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ABSTRACTAnalysis of 20 calibrated accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) ages reveals a chronology for the habitation of a unique peripheral settlement at Zahrat adh-Dhra‘ 1 (ZAD 1), Jordan during the Middle Bronze Age of the Southern Levant. Bayesian modeling distinguishes three phases of occupation between the first settlement at ZAD 1, perhaps as early as about 2050 cal BCE, and its abandonment by 1700 cal BCE. ZAD 1 represents a marginal community, both environmentally and culturally, on the hyperarid Dead Sea Plain, and exemplifies the peripheral settlements that are envisioned as important elements of Bronze Age Levantine society. Most importantly for this study, it is the only peripheral site in the Southern Levant that provides a Bayesian model for its habitation during the growth of Middle Bronze Age urbanized society. The timing of ZAD 1’s constituent phases, early in Middle Bronze I, across the Middle Bronze I/II transition and in Middle Bronze II, correspond well with emerging chronologies for the Middle Bronze Age, thereby contributing to an ongoing reassessment of regional social and settlement dynamics.

ABSTRACTPolitiko-Troulliahas generated the largest radiocarbon (14C) dataset from a Prehistoric Bronze Age settlement on Cyprus. We present Bayesian modeling of 25 calibrated AMS ages, which contributes to an emerging multi-site 14C chronology for Cyprus covering most of the Prehistoric Bronze Age. Our analysis places the six stratified phases of occupation at Troulliabetween about 2050 and 1850 cal BCE, in contrast to a longer estimated occupation inferred from pottery analysis. We provide a rare 14C determination for the transition from Prehistoric Bronze Age 1 to 2 just after 2000 cal BCE, associated with a major architectural dislocation at Politiko-Troulliain response to local landscape erosion, possibly due to increased regional precipitation. We present a regional 14C model for Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus combining the chronology for Politiko-Troulliawith modeled 14C ages from Sotira Kaminoudhiaand Marki Alonia, which is bolstered by individual ages from five other settlements on Cyprus. Through the Prehistoric Bronze Age, agrarian villages on Cyprus developed the foundations for the emergence of urbanized settlement and society during the ensuing Protohistoric Bronze Age. Politiko-Troullia, in conjunction with other key settlements on Cyprus, provides a significant independent contribution to increasingly robust Bronze Age 14C chronologies in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Temples in antisprovide clearly defined liminal spaces for ritual behaviors that are readily recognizable both textually and archaeologically. This architectural form and the religious tradition it embodied were remarkably widespread geographically and temporally, spanning the Levant and Greater Syria from the end of the Early Bronze Age until the early Iron Age. Although the Southern Levant has been characterized as highly urbanized during the Middle Bronze Age, settlement pattern analysis suggests that it was fragmented into numerous polities, as documented subsequently in the Late Bronze Age Amarna Letters. In contrast, Levantine towns and villages shared a common religious tradition marked by ritual behaviors within clearly marked liminal spaces. These behaviors are readily recognizable archaeologically at Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan, where they are framed in temple enclosures by distinct architecturally-defined boundaries, and signaled by feasting on sheep and goat, and deposition of copper-alloy figurines, tools and metallurgical remains. These lines of material and architectural evidence, and the liminal behaviors they reflect, linked villages and towns in localized Levantine polities, as exemplified among a cluster of settlements in the northern Jordan Valley. Parallel sequences of four temples in antisat Tell el-Hayyat and nearby Pella (ancient Piḫiluin the Amarna Letters) developed in tandem through the Middle Bronze Age, suggesting that temple construction and rebuilding was coordinated between town and village communities. Further examples of temples in antisand patterns of material deposition and liminal behavior suggest that this temple form and its associated ritual tradition were spread throughout the Southern Levant as part of a much larger and longer-lived cultural tradition extending across Greater Syria, which has been characterized as a Middle Bronze Age cultural koinè. Thus, despite its fractious local political environment, Middle Bronze Age Levantine society was grounded in a remarkably broad cultural tradition marked by the sacred spaces and liminal behaviors associated with temples in antis.

ABSTRACTWe present the first Bayesian 14C modeling based on AMS ages from stratified sediments representing continuous occupation across the Early Bronze III/IV interface in the Southern Levant. This new high-precision modeling incorporates 12 calibrated AMS ages from Khirbat Iskandar Area C using OxCal 4.4.4 and the IntCal 20 calibration curve to specify the EB III/IV transition at or slightly before 2500 cal BCE. Our results contribute to the continuing emergence of a high chronology for the Levantine Early Bronze Age, which shifts the end of EB III 200–300 years earlier than the traditional time frame and increases the length of EB IV to about 500 years. Data from Khirbat Iskandar also help direct greater attention to the importance of sedentary communities through EB IV, in contrast to the traditional emphasis on non-sedentary pastoral encampments and cemeteries. Modeling of AMS data from Khirbat Iskandar bolsters the ongoing revision of Early Bronze Age Levantine chronology and its growing interpretive independence from Egyptian history and contributes particularly to re-examination of the EB III/IV nexus in the Southern Levant.

ABSTRACTWe present two new Bayesian 14C models using IntCal20 that incorporate 17 new calibrated AMS ages for Early Bronze IV Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Middle Bronze Age Tell el-Hayyat, located in the northern Jordan Valley, Jordan. These freshly augmented suites of carbonized seed dates now include 25 AMS dates from Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and 31 AMS dates from Tell el-Hayyat. The modeled founding date for Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj strengthens an emerging high chronology for Early Bronze IV starting by 2500 cal BC, while the end of its habitation by 2200 cal BC may exemplify a regional pattern of increasingly pervasive abandonment among late Early Bronze IV settlements in the Southern Levant. In turn, our modeled date for the Early Bronze IV/Middle Bronze Age transition at Tell el-Hayyat around 1900 cal BC pushes this interface about a century later than surmised traditionally, and its abandonment in Middle Bronze III marks an unexpectedly early end date before 1600 cal BC. These inferences, which coordinate Bayesian AMS models and typological ceramic sequences for Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat, contribute to an ongoing revision of Early and Middle Bronze Age Levantine chronologies and uncoupling of their attendant interpretive links between the Southern Levant and Egypt.

We compare carbonized seeds and charcoal excavated from four Bronze Age settlements in the eastern Mediterranean to infer distinctions in fuel use and the exploitation of woody vegetation amid developing anthropogenic landscapes. Charcoal evidence generally implicates combustion of fuel wood, while burned seeds commonly result from dung fuel use. Varying fuel consumption profiles reflect the availability of woody vegetation and cultivation practices that reveal temporal and geographical dynamics on Bronze Age agrarian landscapes. In the farmlands of the northern Jordan Valley, villagers at Early Bronze Tell Abu en-Nia‘j and subsequently at Middle Bronze Tell el-Hayyat relied heavily on dung for their fuel needs, supplemented by burning of orchard prunings and to a lesser extent wood from nearby riparian vegetation. In this agrarian setting, limited availability of forest resources engendered exploitation of the highest diversities of cultivated crops, weedy species and woody plants. The village of Zahrat adh-Dhra‘1 (contemporaneous with Tell el-Hayyat) on the arid, sparsely populated Dead Sea Plain relied less on dung fuel, and similarly harvested wood from orchards, while also utilizing the desert trees Acaciaand Tamarix. Fuel use at Politiko-Troullia, Cyprus suggests ready access to Pinusand Quercusforests, and burning of Oleawood from nearby orchards, associated with little dung fuel use and the lowest taxonomic diversity of fuel sources among these four Bronze Age communities. The range of evidence for fuel use at these settlements reflects varying exploitation strategies based on plant resources and animal management in agrarian countrysides, as well as the larger influences of urbanized or non-urbanized society during the development of Bronze Age anthropogenic landscapes.

Plank figures are hallmark anthropomorphic depictions that illuminate Bronze Age society on Cyprus. The excavation of a rare limestone plank figure from a public space at Politiko-Troulliais interpreted in conjunction with spatial patterning of ceramic plank figures, plant macrofossils, animal bones, ground stone, spindle whorls, and metallurgical evidence to infer communal behavior at this Early/Middle Cypriot—period settlement. The Politiko-Troulliastone plank figure is significant as the sole example from a fully documented excavated context and as part of a growing body of evidence for the creation of social identities in emerging complex society on Cyprus.

Seven races of Fusarium oxysporumf. sp. phaseoliKendrick and Snyder (Fop) cause Fusarium wilt (FW) disease of common bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.). FW occurs worldwide and has recently become a serious disease in the central and western USA. The objectives of this research were to identify new sources of resistance to Fop, characterize the Central/South American (CA/SA) PhaseolusCore Collection for reaction to races 1, 4, and 5 Fop and determine if a previously reported sequence characterized amplified region (SCAR) molecular marker would be useful to identify resistance among accessions that make up the CA/SA Core Collection. Seedlings from the CA/SA Core Collection were screened for reaction by a root dip inoculation procedure. Among accessions evaluated for reaction to race 1 Fop, 21 were resistant, 47 intermediate, and 126 susceptible. Fifteen accessions were resistant to race 4, 61 intermediate, and 114 were susceptible. Nine accessions were resistant to both races 1 and 4, and five of the nine (PI 207373, PI 307802, PI 308908, PI 309877, PI 310842) were also resistant to race 5 Fop. All accessions resistant to races 1, 4, and 5 of Fop were characterized as Middle American, which suggests that resistance to multiple races of Fop should be more prevalent in germplasm from Middle America. The SCAR marker previously developed to identify a quantitative trait locus (QTL) associated with resistance to Fop was not associated with resistance in the Core Collection.

Fusarium oxysporumSchlectend. Fr. f. sp. phaseoliJ.B. Kendrick and W.C. Snyder (FOP) is a vascular pathogen that causes Fusarium wilt in common bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.). This disease is an increasing problem in the western U.S., and exploitation of genetic resistance is considered the most feasible control method. The objective of this study was to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) for Fusarium wilt resistance in a population derived from an interracial cross between FOP‐susceptible Belneb RR‐1 (race Durango) × FOP‐resistant A55 (race Mesoamerica). Seventy‐six F6‐derived recombinant inbred lines (RILs) were screened for disease severity in greenhouse inoculations and rated on a scale of 1 (resistant) to 9 (susceptible). The phenotypic data were compared to existing random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker data using single‐factor analysis of variance. Marker U20.750 on linkage group (LG) 10 accounted for 63.5% of the phenotypic variance for this trait. Lines exhibiting the A55 banding pattern at this locus had disease severity scores that averaged 3.6 points lower than lines with the Belneb RR‐1 pattern. Two additional markers, AD4.450 on LG 3 and K10.700 on LG 11, were significant (P< 0.01) in single‐factor analysis of variance, but only marker U20.750 on LG 10 remained significant when composite interval mapping (CIM) was conducted. The tight linkage between the putative QTL and U20.750, as indicated by CIM, makes this marker a promising candidate for conversion to a sequence‐characterized amplified region (SCAR) for use in marker‐assisted selection in Fusarium wilt resistant common bean cultivar development.

Sediments from Rapid Lake document glacial and vegetation history in the Temple Lake valley of the Wind River Range, Wyoming over the past 11,000 to 12,000 yr. Radiocarbon age determinations on basal detrital organic matter from Rapid Lake (11,770 ± 710 yr B.P.) and Temple Lake (11,400 ± 630 yr B.P.) bracket the age of the Temple Lake moraine, suggesting that the moraine formed in the late Pleistocene. This terminal Pleistocene readvance may be represented at lower elevations by the expansion of forest into intermontane basins 12,000 to 10,000 yr B.P. Vegetation in the Wind River Range responded to changing environmental conditions at the end of the Pleistocene. Following deglaciation, alpine tundra in the Temple Lake valley was replaced by a Pinus albicaulisparkland by about 11,300 14C yr B.P. Piceaand Abies, established by 10,600 14C yr B.P., grew with Pinus albicaulisin a mixed conifer forest at and up to 100 m above Rapid Lake for most of the Holocene. Middle Holocene summer temperatures were about 1.5°C warmer than today. By about 5400 14C yr B.P. Pinus albicaulisand Abiesbecame less prominent at upper treeline because of decreased winter snowpack and higher maximum summer temperatures. The position of the modern treeline was established by 3000 14C yr B.P. when Picearetreated downslope in response to Neoglacial cooling.

Surface soil samples from the forested Chuska Mountains to the arid steppe of the Chinle Valley, Northeastern Arizona, show close correlation between modern pollen rain and vegetation. In contrast, modern alluvium is dominated by Pinuspollen throughout the canyon; it reflects neither the surrounding floodplain nor plateau vegetation. Pollen in surface soils is deposited by wind; pollen grains in alluvium are deposited by a stream as sedimentary particles. Clay-size particles correlate significantly with Pinus, Quercus, and Populuspollen. These pollen types settle, as clay does, in slack water. Chenopodiaceae- Amaranthus, Artemisia, other Tubuliflorae, and indeterminate pollen types correlate with sand-size particles, and are deposited by more turbulent water. Fluctuating pollen frequencies in alluvial deposits are related to sedimentology and do not reflect the local or regional vegetation where the sediments were deposited. Alluvial pollen is unreliable for reconstruction of paleoenvironments.

Sediments of Balsam Meadow have produced a 11,000-yr pollen record from the southern Sierra Nevada of California. The Balsam Meadow diagram is divided into three zones. (1) The Artemisiazone (11,000–7000 yr B.P.) is characterized by percentages of sagebrush ( Artemisia) and other nonarboreal pollen higher than can be found in the modern local vegetation. Vegetation during this interval was probably similar to the modern vegetation on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada and the climate was drier than that of today. (2) Pinuspollen exceeded 80% from 7000 to 3000 yr B.P. in the Pinuszone. The climate was moister than during the Artemisiazone. (3) Fir ( Abies, Cupressaceae, and oak ( Quercus) percentages increased after 3000 yr B.P. in the Abieszone as the modern vegetation at the site developed and the present cool-moist climatic regime was established. Decreased fire frequency after 1200 yr B.P. is reflected in decreased abundance of macroscopic charcoal and increased concentration of Abies magnificaand Pinus murrayananeedles.

Analysis of botanical evidence excavated from Zahrat adh-Dhra'1, Jordan elucidates intermittent settlement and agriculture on the geographical and social margins of Middle Bronze Age society in the Southern Levant. Zahrat adh-Dhra'1, lying just east of the Dead Sea, provides data from multiple discontinuous phases of occupation, particularly in comparison to evidence from the continuously occupied Middle Bronze Age village of Tell el-Hayyat in the agricultural heartland of the Jordan Valley. We focus our analysis on taxonomic frequencies and ubiquities for carbonized seeds recovered from 88 flotation samples from Zahrat adh-Dhra'1 and 152 samples from Tell el-Hayyat. Both settlements emphasized cereal cultivation, with a greater accompanying proliferation of wild and weedy taxa on the anthropogenic landscape around Tell el-Hayyat. In contrast, lower taxonomic ubiquities, many of which decline through time, reflect less consistent seed deposition and agricultural practices in accordance with episodic habitation at Zahrat adh-Dhra'1 on the more sparsely settled and impacted hinterland of the Dead Sea Plain. In concert, a suite of evidence, including dispersed architecture, Bayesian modeling of calibrated Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) ages and comparative analysis of archaeobotanical evidence, illuminates Zahrat adh-Dhra'1 as an unprecedented example of discontinuous agrarian settlement on the fringes of Levantine Middle Bronze Age urbanized society.