported a wide variety offruits, vegetables, condiments, fibers, and medici-nal plants (Whitmore and Turner 1992). Thesediversified gardens provided a measure of household-level autonomy, facilitating the maintenance oftraditional crop diversity. Nabhan (1987) sug-gests provocatively that the conservation of mod-ern agricultural biodiversity may also depend onrural resistance to market forces and state-levelpolitical authority. Throughout the tropics, tradi-tional diversified systems are being displaced byhigh-yield monocultures of cash crops such ascoffee, bananas, and pineapple. The ability ofrural peoples to resist this process in the face ofemerging urban markets will have significant im-plications for the future of agrarian diversity.

While the assemblages of wild plant and ani-mal taxa discussed above might suggest such ex-treme agricultural dedication that episodes ofurban collapse would have a devastating impacton Bronze Age rural economy in the southernLevant, the evidence from Ni‘aj and Hayyat at-tests to the resilience of these early rural commu-nities. This resilience is based on shifts inagricultural intensification that variably ex-ploited growing market opportunities or reducedthe potential for institutional control. Tell Abuen-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat exemplify the spec-

Table 6. Significant Results of Floral and Faunal Remains from Tell el-Hayyat and Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj

Results Significance

Substantial remains of cattle, pig, and perennial or-chard crops at Tell Abu en-Ni‘ajIncrease in species that yield marketable commoditiesduring the Middle Bronze II (e.g., olive, wheat, sheep)

Decrease in olive, increase in grape and pig during lateMiddle Bronze II

Relative absence of wild floral and faunal remains fromboth villages (except agricultural weeds)

Persistence of sedentary farming in Early Bronze IV,despite the decline of urban centersShift to market-oriented economy following the re-emergence of urban centers

Enhanced economic autonomy; reduced potential forencroachment by political authorities

Anthropogenic landscape


trum of agrarian strategies that provided the basisfor village economy and ecology in emerging ur-banized societies such as those of the southernLevant.

Acknowledgments

Suggestions and editorial comments by Karl W.Butzer and two anonymous reviewers greatly improvedthis manuscript. Excavations at Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj andTell el-Hayyat were conducted with the cooperationand assistance of the Department of Antiquities ofJordan and the American Center of Oriental Research,Amman. The field component of this research has beensupported by grants to Steven Falconer and BonnieMagness-Gardiner from the National Endowment forthe Humanities (#RO-21027), the National Geo-graphic Society (#2598-83 and #2984-84), and theWenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Re-search (#4382). Analysis of the Hayyat and Ni’ajcollections is funded by grants to Steven Falconer andPatricia Fall from the National Endowment for theHumanities (#R0-22467-92) and by three ArizonaState University Faculty Grants-in-Aid. We offer spe-cial thanks to Mary Metzger for identification andanalyses of the bone material from Hayyat and Ni‘aj, toBonnie Magness-Gardiner for insights into the culturalremains excavated from these two archaeological vil-lages, and to Barbara Trapido for drafting the illustra-tions. Naomi Miller, Karen Adams, and CharlesMiksicek aided in identifying the plant remains.

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Correspondence: Department of Geography, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, email [email protected] (Fall);Department of Environmental Studies, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL 32789 (Lines); Department ofAnthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 (Falconer).


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