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April 7, 2005
Shepherds and Sheep Dung
Steven A. Rosen and six co-authors have published Dung in the Desert: Preliminary Results of the Negev Holocene Ecology Project in the most recent issue of the journal Current Anthropology. Catchy title, but the subtitle needs a little work. The results, as reported in EurekAlert, are interesting.
Although layers of dung accumulated by herds of sheep and goat sheltering in the caves of the Near East have long been an annoyance for archaeologists working on the prehistoric remains that lie beneath them, these layers in fact provide a rich source of new data on ancient shepherds and their environment. . . . new research in the Negev Desert, Israel, reveals the archaeological potential of ancient desert dung that documents, among other things, the earliest direct evidence for the infiltration of domestic herd animals into the desert at around 5000 BC, and the presence of shepherds at different times in history.
How did they know it is sheep and goat dung?
The dung was easily identifiable as that of sheep or goat by comparison to the dung of modern Bedouin flocks still present in the region, and differs from that of other animals like gazelle, hyrax, onager, and even ibex.
Great work if you can get it.
Kidding aside, the history of the agricultural use of the Negev is important not only to the history of the area but also to the understanding of how populations can support themselves in equilibrium within a largely hostile environment. This is as much an ecology problem as an archaeological problem.
Many years ago Nelson Glueck wrote in his popular classic, Rivers in the Desert; A History of the Negev,
It is indeed difficult for the newcomer facing the blazing desolateness of most of the Negev, especially during the summer and autumn months, to believe that is ever was or ever could be anything but a completely barren desert. Some of it is just that and always has been. To conjure up in it, however, verdant crops, fat flock of sheep and goats and herds of cattle, hundreds of camping sites, strongholds and thriving villages would seems to require a wildly uninhibited imagination. (p. 16f)
But as Glueck first demonstrated, the Negev contained everything that the "uninhibited imagination" could conjure. Negev studies have moved well beyond Glueck's pioneering work. The flocks of (at least) sheep and goats that Glueck imagined are now known to have left their mark as early as the late Neolithic period.
References:
Glueck, Nelson, Rivers in the Desert; A History of the Negev, Norton, New York, 1968
Rosen, Steven A., Arkady B. Savinetsky, Yosef Plakht, Nina K. Kisseleva, Bulat F. Khassanov, Andrey M. Pereladov, and Mordecai Haiman, Dung in the Desert: Preliminary Results of the Negev Holocene Ecology Project, Current Anthropology, Volume 46, Number 2, April, 2005
Posted by Duane Smith at April 7, 2005 10:38 AM | Read more on Archaeology |
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