Paleoenvironment and Fruit Tree Horticulture at Early Bronze Age Tel Bet Yerah: Evidence from Charcoal Remains

This article presents the first detailed examination of a charred wood assemblage from Early Bronze Age I–III Tel Bet Yerah (ca. 3700–2500 b.c.e.). The wood-anatomy identification of the charcoal remains aims to reconstruct the nearby natural and horticultural arboreal environment as well as the long-term human-environment relations at the site and beyond it. The assemblage provides evidence for substantial fruit-tree horticulture, mainly of olive and fig. In addition, there is evidence for exploitation of a well-developed Mediterranean woodland in the site’s vicinity, as well as of a riparian habitat. The assemblage also includes taxa rarely encountered in the regional archaeobotanical record, such as pomegranate. The transition from village to urban settlement in the Early Bronze II (ca. 3100–2850 b.c.e.) shows changes in the charred wood assemblage that parallel economic, cultural, and environmental changes evidenced in the settlement layout and other findings. Evolving cultural-economic interactions between local and “Khirbet Kerak” populations during the first part of the Early Bronze III (ca. 2850–2700 b.c.e.) are also indicated. The study also offers a general land-use scheme for the site, based on the data that emerged from this research combined with the results of other relevant paleoenvironmental and archaeobotanical studies.