Hellenistic agricultural economies at Ashkelon, Southern Levant
2022
Marston, John M. | Birney, Kathleen J.
Agricultural economies of the Hellenistic era (323–30 BCE) are poorly understood from primary plant and animal remains despite the extent of sites and rich historical records dating to this period. Here we present archaeobotanical remains from Hellenistic Ashkelon, an urban centre on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant, in comparison with a survey of the extant literature on Hellenistic archaeobotany across the eastern Mediterranean. Agricultural systems at Ashkelon focused on the cultivation of cereals, pulses, grapes, and figs, as did those of many other Hellenistic sites. We identify Triticum dicoccum (emmer) as a core component of agriculture at Ashkelon, a new finding for the period. Re-examination of other published Hellenistic assemblages from the southern Levant additionally suggests that T. dicoccum cultivation has been underappreciated to date and may have been regionally widespread, a legacy of Ptolemaic Egyptian control of the region in the early Hellenistic. A spatial and diachronic analysis of archaeobotanical remains in conjunction with the archaeological evidence at Ashkelon indicates a shift in practices of domestic food preparation towards increasing commercialization of food preparation. Further detailed archaeobotanical study of other Hellenistic cities is needed to establish whether this trend extends beyond Ashkelon during the period.
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