Imperial Context and Agricultural Content: Dimensions of Space and Practice in Agricultural Lifeways in Dhiban, Jordan, 500 CE – 1400 CE

Summary

In this paper the results of an archaeological case-study are presented to argue that considerations of space, taken here to be a physical location in Cartesian terms, are essential to identifying changes in agricultural practice in premodern imperial contexts. The recording of the location of samples intended for paleoethnobotanical analysis, whether through digital or other means, allows for more nuanced reconstructions of the depositional routes of archaeological plant remains. In turn, these depositional routes can highlight the ways in which imperial interventions may un/intentionally restructure daily (agricultural) practice. Such techniques were utilized at the archaeological site of Dhiban, Jordan during excavations from 2009 to 2013. The tall of Dhiban was inhabited from at least 1000 BCE to 1500 CE, but it was transformed during two moments of imperial intervention, the Byzantine (300 – 640 CE) and Mamluk (1250 – 1450 CE) periods. The spatial visualization of over 200 analyzed and point-provenienced flotation samples reveals that communities at Dhiban responded to each of these moments of imperial intervention through changes in on-site depositional practices of daily waste as well as plant processing detritus.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeologies of Empire and Environment   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13199