Abstract
The construction of terrace walls for dry farming in the highlands of the Levant was traditionally associated with demographic growth that caused pressure on available land for cultivation. In this paper we suggest an alternative model and claim that terraces were adopted as a subsistence strategy at periods when land ownership was centralized in the hands of either powerful landowners or managed through complex family-based cooperation like the Musha system of the Late Antiquity period. This claim is based both on the study of land use and settlement patterns within the Upper Nahal Soreq, north-west of Jerusalem, where close to 350 excavated or surveyed sites of all kinds were catalogued and mapped, and on the results of an OSL dating project that directly dated the construction of terrace walls for dry farming in the highlands of Jerusalem in general and at the Upper Nahal Soreq catchment in particular.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 274-289 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Oxford Journal of Archaeology |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Aug 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Funding
This research was supported by an Israel Science Foundation grant (Grant No. 1691/13) awarded to Y.G. and N.P. We wish to thank Uri Davidovich, Gideon Avni, Yoav Avni, Nitsan Ben‐Melech, Rotem Elinson, Amos Nadan and Ido Wechtal for their partnership in the research, as well as for invaluable comments.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Israel Science Foundation | 1691/13 |
