Panel 7.8 – Consumption of Local and Imported Goods in Palaestina in Roman and Byzantine Times


Organisation:

  • Jon Seligman (Israel Antiquities Authority)
  • Itamar Taxel (Israel Antiquities Authority)

Panel abstract

The proposed panel, designated for the session on Consumption, focuses on the province of Palaestina in Roman and Byzantine times (first to seventh centuries CE). It presents several case studies, which reflect the consumption of locally-produced and/or imported goods by a variety of populations living in rural, urban or other settings. Three of the panel's papers will demonstrate the consumption and production of foodstuffs and agricultural goods by local and foreign communities in a specific region or site during times of relative peace (Seligman; Ashkenazi and Aviam) or political turbulence (Stiebel). The three other papers will discuss the consumption and use – including reuse and recycling – of various architectural media, be they building materials or stone objects, decorative elements or liturgical furnishing. The latter cases will be examined within the context of a specific period or consecutive periods in a given site (Gendelman and Gersht) or region (Habas),or from a cross-regional perspective (Taxel). Altogether, the suggested panel provides an opportunity to publicly discuss various aspects of consumption, some are unique to Roman-Byzantine Palaestina while others are familiar from other regions but have not yet been systematically studied locally.

 

Paper abstracts

1. Jon Seligman (Israel Antiquities Authority)

Production and Consumption in the Hinterland of Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period
Like any city, in any period, a symbiotic relationship existed between Jerusalem and its hinterland. Byzantine Jerusalem was a prosperous city, public investment leading to population growth, stimulating demand for agricultural goods and in turn to more pilgrims, who would spend their money in the city. Jerusalem was characterised by a huge religious sector servicing the many cultic institutions of the city and this required an efficient surplus agricultural sector to feed so many non-productive people.
The lecture will concentrate on strategies of agricultural production as they are expressed archaeologically, with specific attention paid to olive oil production, capacity and consumption. Given this data, an attempt will be made to judge the nutritional and subsistence capabilities of the hinterland of Jerusalem in order to assess if autarkic sustenance for the population of the region was feasible.
Furthermore, given the lack of an integrated settlement infrastructure in the environs of Jerusalem in the Roman period, attention will be given to the development of the agricultural coenobium as a system that could guarantee a food supply for the large urban population that evolved in Jerusalem during the Byzantine period.

 

2. Jacob Ashkenazi and Mordechai Aviam (Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee)

The Contribution of Monks and monasteries to Rural Economy in Late antiquity: The Galilean Test Case
Monasticism is known to have introduced a significant role in late antique Christianity. Studying monasticism through the lens of hagiography alone can distort the understanding of the overall picture of monastic life in the Christian orient. Archaeological surveys and excavations in the Levant in recent years, and in Galilee in particular suggest that monasticism played a prime key role in the economic prosperity of the 5th-6th centuries of the Levant. Rural monasteries were located inside the village or within a short walking distance from it and most of them contained industrial facilities whose production exceeded the needs of the local monastic community. The rural economy of late antique Galilee was mainly based on olive oil and viticulture. It would seem that the monasteries, in addition to their given and obvious spiritual and surely religious functions, also served as part of the region’s economic and industrial infrastructure, thus creating and substantiating complex and lasting connections between them and the villages that surround them. By emphasizing on the monastic production of olive oil and viticulture we will suggest a new outlook on rural economy in the Galilee in Late antiquity.

 

3. Moshe Fischer and Yannis Maniatis (Tel Aviv University) / Dimitris Tambakopoulos (Laboratory of Archaeometry, Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology)

Marble imports from Roman and Byzantine Apollonia-Arsuf (Israel): Aspects of commerce and recycling
The focus of this paper is the presentation of several marble items uncovered at Apollonia/Sozousa/Arsuf (Israel) dated to the Roman and Byzantine period yet retrieved in Crusader period context as reused/recycled items. In spite of the intensive excavations carried out in the last decades at the site and the richness of information regarding the Roman and Byzantine periods only a few marble items originating in these periods have been found in situ. Most of them were found in or close to the massive remains of the Crusader period, and in this case, mainly as spolia, partly in their original shape but mostly refurbished for use other than their firstly minded one. However, their typological analysis corroborated with the source of their marble as based on laboratory examination offer some aspects of the use of imported architectural and sculptural marble objects at Apollonia and their economic background.

 

4. Lihi Habas (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Imported Marble and Local Production of Liturgical Furniture in the Negev: A Case Study
Hundreds of liturgical furniture and vessels made of marble or local limestone or Bituminous Schist, complete and broken, have been found in the churches of the Holy Land (Provincia Palaestina Prima, Secunda, Tertia and Provincia Arabia). The liturgical furniture included chancel screen, an ambo, altar table (sacra mensa), ciborium and reliquary. The marble elements were standard products created in the imperial workshops in Proconnesus Island in the Sea of Marmara. These were exported by marine transport during the reign of Justinian to the entire Byzantine world
This lecture will focus in the Negev region which belonged to Provincia Palaestina Tertia. In this desert and semi-desert area, villages and towns developed along the trade routes that crossed the desert from the east to the ports of the Mediterranean already under The Nabataean Kingdom and Roman period. But in the Byzantine Period there has been a significant increase in the population, the cities grew, many churches were built, agricultural activity expanded, mainly wine production and the area benefited economically from the movement the journeys of pilgrimage from the Holy Land to Egypt and Sinai. The lecture will focus on the liturgical furniture made of imported marble which found in the Negev, its impact on local production alongside unique local creation.

 

5. Rivka Gersht (Tel Aviv University and Oranim College of Education) / Peter Gendelman (Israel Antiquity Authority)

Architectural Decoration in Roman and Late Antique Caesarea Maritima: Production, Importation and Reuse
The excavations at Caesarea Maritima, the capital of the province Judaea, later Syria Palaestina and Palaestina Prima, provided a huge amount of evidence for local production of architectural decoration out of raw and recycled materials. The two workshops excavated in the 1990s — one for producing floor mosaics, the other for producing wall sectile panels — provide valuable data regarding the working process and methods of production. Tool marks offer evidence for employing of almost all known tools and methods of production including water powered multi-blade sawing machines. The vast majority of the architectural decoration was made of imported stones including marbles, limestones and sandstones in a variety of colors, of granite, of porphyry and of conglomerates. Recycling and reusing of architectural members became common practices in Late Antique Caesarea. Excellent examples for these practices are the Semi-Public Complex located within insula W2S3 at Caesarea and the Bath-house at Khirbet Jābir in the vicinity of Caesarea, wherein all survived architectural decoration was made of Roman columns, bases and cornices, which were likely brought to the site from the city of Caesarea. The paper will present the mentioned evidence and more.

 

6. Itamar Taxel (Israel Antiquities Authority)

Reuse and Recycling of Architectural Elements and Stone Objects in the Countryside of Late Antique Palestine
Much scholarly attention has been given to the subject of reuse and recycling older architectural elements (spolia) in Late Antiquity (fourth to seventh/eighth centuries) across the Mediterranean, especially within the context of urban or otherwise monumental architecture. This includes also a handful of studies on urban and a few rural public structures in late antique Palestine. However, the potential of the rich archaeological data related to the countryside of late antique Palestine to shed much new light on the phenomenon of spolia reuse and recycling remained largely unexploited. A review of the published and some unpublished excavations of rural sites across the country points to two main types of spolia utilization: 1) architectural elements which were reused for a designation similar to their original one; 2) architectural elements and other stone objects (such as sarcophagi and millstones) which were reused for a designation different from their original one. The latter category includes also the practice of recycling, in which a given item has totally lost its original identity while becoming a raw material in the construction of a new element/structure. This lecture will discuss these practices, which contribute not only to the study of building techniques and materials in late antique rural Palestine, but also to the understanding of contemporaneous world-views, mentalities and economic choices.