Ecology of the Past – Late Bronze and Iron Age Landscapes, People and Climate Change in Philistia (the Southern Coastal Plain and Shephelah), Israel

Here we present a case study using modern ecological data (collected over the period 1948-2014) to assess changes that took place in plant and animal occurrences in the 12th century BCE in Philistia – the southern coastal plain of Israel and the Judean foothills in its immediate hinterland, as a result of either shifts in anthropogenic behavior or climate. Using published archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data from several archaeological sites in this region (e.g. Tel Aphek, Tell es-Safi/Gath, Tel Miqne/Ekron, Ashkelon), we compared habitat associations of these palaeo-assemblages to observations on modern plants and animals from the same geographic region. Multivariate analytical methods, DCA and CCA ordination, showed mesic to xeric gradients in both the modern and the archaeological data. The clearest pattern in the archaeological data was a separation of Late Bronze Age (mesic) from Iron Age I and Iron Age II sites (xeric). We interpret this shift as reflecting the decrease in rainfall between the Late Bronze Age (ca.1550-1180 BCE) and Iron Age (ca. 1180-586 BCE) periods, a phenomenon that has been documented in the Eastern Mediterranean in general by other palaeoclimatic proxies (e.g. pollen, cave speleothems and the Dead Sea level)