Crop Production in the Levant and International Trade Exchange: investigating coprolites and crop plant remains from the 1st millennium CE Negev Highlands and Aravah Valley

Project Information

CroProLITE

Grant agreement ID: 101025677

DOI

10.3030/101025677

Project closed

EC signature date 28 April 2021

Start date 1 September 2022

End date 31 August 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 224 933,76

EU contribution

€ 224 933,76

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CroProLITE (Crop Production in the Levant and International Trade Exchange: investigating coprolites and crop plant remains from the 1st millennium CE Negev Highlands and Aravah Valley)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Long-term historical processes of plant domestication and diffusion have shaped global mosaics of contemporary crop cultivation and consumption. While archaeological research on these processes has largely focused on the prehistoric origins and the spread of agriculture, later developments in agrarian history have had no lesser impact and are essential for understanding the long-term history and evolution of agricultural crops. This research develops new approaches to studying the transformative developments of agriculture in the first millennium CE through a study of plant remains and herbivore dung from archaeological sites in the Negev-Aravah.

Results of this research indicate that the 1st c. BCE to the 4th c. CE marked a period of unprecedented crop diffusion in the Southern Levant – a phenomenon coined in project publications as “Roman Agricultural Diffusion” (RAD). In the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods, this new agricultural diversity becomes evident in Negev desert settlements, along with at least one crop species first introduced in the Early Islamic period: the aubergine. The latter represents a component of the “Islamic Green Revolution” (IGR). Considering the IGR and RAD together, the first millennium CE saw more new contributions to agricultural diversity than any previous millennium – and this appears to be the case throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean. However, in the Negev at least, none of the first millennium introductions are well-represented in archaeobotanical assemblages. This suggests that they did not quickly change local diets or landscapes, and supports a gradualist model for agricultural change over the last 10,000 years.

The CroProLITE project also made contributions to multi-proxy coprolite analysis—particularly of herbivore faecal pellets found at Negev desert sites. Project pilot studies demonstrated the value of micro-CT scanning as a screening technique for macroremain preservation, and of ancient DNA as an important source for dietary reconstruction. This complements previous and ongoing analyses of archaeobotanical proxies including seeds, pollen and phytoliths. An additional pilot study demonstrated the reliability of dung pellet exterior shavings for radiocarbon dating, making it possible to use an otherwise discarded source of contaminants. This will improve multi-proxy workflows to better unpack these rare time capsules of past economies and ecologies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A study of archaeological plant remains from the Negev Highlands – some of which provide the earliest evidence for eggplant and white lupin in the Levant – suggests that the effects of Roman Agricultural Diffusion (RAD), and first millennium CE agricultural change more generally, marked an unprecedented period of long-distance crop diffusion (Fuks et al. 2023a). Yet the new crop plants did not markedly change local diets, suggesting that adoption proceeded slowly, over millennia. This is the first archaeobotanical study published in the journal eLife and it informs a permanent plaque on “The globalisation of crop plants” in the Cambridge Botanical Gardens lupin beds, along the "Amazing People, Enquiring Minds" trail [https://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/research-science/amazingpeople/daniel-fuks-white-lupin/]. These findings were presented at a roundtable session on Agrarian change in the medieval Mediterranean at the 2024 European Archaeological Association conference in Rome, and in the Cambridge Botanical Gardens’ Science on Sundays series for the general public.

Fuks, D., Melamed, Y., Langgut, D., Erickson-Gini, T., Tepper, Y., Bar-Oz, G. and Weiss, E. 2023a. Unprecedented yet gradual nature of first millennium CE intercontinental crop plant dispersal revealed in ancient Negev desert refuse. eLife, 12: e85118. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85118

***

As time capsules of past economies and ecologies, ancient faeces, or coprolites, comprise a scarce but valuable archaeological resource. To make the most of the information encapsulated in them, developing multi-proxy workflows has been a focus of the CroProLITE project. During the project period this led me to participate in analyses of various types, including micro-CT scanning at the Paleolab, U. Cambridge McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and at the Biotomography Centre, U. Cambridge Zoology Dept; proteomics and lipid extractions at the U. Copenhagen; ancient DNA extractions at the McDonald Institute’s Henry Wellcome Laboratory for Biomolecular Archaeology; radiocarbon pretreatments at the 14CHRONO Centre, Queen’s University Belfast; and stable isotope analyses at the Pitt Rivers Lab, McDonald Institute. Some results have been published (Fuks et al. 2023b), while more are forthcoming.

Fuks, D., O’Neill-Munro, N., Reimer, P.J. Erickson-Gini, T., Bar-Oz, G., Galili, R., Bucking, S. 2023b. Minimally destructive radiocarbon dating of caprine dung. Radiocarbon, 65(4): 832–847. https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2023.70

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Motivated by the desire to contextualize my findings on crop diffusion across a wider geographic and disciplinary range, colleagues and I recently founded the Crop History Consortium (CHC). The CHC is a cross-disciplinary group aiming to conduct and promote interdisciplinary synthesis research on crop histories, with a focus on the last 3,000 yrs in the Middle East and Mediterranean. The CHC has so far (1) organized dedicated sessions at the 2023 and 2024 European Archaeology Association conferences and was invited to continue in 2025; (2) earned a UKRI AHRC Networking Grant awarded to Michelle Alexander (U. York; PI) and Daniel Fuks (co-PI); and (3) produced its first paper, on ‘Orphan crops of archaeology-based crop history research’ for publication in Plants, People, Planet’s special issue on ‘forgotten crops’. For more on the paper and the CHC, see: https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/orphan-crops

Fuks, D., et al. 2024. Orphan crops of archaeology-based crop history research, Plants, People, Planet. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10468

***

In September 2023, I had the honour of participating in the planting of a 1300-year-old variety of grapes on the outskirts of the UNESCO world heritage site, Avdat. Previous research demonstrated the significance of viticulture in this region during Late Antiquity (Fuks et al. 2020). Grape pips I retrieved from excavations led by Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini (Israel Antiquities Authority) and Prof. Scott Bucking (DePaul U.) at Early Islamic Avdat were DNA sequenced and identified to variety in a study led by Dr. Pnina Cohen, Dr. Meirav Meiri (Tel-Aviv U.) and Prof. Guy Bar-Oz (U. Haifa) (Cohen et al. 2022). With support of an ERC proof of concept grant awarded to Bar-Oz, those same varieties were then planted at the site for the first time in over 1,000 years! Lior Schwimer (Ben-Gurion U. and Nature and Parks Authority) oversaw the planting.

Cohen, P., Bacilieri, R., Ramos-Madrigal, J., Privman, E., Boaretto, E., Weber, A., Fuks, D., Weiss, E., Erickson-Gini, T., Bucking, S. and Tepper, Y. 2023. Ancient DNA from a lost Negev Highlands desert grape reveals a Late Antiquity wine lineage. PNAS, 120(17): e2213563120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2213563120

Fuks, D., Bar-Oz, G., Tepper, Y., Erickson-Gini, T., Langgut, D., Weissbrod, L. and Weiss, E. 2020. The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data. PNAS, 117 (33): 19780–19791. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1922200117

Dung Drops - Bake Your Project @McDonald Institute, 2024

Planting an ancient grape variety at UNESCO World Heritage Site, Avdat, Sept 2023

Avdat dung pellets - 300-400 yrs old

Fecal proteomics extraction, Globe Institute, U. Copenhagen

Plant domesticates by frequency in 1st mill. CE Negev & pd initial domestication/intro in S Levant

Seed in ancient dung revealed by micro-CT scan

1st mill. CE crop diffusion - view from the Negev Highlands