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Occupation of Mitzpe Shivta in the Negev Desert coincided with times of economic and social upheaval and counterculture movements during the sixth and seventh centuries AD. Inscriptions and symbols found in rock-hewn rooms in the region indicate that while the agricultural economy declined during the late Byzantine period, pilgrimage and monasticism prospered. Keywords: radiocarbon dating, rock-cut rooms, epigraphic survey, agriculture, pilgrimage, Introduction Textual sources suggest that monasteries and the clergy were influential in the agricultural flourishing in the Negev Desert between the fifth and sixth centuries AD (e.g. Kraemer 1958). Communal [...]

Long-distance trade routes criss-crossed ancient Africa and Eurasia. Archaeological research has focused on the commodities in transit and the excavation of major centres located along these routes, with less attention paid to smaller caravanserai and evidence such as rubbish middens. The 'Incense Route' linked the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, with activity peaking during the Nabataean and Roman periods. The authors present the results of test-pit excavations of middens at three small Nabataean-Roman desert caravanserai along the 'Incense Route'. The assemblages recovered include material culture attesting to wide, interregional connections, combined with archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data illuminating the subsistence basis of the caravan trade. Keywords: Israel, Negev, Nabataean, Roman, midden, trade route, caravan trade, Introduction Ancient long-distance trade foreshadowed the development of international commerce and attests to a process of pre-modern globalisation. The connection between economic developments and the road networks in Eurasia and [...]

Based on an examination of the outlooks and practices held by past and present Negev desert viticulturists vis-à-vis their environs, the article offers insights into how the wine sector can bolster its response to current climate adversity. The discussion fuses bio-archaeological research on the evolution of ancient grape cultivars (Vitis vinifera) in the Negev with an extensive ethnographic inquiry into the ongoing wine revival in arid southern Israel. Ancient DNA analysis of relic grape material led to the identification of an historical Negev viticulture lineage. The findings provide a temporal framework for contextualizing tphe interrelated anthropological data obtained on contemporary dryland viticulturalists and wine makers in Israel. Since the climate in the Negev has remained relatively stable over the last several millennia, it makes for an apt point of comparison via which to gauge the outlooks held by both historical and modern viticulturalists towards the local landscape. We suggest enacting two evidence-based adjustments to counter ecological instabilities: the holistic revival and applied renewal of historical cultivars, and the attendant agronomic routines that sustained their growth in the past. A more nuanced understanding of the unique terroir arid viticulturalists are operating in, together with the learned incorporation of the hardy genetic traits of age-old cultivars, will benefit wine growers to attune their responses to the array of challenges wrought by climate change on the wine industry. It is therefore our hope that the research methodologies and heritage-oriented horticultural perspectives we present in this paper will prove beneficial to broader wine growing regions (pax-Mediterranean and beyond) who are fortunate to likewise possess their own rich viticultural histories and lineages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many large mammal species went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their DNA may persist due to past episodes of interspecies admixture. However, direct empirical evidence of the persistence of ancient alleles remains scarce. Here, we present multifold coverage genomic data from four Late Pleistocene cave bears (Ursus spelaeus complex) and show that cave bears hybridized with brown bears (Ursus arctos) during the Pleistocene. We develop an approach to assess both the directionality and relative timing of gene flow. We find that segments of cave bear DNA still persist in the genomes of living brown bears, with cave bears contributing 0.9 to 2.4% of the genomes of all brown bears investigated. Our results show that even though extinction is typically considered as absolute, following admixture, fragments of the gene pool of extinct species can survive for tens of thousands of years in the genomes of extant recipient species.

Past and present cultures perceive their natural landscape as an integral and vital component of their complex worlds, while particular landscape features and associated monuments built in selected locales become sacred and revered through stories, legends and rituals embedded in mundane and ceremonial events. The hyper-arid Har Tzuriaz area in the southern Negev, Israel, offers a case study of culture-geographic continuities over a chronologically cumulative archaeological sequence. The large set of well-preserved structures located adjacent to water sources, a massive escarpment and a major desert crossroads includes campsites, cult sites, rock-art sites, cairn fields and one desert kite (a large game trap). Cultural continuities and change can be traced from the sixth millennium bce through recent times, reflecting a dynamic system of meanings and interpretations of both the natural and the built landscape within one particular sacred area in the desert. These phenomena are exemplified in archaeological analyses of an open-air shrine, burial cairns, an isolated desert kite and a precise engraving of that kite dated 5000 years later, all in the general context of a dense concentration of surveyed sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Past fish provenance, exploitation and trade patterns were studied by analyzing phosphate oxygen isotope compositions (δ18OPO4) of gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) tooth enameloid from archaeological sites across the southern Levant, spanning the entire Holocene. We report the earliest evidence for extensive fish exploitation from the hypersaline Bardawil lagoon on Egypt’s northern Sinai coast, as indicated by distinctively high δ18OPO4 values, which became abundant in the southern Levant, both along the coast and further inland, at least from the Late Bronze Age (3,550–3,200 BP). A period of global, postglacial sea-level stabilization triggered the formation of the Bardawil lagoon, which was intensively exploited and supported a widespread fish trade. This represents the earliest roots of marine proto-aquaculture in Late Holocene coastal domains of the Mediterranean. We demonstrate the potential of large-scale δ18OPO4 analysis of fish teeth to reveal cultural phenomena in antiquity, providing unprecedented insights into past trade patterns.