Human landscapes: agricultural intensification and peasant resilience in medieval southern greater syria.
Medieval Islamic Archaeology in Southern Greater Syria is relevant to the sustainable agricultural intensification discourse due the implementation of state intensive land use for profit that affected the lives of peasants and the ecology of semi-arid regions. Medieval Islamic agricultural intensification practices included irrigation, fertilizers, overgrazing, deforestation and cash cropping, which increase agricultural yields. The project “Human Landscapes: agricultural intensification and peasant resilience in medieval Southern Greater Syria” (HumanLand), offers a deep-time perspective on these issues. According to surveys and historic resources, the later medieval Islamic eras were marked by the collapse of the Mamluk state, the decline of major agricultural centers, and a shift to a seasonal basis occupation partly due to climatic stressors of the end of the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as the lack of state resources and support. HumanLand will use new environmental and textual data for medieval land-use to investigate these three objectives: 1) To identify changes in agricultural intensification in relation to climatic, political and economic shifts that took place in the late 14th and much of the 15th centuries, 2) To investigate the use of sustainable strategies and impact of imperial regimes on medieval communities, and 3) To investigate the impact of political structures on the ecology in semi-arid regions. The project will use botanical micro remains (phytolith, starches and spherulites) and stable isotope data from crop remains to understand agricultural practices of six medieval communities of Jordan and Israel. This evidence will be evaluated with information on land-use in medieval texts. These methods combined, provide evidence for intensified agriculture making this research one of the few studies done, which combine the different approaches proposed to approach the big picture of medieval Islamic agricultural history.