Ancient trash mounds unravel urban collapse a century before the end of Byzantine hegemony in the southern Levant

Guy Bar-Oz, Lior Weissbrod, Tali Erickson-Gini, Yotam Tepper, Dan Malkinson, Mordechay Benzaquen, Dafna Langgut, Zachary C. Dunseth, Don H. Butler, Ruth Shahack-Gross, Joel Roskin, Daniel Fuks, Ehud Weiss, Nimrod Marom, Inbar Ktalav, Rachel Blevis, Irit Zohar, Yoav Farhi, Anya Filatova, Yael Gorin-RosenXin Yan, Elisabetta Boaretto

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The historic event of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) was recently identified in dozens of natural and geological climate proxies of the northern hemisphere. Although this climatic downturn was proposed as a major cause for pandemic and extensive societal upheavals in the sixth–seventh centuries CE, archaeological evidence for the magnitude of societal response to this event is sparse. This study uses ancient trash mounds as a type of proxy for identifying societal crisis in the urban domain, and employs multidisciplinary investigations to establish the terminal date of organized trash collection and high-level municipal functioning on a city-wide scale. Survey, excavation, sediment analysis, and geographic information system assessment of mound volume were conducted on a series of mounds surrounding the Byzantine urban settlement of Elusa in the Negev Desert. These reveal the massive collection and dumping of domestic and construction waste over time on the city edges. Carbon dating of charred seeds and charcoal fragments combined with ceramic analysis establish the end date of orchestrated trash removal near the mid-sixth century, coinciding closely with the beginning of the LALIA event and outbreak of the Justinian Plague in the year 541. This evidence for societal decline during the sixth century ties with other arguments for urban dysfunction across the Byzantine Levant at this time. We demonstrate the utility of trash mounds as sensitive proxies of social response and unravel the time–space dynamics of urban collapse, suggesting diminished resilience to rapid climate change in the frontier Negev region of the empire.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8239-8248
Number of pages10
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume116
Issue number17
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Gil Gambash for his instructive comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement 648427) and the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 340-14). Radiocarbon research is supported by the Exilarch’s Foundation for the D-REAMS Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory. E.B. is the incumbent of the Dangoor Professorial Chair of Archaeological Sciences. This study was conducted under the licenses of the Israel Antiquities Authority (G-69/2014, G-10/2015, G-6/2017).

Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Gil Gambash for his instructive comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement 648427) and the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 340-14). Radiocarbon research is supported by the Exilarch’s Foundation for the D-REAMS Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory. E.B. is the incumbent of the Dangoor Professorial Chair of Archaeological Sciences. This study was conducted under the licenses of the Israel Antiquities Authority (G-69/2014, G-10/2015, G-6/2017).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Ancient urban trash mounds
  • Byzantine period
  • Late antique little ice age
  • Societal collapse
  • Southern levant

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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