Browsing by Subject "Middle Bronze Age"

The Ancient city of Megiddo in Southern Levant has been continuously occupied by various cultures for over three thousand years. With extensive excavating and studying of the site important information on the environmental history of Southern Levant and especially Jezreel Valley region have been acquired. This study aims to answer the questions what kind of cultural landscape surrounded Tel Megiddo during the Middle Bronze Age and what kind of horticultural activities can be studied with dendroarchaeological methods, such as anthracology. For this study, 280 carbonized wood remain samples were taxonomically identified from the Tel Megiddo excavations from seasons 2018 and 2022. They were identified with a microscope in order to reconstruct the arboreal paleo-environment and determine the possible horticultural practices during the Middle Bronze Age. In total 18 different taxa were successfully identified from which seven were considered to be horticulturally important. In addition to the identification of the new carbonized wood remains from the excavation seasons 2018 and 2022, the previous referential database constructed of the excavation seasons since 1991 till 2014 was studied and new dataset tables were made to highlight the taxa encountered during the Middle Bronze Age. Based on the final results, 488 samples of carbonized wood were taken into deeper analysis from which in total 26 different taxa were identified. Twelve of these taxa were considered to have been used in horticultural activities. The samples were dominated by common olive, Olea europaea, which indicated that there were orchards in the vicinity of the Middle Bronze Age city. Other horticultural taxa indicated on possible gardens within the city walls as possible food gardens and prestigious elite gardens. In other matter the wood in the vicinity of the city was used as firewood, and for construction and as carpentry material.