The disappearance of Capparisspinosa (the cultivated caper) from the southern Levant

Capparis spinosa (caper) grows wild around the Mediterranean basin. In southern Italy, Greece and the islands, especially Cyprus, collected and cultivated varieties of the caper have been a part of the local food as a flavouring since antiquity. Presently in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Sinai the wild caper is absent from traditional foodways. In Syria it is sometimes picked to be processed in Turkey. Ancient Hebrew sources indicate that in the Levant, in addition to being collected from the wild, capers were intensively cultivated as food and also used as a boundary marker or prickly fence during the Roman and Byzantine periods. This article discusses when and for what reason the cultivation of the caper and its intensive collection and use were discontinued.