Early neolithic exploitation patterns in the Levant - Springer Link

Early Neolithic Exploitation Patterns in the Levant: Cultural Impact on the Environment Gary O. Rollefson Ilse K6hler-Rollefson

San Diego State University

INTRODUCTION Over the ca. 4,500 years of the Neolithic period in the Near East (8,500-4,000 B.C.), the southern Levant underwent trends of development different from those that characterized the northern Levant and Greater Mesopotamia. The divergence was particularly evident in the 7th and 6th millennia B.C., for the area (including modern Jordan, Palestine/Israel, and Syria south of Damascus) experienced cataclysmic changes in settlement patterns. Recent archaeological excavations in Jordan have required a reassessment of the developments in the southern Levant, for while major alterations in settlement patterns did take place, it is now clear that the earlier scenario of events and explanations is oversimplified and incorrect (Fig. 1).

SETTLEMENT PATTERN SHIFTS AND CLIMATE It now appears the 7th millennium witnessed two phases of settlement pattern dislocation. Early 7th millennium sites throughout the Near East ranged from 1-4 hectares in size, and many of these villages in the southern Levant collapsed by 6,500 B.C., including Jericho and Beidha (RollPlease address correspondence to Dr. Rollefson, Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-0377. Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 13, Number 4, Summer 1992 © 1992 Human SciencesPress,Inc.

243

244

POPULATIONAND ENVIRONMENT

FIGURE 1. Some of the principal Neolithic sites mentioned in the text.

C~talHiiyiJk

Beisamoun

..

.~ii~'~" ~WadiShu'eib

~~,c~r~

TeU•AbuHurey Z,

. 'As"Ghaza.

Beidhae eBasta

efson, 1989). But new settlements were founded at the same time in quite variable landscapes, such as Abu Gosh in the heights above Jerusalem (Lechevallier, 1978) and Mosad Mazal (Taute, 1981) near the southern end of the Dead Sea. °Ain Ghazal, which was established as a small hamlet at ca. 7,250 B.C., grew to immense proportions (12+ hectares) after 6,500

245 GARYO. ROLLEFSONAND ILSEKOHLER-ROLLEFSON

B.C., as did Basta in southern Jordan (ca. 14 ha) and Beisamoun and Khirbet Sheikh ~Ali (10 ha each) in northern Palestine (Rollefson, 1987). The megasite phenomenon also affected the northern Levant, with Tell Abu Hureyra reaching nearly 12 ha (Moore, 1975), although other Neolithic settlements remained generally smaller than 8 ha (Rollefson, 1987; cf. Geobel, 1984). The second change in settlement patterns happened at the end of the 7th millennium. By 6,000 B.C., for example, every known permanent farming village in Palestine/Israel had been abandoned, leading some archaeologists to envision a major exodus of the local populations to regions to the north and northeast, leaving the southern Levant essentially vacant and unpopulated for up to a thousand years (Mellaart, 1975; Kenyon, 1979; Perrot, 1968). The cause for this catastrophe was cited as a slight but sufficient decrease in rainfall, rendering agriculture in this marginal environment unreliable (Kenyon, 1957; Perrot, 1983). Pollen evidence from the Huteh Basin and Birket Ram in the northern Jordan Valley seemed to support a climatic deterioration (Horowitz, 1979). Fieldwork conducted at 'Ain Ghazal (e.g., Rollefson & Simmons, 1988; Rollefson, Kafafi, & Simmons, 1990; in press; Simmons et al., 1988), Wadi Shu°eib (Simmons et al., 1989), and Basta (Nissen et al., 1987) convincingly contradicts the view that the southern Levant suffered widespread abandonment at the end of the 7th millennium. All three sites, located along the north-south hilly spine of Jordan, maintained a vigorous growth into the early 6th millennium, and ~Ain Ghazal (and perhaps Wadi Shu~eib), at least, continued as a large (12 + hectares) permanent farming settlement without interruption until at least 5,000 B.C. The persistence of 'Ain Ghazal, in particular, which is situated along the modern 250-300 mm isohyet (considered to be the minimal amount of rain for dry farming), argues strongly against climatic change as a reason for the abandonment of the other agricultural villages in the southern Levant. As a regional phenomenon, a decrease in rainfall in the Palestinian area should have affected the area to the east with as much impact, making reliance on agriculture unpredictable at 'Ain Ghazal, Wadi Shu'eib, and Basta; but this was clearly not the case. What, then, can be cited as the reasons for the catastrophe that afflicted so much of the southern Levant? Based on the "Ain Ghazal excavation results, the disruption is most likely a combination of three principal factors that operated differentially in the southern and northern parts of the Levant. These factors include plaster technology, animal husbandry, and

topographic variation.

246 POPULATIONAND ENVIRONMENT

PLASTER PRODUCTION IN THE LEVANT Plaster technology was highly developed in the Near East by the 7th millennium B.C., and the material was used for a broad range of purposes (Rollefson, 1990). "Plaster" is a generic term that includes a variety of products, and each type has different requirements for its manufacture. Mud plaster is produced simply by adding water to soil (preferably clay); mud plaster was used throughout the Near East. In Greater Mesopotamia it was the principal wall-finishing material, and reports of other kinds of plaster during the Neolithic period are very sporadic. Huwwar is another poorquality plaster made of crushed chalk, soil, and water; like mud plaster, its production cost is relatively low, involving simple mechanical alteration of naturally occurring resources. The use of huwwar in the 7th millennium was not common except, perhaps, in the northern Galilee area of Palestine, although huwwar became more prominent in the late 6th millennium in the southern Levant, at least. Gypsum plaster is made by burning gypsum (CaSO4), a process that requires relatively low burning temperatures (between 150-400 ° C.). Lime plaster results from heating limestone (CaCO3) to much higher temperatures (800-900 ° C.), using more fuel over more sustained periods of firing (Kingery, Vandiver & Prickett, 1988). Gypsum plaster was used in the northern Levant, perhaps reflecting the general scarcity of limestone outcrops near permanent settlements and/or a relative paucity of available quantities of high quality fuel. Lime plaster, on the other hand, was characteristic of the southern Levant, where both limestone and stands of hardwood trees were locally abundant. Lime plaster was manufactured on an industrial scale through almost all of the southern Levant throughout the 7th and early 6th millennia. Laboratory investigations (Kingery, Vandiver & Prickett, 1988, p. 221) have shown that a ton of quicklime requires four tons of wood as fuel for the process. Based on these calculations and those of Garfinkel (1987), the number of trees for plaster production and structural support for house construction was calculated for one-hundred-year intervals at 'Ain Ghazal from 7,250-5,750 B.C. (Rollefson, 1991, cf. Rollefson & K6hler-Rollefson, 1989). Table 1 reflects the growing exploitation of forest stands during this period, and the total consumption of trees and area is indicated in the last row. In summary, during the 7th and early 6th millennia, the residents of °Ain Ghazal systematically deforested the immediate vicinity of the settlement, creating a devegetated area with a radius of 3.0 km or more from the center of the settlement.

247 GARY O. ROLLEFSONAND ILSE KOHLER-ROLLEFSON

TABLE 1 Exploitation Requirements of Trees for Architectural Construction at 'Ain Ghazal* Century Ending

Houses

Trees, Plaster

Trees, Timbers

Total Trees

Ha

7250 b.c. 7150 7050 6950 6850 6750 6650 6550 a 6450 6350 6250 b 6150 6050 5950 5850 5750 5650 5550 5450 c

126 157 188 219 250 283 346 409 472 535 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600

756 942 1128 1314 1500 1698 2076 2454 2832 3210 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 .

504 628 752 876 1000 1132 1384 409 472 535 --------.

1260 1570 1880 2190 2500 2830 3460 2863 3304 3745 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600 3600

72 90 108 125 143 162 198 168 194 220 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

.

.

Cum Ha

Cum r (kin)

72 162 270 395 538 700 898 1066 1260 1480 1692 1904 2116 2328 2540 2752 2964 3176 3176

0.48 0.72 0.93 1.12 1.31 1.49 1.69 1.85 2.00 2.17 2.32 2.46 2.60 2.72 2.84 2.96 3.07 3.18 3.18

* Column codes: Ha - Hectares Cum Ha - Cumulative hectars Cum r - Cumulative deforestation radius (kilometers) a - Change in architectural design b - Population stabilizes c - Lime plaster manufacture ceases

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY Just as the northern and southern parts of the Levant differed in the plaster t e c h n o l o g y used d u r i n g the 7th and 6th m i l l e n n i a , w i t h the attend a n t severe drain on forest c o v e r in the latter area, there was a c o n c o m i tant distinction in the subsistence e c o n o m y practiced in the t w o zones. Sheep d o m i n a t e d the d o m e s t i c animals of the north, w h i l e in contrast

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POPULATIONAND ENVIRONMENT

goats had been herded in the southern Levant since the beginning of the 7th millennium (K~hler-Rollefson, 1989; Helmer, 1989). The behaviors of these two animals are different. Sheep are grazers, relying on grasses for their food. Goats, on the other hand, are browsers, preferring coarse vegetation including brush and shrubs, and this dietary distinction had grave consequences for the people of the southern Levant for two reasons. The first of these is that although the southern Levant suffered considerable deforestation around the permanent farming settlements as a result of the perceived need for lime plaster manufacture, under normal circumstances it would be expected that reforestation would occur, at least to a considerable degree. But normal circumstances in the south included hungry goats, for whom delicate seedlings and saplings would have constituted strong temptations to satisfy their considerable appetites. Thus, the row-by-row tallies of trees in Table 1 represent cumulative losses of trees and tree cover, since reforestation was prevented in the usual course of goat herding. The second deleterious consequence of the reliance on goats in the southern Levant concerns the fragility of the plant community and the terrain (see below). The replacement of tree stands with fields of cereals and pulses for human dietary needs was immediately beneficial for the societies living in Jordan and Palestine/Israel, but this was a short-term benefit, for climax conditions in the area are delicate and subject to easy mismanagement. The general conditions of the new farmland near large water sources entailed regrowth of poor quality vegetation cover, even under fallow conditions (K6hler-Rollefson, 1987), that competed with the succeeding crop harvests. The thistles and other scrub also provided a positive feedback situation to intensify goat browsing, reducing the plant cover to bare minimums and exposing the soils to the ravages of erosion (Fig. 2).

TOPOGRAPHY A N D SOILS

The geological history of the two areas of the Levant has also contributed considerably to major differences in settlement pattern stability. From the heights of Jebel esh-Sheikh in central Syria, one looks onto horizons that are flat and virtually unrelieved (except for postNeolithic archaeological mounds), stretching for vast distances to the north, south, and east. The lay of the land in the southern Levant is strikingly different, where ranges of mountains and hilltops are separated by deeply dissected watercourses of permanently or seasonally flowing rivers and streams. In fact, the only flat-

249 GARY O. ROLLEFSON AND ILSE KOHLER-ROLLEFSON

FIGURE 2. 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in its topographic perspective, with "flat" (2-4 ° slope) agricultural soils indicated by stippling. The concentric circles show the scale of increasing deforestation and browsing requirements through time. • Sorina

.

Snrina

~rid

i

N

I

0

i

•

1 km

1

"1 5

250 POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT

lands of any significance in the south are the semiarid and arid steppes and deserts of eastern Jordan, areas that could not support agricultural communities of any size for any appreciable amount of time. The term "any significance" demands some comment, for admittedly there are relatively extensive plateaus in Jordan and parts of Palestine/ Israel. But without later developments of well-digging or other water management systems,-such potentially useful farmland was out of reach to populations dependent on freely available water; furthermore, the absence of transport made the harvest of cereals and legumes on such farmland virtually useless to people tied to water sources that were restricted to wadi bottoms (cf. Higgs & Vita-Finzi, 1972; Jarman, Vita-Finzi, & Higgs, 1972; Flannery, 1971). What was available to the local farming settlements of the southern Levant, then, were the local slopes and adjacent hilltops of deep wadi systems that contained sufficient supplies of fresh water for the village inhabitants. The removal of trees for housing construction opened new tracts for cultivation, but most of these tracts were rendered susceptible to erosion by the browsing habits of goats, an animal that was adopted by pastoralists because it was at home in the craggy terrain. The use of farmland for goat pasture necessarily had to follow the spring harvest, so the damage inflicted by herds of goats occurred before the ensuing rainy season, laying bare the fragile soils not only to removal by gentle and strong winter rainstorms alike, but also to deflation by the persistent and frequently strong prevailing westerly winds of the region.

DISCUSSION The mosaic effects of the particular aspects of plaster technology, animal husbandry, and local terrain around most 7th millennium Neolithic sites in Palestine/Israel had devastating effects on farming settlements that were tied to restricted sources of fresh water. Such impacts happened as early as 6,500 B.C., and Jericho and Beidha were abandoned not as a result of regional dessication, but of culturally-induced environmental degradation. Reactions to such local ecological disturbances was to relocate to new locations or to join less threatened settlements in more varied and reliable ecotones. Most of these adaptations were vulnerable to eventual overexploitation after some 500 years of continuous occupation, and by 6,000 B.C. only those settlements at the edge of the steppes and deserts (e.g., ~Ain Ghazal), which provided relief in terms of available forage for goats, man-

251 GARYO. ROLLEFSONAND ILSEKOHLER-ROLLFFSON

aged to delay the combined effects of environmental degradation, albeit with considerable changes in sociocultural manifestations (Rollefson & Simmons, 1988). Other communities that had persisted in more confined ecological situations in Palestine/Israel, and in some of the more sensitive parts of Jordan, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria (e.g., Tell Ramad, near Damascus [cf. de Contenson, 1985]) were forced to abandon their settlements as a consequence of culturally-induced degradation of the environment. But there is little indication that these farming communities left the region for better pastures in the northern Levant or Greater Mesopotamia. Instead, it is more plausible to suggest that the villages, regardless of small or megasite proportions, dispersed into the undamaged countryside, establishing new but smaller settlements that relied on smaller fresh water resources. The apparent absence of post-7th millennium Neolithic farming hamlets and small villages in much of the southern Levant is likely the result of restricted archaeological visibility of the available evidence. First, smaller sites have been largely ignored in terms of excavation projects ("bigger is better" is a powerful funding appeal). Second, distinctions between preand post-6,000 B.C. cultural developments are subtle in terms of survey indications that might point to specific identification of relevant 6th millennium farming settlements in Palestine/Israel and Jordan (cf. Rollefson & Simmons, 1988), and archaeological surveys may have misclassified critical surface finds. ~Ain Ghazal sustained its role as a major population center based on farming and herding throughout the 7th and 6th millennia because of its critical location at a major ecotone of biological resources. Even so, the late 6th millennium occupation of the large settlement resulted in a fundamental alteration of local resource exploitation, for pottery production after ca. 5,500 B.C. placed a new cost on fuel. Coincident with the emergence of a ceramic technology, the production of lime plaster ceased abruptly, and economically less demanding mud plaster and huwwar were substituted. Even these cultural modifications at ~Ain Ghazal were insufficient to withstand the drain on local resources and, as was the case at Wadi Shu~eib and Basta, ~Ain Ghazal was eventually abandoned as a farming settlement, being visited, instead, as a temporary, seasonal camp sometime after 5,000 B.C. (K6hler-Rollefson & Rollefson, 1990). Smaller contemporaneous farming sites thrived throughout the northern part of Jordan, at least (e.g., Kafafi, 1988), and the eastern steppe and desert of Jordan experienced an intensified simultaneous nomadic pastoral exploitation (Betts, 1988).


Although the cultural impact on the environment was devastating in terms of its cumulative effects in the southern Levant, it should be emphasized that the results were not catastrophic in the sense that the effects suddenly forced the abandonment of Palestinian sites by starving, panicstricken residents. It is unlikely that environmental changes were apparent among any of the several generations living in a settlement at one time, although oral traditions may have referred to more Eden-like conditions in the distant past. The consequences of these changes are clearly visible in ~Ain Ghazal's stratigraphic succession, but they are reflected only as gradual shifts in architectural accommodations to restricted availability of structural timbers (resulting in decreasing room size [Rollefson, Kafafi & Simmons, in press]), in the decreasing sizes and quantities of charred wood in domestic ash pits (Rollefson & K6hler-Rollefson, 1989), and in the trends of decreased variability in wild animal species in the faunal record through time (K6hlerRollefson, 1989). The cultural degradation of the environment is best represented in °Ain Ghazal at present, although more detailed reports from sites such as Basra and Wadi Shu~eib should provide invaluable corroborating information. But absolute confirmation of the cultural degradation explanation for the settlement disturbance in the southern Levant demands that more attention be focused on excavations of the smaller early 6th millennium settlements in Palestine/Israel predicted by this hypothesis.

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