Harvey Weiss

The Genesis And Collapse Of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization

Archaeological and soil-stratigraphic data define the origin, growth, and collapse of Subir, the third millennium rain-fed agriculture civilization of northern Mesopotamia on the Habur Plains of Syria. At 2200 B. C., a marked increase in aridity and wind circulation, subsequent to a volcanic eruption, induced a considerable degradation of land-use conditions. After four centuries of urban life, this abrupt climatic change evidently caused abandonment of Tell Leilan, regional desertion, and collapse of the Akkadian empire based in southern Mesopotamia. Synchronous collapse in adjacent regions suggests that the impact of the abrupt climatic change was extensive.

The Structure and Dynamics of Dry-Farming States in Upper Mesopotamia [and Comments and Reply]

A model describing the layout of Early Bronze Age Mesopotamian states is synthesized using a range of off-site and on-site data from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. These allow the description of the basic settlement patterns, land use, and exchange systems of an early state system. The hypothesis is tested that Bronze Age settlements in this zone of rain-fed farming tended not to exceed IOO hectares, an area which was capable of accommodating between io,ooo and 2o,ooo people. Detailed off-site surveys and landscape archaeology suggest that these settlements were provisioned by intensively farmed zones of cultivation that surrounded the central settlement and by tributary secondary or satellite communities. This main production zone was just capable of supporting the population of the prime site, but the constraint of labour and the frictional effect of distance meant that food produced farther away than some io-is km made only a minor contribution to the main settlement. As a result, settlements tended not to expand beyond a certain size. Even then, the maximizing effect of intensive crop production in such areas of highly variable rainfall and episodic major droughts made these communities very vulnerable to collapse.

Drought is a recurring challenge in the Middle East

Climate change and water availability in the Middle East are important in understanding human adaptive capacities in the face of long-term environmental changes. The key role of water availability for sedentary and nomad populations in these arid to semiarid landscapes is understood, but the millennium-scale influence of hydrologic instability on vegetation dynamics, human occupation, and historic land use are unknown, which has led to a stochastic view of population responses and adaptive capacities to precipitation anomalies. Within the time-frame of the last two global climate events, the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age, we report hydrologic instability reconstructed from pollen-derived climate proxies recovered near Tell Leilan, at the Wadi Jarrah in the Khabur Plains of northeastern Syria, at the heart of ancient northern Mesopotamia. By coupling climate proxies with archaeological-historical data and a pollen-based record of agriculture, this integrative study suggests that variability in precipitation is a key factor on crop yields, productivity, and economic systems. It may also have been one of the main parameters controlling human settlement and population migrations at the century to millennial timescales in the arid to semiarid areas of the Middle East. An abrupt shift to drier conditions at ca. AD 1400 is contemporaneous with a change from sedentary village life to regional desertion and nomadization (sheep/camel pastoralists) during the preindustrial era in formerly Ottoman realms, and thereby adds climate change to the multiple causes for Ottoman Empire “decline.”

Late Third Millennium Abrupt Climate Change and Social Collapse in West Asia and Egypt

The palaeoenvironmental record for the 2200 BC abrupt climate change is synthesized. Alternative explanations for synchronous and extended Old World social collapse are examined and rejected. Quantification of the abrupt climate change is necessary if we are to understand its social consequences.

The Sea Peoples, from Cuneiform Tablets to Carbon Dating

The 13th century BC witnessed the zenith of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean civilizations which declined at the end of the Bronze Age, ∼3200 years ago. Weakening of this ancient flourishing Mediterranean world shifted the political and economic centres of gravity away from the Levant towards Classical Greece and Rome, and led, in the long term, to the emergence of the modern western civilizations. Textual evidence from cuneiform tablets and Egyptian reliefs from the New Kingdom relate that seafaring tribes, the Sea Peoples, were the final catalyst that put the fall of cities and states in motion. However, the lack of a stratified radiocarbon-based archaeology for the Sea People event has led to a floating historical chronology derived from a variety of sources spanning dispersed areas. Here, we report a stratified radiocarbon-based archaeology with anchor points in ancient epigraphic-literary sources, Hittite-Levantine-Egyptian kings and astronomical observations to precisely date the Sea People event. By confronting historical and science-based archaeology, we establish an absolute age range of 1192–1190 BC for terminal destructions and cultural collapse in the northern Levant. This radiocarbon-based archaeology has far-reaching implications for the wider Mediterranean, where an elaborate network of international relations and commercial activities are intertwined with the history of civilizations.

The Scenario of Environmental Degradation in the Tell Leilan Region, Ne Syria, During the Late Third Millennium Abrupt Climate Change

This paper refines the characterization of the 2200–1900 BC abrupt climate change identified within soil proxy data retrieved on the Habur Plains (N.E. Syria). We compare a selection of soil stratigraphic data from: (1) archaeological contexts in which abandonment sequences above the last Tell Leilan period lib (2300–2200 B.C.) occupation floors provide a continuous record of the depositional dynamics 2200–1900 BC; (2) natural soil contexts in the environs of Tell Leilan that parallel the local site record with changes of soil-forming conditions and landform dynamics at a micro-regional level.

Isotope evidence for agricultural extensification reveals how the world's first cities were fed

This study sheds light on the agricultural economy that underpinned the emergence of the first urban centres in northern Mesopotamia. Using δ13C and δ15N values of crop remains from the sites of Tell Sabi Abyad, Tell Zeidan, Hamoukar, Tell Brak and Tell Leilan (6500–2000 cal bc), we reveal that labour-intensive practices such as manuring/middening and water management formed an integral part of the agricultural strategy from the seventh millennium bc. Increased agricultural production to support growing urban populations was achieved by cultivation of larger areas of land, entailing lower manure/midden inputs per unit area—extensification. Our findings paint a nuanced picture of the role of agricultural production in new forms of political centralization. The shift towards lower-input farming most plausibly developed gradually at a household level, but the increased importance of land-based wealth constituted a key potential source of political power, providing the possibility for greater bureaucratic control and contributing to the wider societal changes that accompanied urbanization.

Medieval coastal Syrian vegetation patterns in the principality of Antioch

The coastal area of Jableh, in the vicinity of the Saladin and Al-Marquab castles, is a fertile alluvial plain located on the northwestern part of Syria, in what was once the crusader Principality of Antioch. In order to detail the coastal environment during the crusader period in the Middle East, palynological analyses have been conducted on the underlying coastal-alluvial deposits. The recovered sediments represent a continuous record of the environmental history of the area spanning a c. AD 850—1850 cal. yr period, from the Muslim Era up to and including the late Ottoman times. During the local crusader period (AD 1100—1270), the area was dominated by an arborescent mattoral mixed with a xerophytic shrub-steppe. The alluvial plain was slightly waterlogged and colonized by a wetland meadow with an open vegetation of steppe-like character on bare surfaces and fresh arable soils. The riparian and open deciduous riverine forests were weakly developed. Signs of agricultural activities are mainly recorded for the High Medieval period (AD 1000—1300), with an increase of vineyards in the coastal area. Since c. AD 1250 cal. yr until the end of the crusader period, agricultural activities never reached the same intensity as during the Mameluke Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire.