Research Paper: Social Ecology of Tribal Village Agriculture

ThinkRelateAct — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:56:18 CDT

Dryland Ecosystems, Early Israel, and Tribal Village Land Management Techniques ABSTRACT Modern and historical agro-pastoral villages combine small-plot agriculture with animal herding, and utilize the gathering of wild foods and hunting as important sources of nutrients over the annual cycle of seasonally available species. Tribal cultures’ relationship with the land is typified by traditional knowledge systems, which see the natural environment as modeling the self-sustaining interactivity of an entire ecology. The knowledge of the intricate workings of this interactivity sets the precedent for how human beings live in, and are part of, that ecology. The many biblical stories of early tribal Israel’s relationship with the land point to an ecological ethic that is still reflected in modern tribal religious wisdom. These traditional knowledge systems hold vital information for modern humans seeking to live wisely in our particular ecologies. We can understand a number of aspects of early Israel’s tribal village agro-pastoral lifestyle if we utilize models from the fields of ethnobiology, ethnoarchaeology, ecosystem comparison studies and the ecological knowledge systems of agro-pastoral tribal villages regarding their relationship to the land. Ecosystem comparison studies have determined that modern and historical Mediterranean-type scrub grasslands (such as that of the central hill-country of Israel) contain a heretofore unacknowledged biodiversity of plant types, which may have provided early Israel with a much wider variety of foods than what they could grow in the small-plot agriculture in these drylands. There are tubers, berries, nuts, other fruits and vegetables growing in the forest remnants, or scattered in the scrub grassland stands that nourish both human and animal inhabitants. DRYLAND ECOSYSTEMS, TRIBAL VILLAGES AND EARLY ISRAEL OUTLINE: Introduction 1. I. The Tribal Village in its Natural Environment 3. A. Agrosilvipastoralism in Modern and Historical Tribal Village B. Comparative Ecological Biodiversity 5. C. Ethnoarchaeology and Tribal Villages 8. 1. Ethnoarchaeology in Israel 9. II. The Tribal Village’s Social Environment 10. A. Tribal Village Land management and Local Knowledge Systems 1. Ethnobotany and Traditional Knowledge Systems 12. 2. Ethnobotany and Tribal Village Agro-Pastoral Techniques B. Developing Societal Forms Relation to Local Ecology 13. III. The Natural and Social Ecologies of Early Israel 14. A. Implications of This Study for Interpreting the Biblical & Archaeological Records B. Ecological Exigencies, Social Ethics and early Israel 16. Conclusions DRYLAND ECOSYSTEMS, EARLY ISRAEL AND TRIBAL VILLAGE LAND MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE We can understand a number of aspects of early Israel’s tribal village agro-pastoral lifestyle in more enlightened ways if we utilize structural interpretation models from ethnobiology (which takes a similar approach to ethnoarchaeology) and by using comparison studies to learn characteristics of agro-pastoral tribal villages and their relationship to the land. We have studied the factors that promote the relative stability over numerous generations of a human social group living in a fragile dryland eco-system. The methodology utilized in this paper include ethnobiology (specifically, ethnobotany), and the social structure analysis of the ethnoarchaeology approach described by Jak Yakar and others (Yakar J., 2000, #17). Ethnoarchaeology compares patterns discerned in archaeological contexts with those recorded in traditional rural societies, historically and in present-day communities. A 2005 conservation ecology project included a botanical study comparing the flora of the historical and modern central hill-country of Israel with a similar eco-system in the dryland regions of the southwestern United States. This comparative ecology project used the same model as those of Barbara Ertter, which compared the central plateau of Iran and a similar ecology in the southwestern United States (B. Ertter, M. Blumler, 1992; Ertter, 1999). These studies, taken together, have numerous implications for understanding the biodiversity of plant species that emerge and persist in uncultivated areas of these kinds of ecologies. The study asserted that in all three modern and historical ecologies, including the central hill-country of Israel, there is a heretofore unacknowledged biodiversity of plant types in this ecosystem, which may have provided early Israel with a wider variety of foods than what they could grow in the small-plot agriculture in these drylands. In certain areas, there are tubers, berries, nuts, other fruits and vegetables growing in the forest remnants, or scattered in the scrub grassland stands that nourish both human and animal inhabitants. We have taken the approaches here of Ethnoarchaeology, which aids archaeological interpretation by techniques from modern and historical ethnography, which observes social structures and cultural patterns in comparison studies. Yakar delineates the use of the ethnoarchaeology approach in his monograph in the Archaeology Series of the University of Tel Aviv: “In archaeological terms, settlement types are usually defined on the basis of their location, size, architectural characteristics and the composition of their material culture assemblages. Interdisciplinary field studies, which investigate topographic features, palaeosoils, palaeoclimates and distribution of natural resources can partly explain the ecological and thus the economic significance of site locations… While such research can certainly narrow the range of possible palaeodemographic (Angel 1969) and socio-economic structures in a given region, they must be combined with pertinent historical and ethnographic records to produce a broader picture.” (Yakar, 2000) Hence, there is an accumulating body of literature that can broaden our view of the social form of the agro-pastoral tribal village and its relationship with the often challenging dryland environments in which they live. In addition, the United Nations has acknowledged the importance of traditional knowledge at the recent , meeting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, where the title of the keynote speech was: “Traditional knowledge as a factor of ecological consciousness: formation and conservation of the environment” (UN FAO, 2004 UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Conference proceedings publication #942004-324). Eco-botanical studies have compared ecosystems that were semi-arid to arid shrub or scrub grassland adjacent to pine-forested, rocky hill-country, which contained sparse water sources (one river, with few tributaries). What makes these comparisons very useful is that the societal form of the agro-pastoral tribal village, as described in texts that tell the story of early Israel, is highly comparable to our observations of modern-day agro-pastoral tribal village who practice small-plot agriculture and animal herding, and who are living in the relatively remote dryland ecologies of the semi-arid scrubland of New Mexico and in other such isolated environments around the world. This ethnoarchaeological approach in which cultures living in present-day similar ecologies in similar lifestyles are studied is sometimes referred to as the “archaeology of the living.” (Yakar) Archaeological studies of early Israel show permanent or semi-permanent living sites in which small-plot agriculture and animal herding may have been combined with the hunting, gathering and trapping of locally-available food sources in this agro-pastoral kind of lifestyle (Yudkin, J. 1969). There are current controversies regarding how we should interpret the relatively sparse archaeological remains in order to understand what may have happened to this developing culture at the time of the agricultural settlement (or resettlement) of the central highlands of early Israel. Gottwald, Thompson, Finkelstein and Dever, among others, have provided us with differing views of what may or may not have happened historically – whether there was really an Exodus; what were, if any, the patterns of war-making or other types of interaction with the various inhabitants of the land of Canaan; or whether this small band was part of a peasant’s rebellion that secured the hill-country as a kind of outpost of a culture. Some believe that the monocropping or large-field, single-crop agricultural system of the Egyptian empire disintegrated rapidly in the 12th century BCE due to a series of years of drought, perhaps coupled with various types of political maneuverings by eastern Mediterranean states. That is the “macro” view; - we are taking here a “micro” view of a social reality that may or may not be affected by the “changing of the guard” of large empires. What often happens is that these isolated tribal village communities, sometimes ignored as politically or economically insignificant, become carriers of a long history of cultural traditions (particularly the traditions regarding the land and the peoples’ relationship to the land), while city-states of dominant urbanized cultures may rise and fall. The commonalities that this study has found among agro-pastoral communities in semi-arid zones are of a way of life that has been repeated in most of these types of environments around the world. And these particular patterns seem to have been a persistently stable way of living, once the people living there have learned, either from their predecessors, near neighbors or through trial and error, how to take advantage of these unique lands. Archaeological reports show typical tribal village contours of extended family housing units, typically in clusters of 12-15 housing units per village, which are adjacent to small, *cultivated areas (see Figure 1). Interstitial to the cultivated settlements are larger areas of open territory that contains a wide variety of wild grass grains, tubers, berries and other fruits, nuts, and small and large wild animals, all of which provide gathering, hunting and trapping of foods for humans, and provide fodder for the grazing of animal herds. This paper is a moderating response to those who have stated that early Israel’s tribal village life was “brutish, nasty and short” (Hopkins, D. 1974). While the work of the agricultural community on dryland ecologies is difficult, it is certainly not impossible, or doomed. Obviously, portions of this culture and other tribal village cultures have survived on these types of lands for hundreds of years and many generations. Early Israel may well have adopted from its Canaanite neighbors some of the ecology management techniques that are in this traditional realm, and may also have exhibited the same innovative, flexible, wise and appropriate activities that other agricultural villages have used as they have come to know the intimate workings of their local environment over many years. The knowledge necessary in order to glean sustenance and maximize the use of the sparse water resources from the local environment in each season of the year, is a type of back-up (or “sustenance insurance”) system to the major agricultural products such as the emmer wheat and barley grass, or vine and fruit tree species (Chernoff ; Ollendorf ). The entire biome becomes a way of providing a wider variety, and a rather stable supply, of food sources. UNIQUE FEATURES OF DRYLAND ECOLOGIES Analyses of comparative dryland ecologies, particularly of the botanical systems, hold important implications for understanding the settlements of early Israel; for understanding the social economy, and estimating the “carrying capacity” or vitality and sustainability of the region’s communities. In most archaeological reports, there is much attention paid to the details of village or town structure and constructed (or human-made) artifacts. There has been little or no attention paid to the larger context in which the village or town actually lived, and on which it depended for its very survival and continuity, and that is the ecology of the local environment. It is the knowledge and management of the particulars of a dryland environment that contributes, in large part, to whether the agro-pastoral society is able to sustain itself over longer periods of time. The comparison of similar climates and ecologies of ancient & modern Israel and the semi-arid scrub grassland ecosystem west of the Pecos River of New Mexico, reveals a floral diversity in a climate and ecology similar to what has been referenced in biblical texts, and in archaeobotanical and modern botanical research on these types of ecosystems. [reference Table 1 “Ecosystems of Israel”; and the botanical lists from NM Heritage Project and Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, HERE] The particular types of dryland geographies that have been compared have unique and similar botanical systems that include the same genera or plant families. This is to be expected, since plant communities develop over milennia with similar species finding their way and growing in the environments most appropriate to these species. The types of trees, fruit-and-nut-bearing shrubs, grasses, edible roots and leaves shown here are grown or occur naturally in “stands,” where each stand is a kind of “micro-ecology” of a variety of differing heights and types of plants making maximum usage of the available soil type, nutrients and groundwater availability. The varieties of micro-ecologies (including soil types) that occur closer to, or further from water sources, or higher or lower on the hillsides all promote the stability and renewability of the larger botanical system. I. GEOGRAPHICAL AND ECOLOGICAL COMPARISONS (Slide: show Eco-Zones of Israel)** The riverine ecologies of southern New Mexico and Israel share many geological, geographical and environmental similarities, from the desert savannah/grassland to rocky scrublands in the hill-country areas. The sources of botanical data are from analyses of the relatively “pristine”* environment in New Mexico by the Natural Heritage Program of the Botany Department at the University of New Mexico and other botanical databases; and also from the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, Aleppo Syria, from the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Collection, and from the Science and Technology Committee publications of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The number and variety of grains, tubers and seeds and fruits, both cultivated and wild that exist and did exist in these similar ecologies, even given the changes brought about by the interaction of some fluctuations of climate and millennia of land use by humans, did support slowly expanding populations over many generations. The dominant plant species that appear in the ecologies of uncultivated semi-arid areas of present-day drylands, including the semi-arid scrubland/grasslands of central and southern New Mexico, are the same or related genera and species that can and do grow in the hill-country of Israel. These wild native species have grown in these ecologies since the Pleistocene era of last major climate change. The Quarternary Environments Network suggests that the ecologies in these areas have not changed substantially over the last 5,000 years, even though there may be quite some variation in the year-to-year and decade-to-decade vegetation cover in the semi-arid regions because of fluctuations in rainfall and groundwater availability.[1] The tribes that have lived on the hilly, semi-arid savannah in our modern-day communities have, like other cultures, combined agriculture, pastoralism and (this paper points out) the hunting or trapping and gathering of wild foods in uncultivated grassland or scrub forest areas in order to add not only variety to the diet, but to supplement diets when other sources are less available. As a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report states, “Apart from the key role of wild plants as grazing and fodder for wild and domestic animals, many of the species of the different types of grasslands are used by pastoral and agropastoral farm households not only for food, but also for fuel, construction, medicine and veterinary medicine.”[2] (I was surprised to discover, when examining these botanical families, that, depending on the location, 28-35% of these plants are edible for humans, or can be used for medicinal purposes) (reference). Barbara Ertter’s study comparing the dryland ecology of the western and southwestern United States and the central plateau region of Iran lists the biogeographical, climatic and geological similarities of these areas.[3] My study has made similar observations that: (Slide –Ertter Comparisons)

Both regions are near the same latitude (between the 32nd and 36th parallels).

Both have large central plateaus with interior-draining river basins, in the rain shadows of mountain ranges.

Both have Mediterranean-type climates, with the majority of precipitation falling in the winter.

Both regions have complex geological histories, resulting in a great diversity of current geological, geographical, ecological and topographic features.
Along with climate, geology, and topography, which are the primary factors that determine plant distribution, similarities between the floras of Israel and western North America are increased by historical biogeography. Both regions contain remnants of the broad leaf forests that once covered much of the middle and southern temperate zone during the Cenozoic Era. As the climate and land forms changed, this forest disappeared from most of its former range, being replaced by shrublands, grasslands, deserts, and conifer woodlands.[4] Note the similarities, even in the topography, of these geologically and geographically similar areas in the following two illustrations[5]: SLIDE (topographies) We see that there is a river system and one or two hill and mountain ranges, with a rapid change in elevation as one travels from the river valley to the hills regions. The latitude, soil types and the climatological influence of adjacent true deserts to the east and south create a unique concentration of fragile soil fertility in both of these regions. When we compared the native plant varieties of these two areas, we saw that a number of plant genera/species are the same or closely related (* sign). This is a “collapsed” sample of the common plant species, and there is, in the most commonly-occuring plant families in the 2 categories, a 70 – 80 % similarity of distribution. This is to be expected, since plant communities develop over milennia with similar species finding their way and growing in the environments most appropriate to these species. Secondly, we see that 35% - 42% of these species are edible (Bold “X”), and that quite a number of others that can be used for medicines or flavorings to add variety to the diet (small “x”). The majority of these plants have their rapid growth initially in the early spring to summer, after winter moisture has incited seed germination, plant growth and leaf, bud and fruit formation, and this is when many of these plants and plant parts are harvested and dried for later use. However, quite a number of the fruiting plants mature their fruit and nuts quite late in the summer season, and the hardier of the fruits may remain on those plants until their full maturity well into the dry season.[6] THE AGRO-PASTORAL TRIBAL VILLAGE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ITS SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT The analysis of types of developing societies also reveals that each social form correlates highly with certain types of ecologies. In the model provided here, we see that early Israel featured aspects of “Tribal” and “Communitarian” societies. Societal Forms and Their Associated Ecologies Band societies: Found in a variety of ecosystems Hunter-gatherer technology Clan-based kinship systems Tribal societies: Open steppes or grasslands w/ Large populations of ungulates Advanced hunter/gatherer and/or Pastoral nomadic Communitarian: Ecosystems that support cultivation Land owned by clan or village Strong kinship system cross-cut by religious & economic ties Archaic societies: Riverine ecosystems; Complex Agriculture/ Horticulture; Surplus centralized & Reallocated by pre-urban/urban centers; Concept of private property leading to: Defense and weaponry becoming important Certain biblical stories have a background of the “pastoral-nomadic” lifestyle; others imply that various types of cultivation of the land occurred at different times in Israel’s history. We also see the importance of the early kinship systems, and that the legal codes reflect the difficult transition from a view of the land that provides open pasturing for animal herds (the main conflict being with other ethnic groups), to the concept of private property ownership by individuals (or at least heads of families).

Social Forms and Their Associated Ecologies[7]

v v Band societies are found in a variety of ecosystems, and generally have hunter-gatherer technology, a kinship system which only weakly influences the formation of actual groups, and a totemic religious structure which brings clans together for occasional religious festivals.

v v Tribal societies are also found in a variety of ecosystems, but persist longest on open steppes or grass lands with large populations of ungulates. They have generally developed advanced hunter-gatherer and/or pastoral nomadic technologies which allow them to exploit these herds, sometimes supplemented with raiding or trading, and have strongly developed kinship systems which largely organize social life, and polytheistic religions.

v v *Communitarian societies*** are found in ecosystems which make the cultivation of food relatively easy, and have developed horticultural or agricultural technology. Land is generally owned by the clan or village and is often periodically redistributed. A strong kinship system is cross-cut by social forms which transcend kinship ties, such as the village itself and various religious societies. The polytheistic religions of communitarian societies are characterized by a strong emphasis on fertility rituals and are often dominated by a goddess of wisdom and fertility, such as the Keres Sussistinako or the universal Mediterranean goddess which forms the background of the cults of Isis and Demeter.

v v Archaic societies are found especially but not exclusively in riverine ecosystems and have advanced horticultural or agricultural technologies. Surplus is centralized and reallocated by a temple complex, which may or may not form the center of an urban concentration. The polytheistic religious ideologies of archaic societies are characterized by the emergence of an increasingly well-defined high god concept, often associated with the sun. The Anasazi stage of the Puebloan civilization is characteristic of this form, as is the Mississippian civilization.

v Tributary societies are often founded as nomadic raiders conquer communitarian or archaic riverine communities and impose rents, taxes, and forced labor, eventually building large urban centers and transforming the religious structure in a way which leads to a predominance of divine monarchs who integrate both warlike and priestly functions, such as the Egyptian Ra or the Bablyonian Marduk.

Three of the characteristics of the different “stages” of cultural development are notable for the purposes of this study. Note that social forms and the manner of utilization of the local environments are associated & the social and political forms develop over time. The Tribal Society is described as having advanced hunter-gatherer and pastoral nomadic characteristics in their management of animal grazing of arid pasture lands; and includes a strong kinship system, all of which are evidenced in Bible texts describing an era of development in Israel’s history. We may also interpret that the agro-pastoral communities of our biblical stories had characteristics of the communitarian society, in which land is held in full or in part by the social group. William Dever concurs when he comments on the social structure of early Israel and concludes: (these villages) “may certainly be characterized as rural, family-based, and undoubtedly agricultural. Judging from these facts, we may safely infer several qualities of the resultant lifestyle: ‘simple’; ‘self-sufficient’; …(and) ‘communitarian.’[8] Additionally, in his next section on the political organization of early Israel, Dever affirms that the “tribes are social entities that are: 1. Kin-based;…2. Acephalous (headless), (that is), lacking highly differentiated social strata or centralized power…3. Pre-state in terms of organization,… (and may be) autonomous.” One of the features of many tribal societies’ primary values system is that there is a certain amount of pride in seeking to be self-sufficient (to live on what they can produce or grow in their own locale), which reinforces the importance of the local community. Further insight into the very different world of the tribal village comes from the field of Ethnobiology. Ethnobiology is defined as a bridge between modern science and traditional or tribal/indigenous knowledge of ecosystem attributes, wherein indigenous experts, who have been the primary observers of biocomplexity of the local landscapes and are intimately acquainted with the knowledge of the local environments, gain this knowledge through gathering, hunting, trapping and small-plot agriculture, over many generations.[9] The accumulated knowledge of the tribal agro-pastoral society includes the development of particular environmental interventions, such as replanting the seeds of more robust wild or domesticated plants, the management of plant genomes via age-old traditions of seed exchange or seed-trading between communities, the management of animal herds to take advantage of seasonal changes in plant and water source availability. Traditional agro-pastoral communities exhibit examples of managing sparse water resources in the drylands such as cisterns and utilizing cave and other underground spring or above-ground water resource collection, storage and disbursement systems, which was shown on our introductory slide, and will be shown in greater detail in a following slide. Another characteristic that may contrast very highly with modern Euro-American ways of individualism, is that the entire community works together for the good of the entire community, and individuals who are self-centered are often shunned – it is a kind of gestalt, that the whole community is greater (and has greater priority) than simply the sum of the individuals who are part of the community. Dr. Pietro Laureano of the United Nations Desertification intervention group contrasts traditional ways of knowing and interacting with the environment with the more modern approach to use of the environment in more discrete ways. The Table here shows this contrast: SLIDE # 9 Source: Laureano, Pietro, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Report of the Science and Technology Committee, 1999. FAO, NY, NY 10020) Note here how traditional, indigenous knowledge systems show a much more integrated use of resources; that is, that forest and uncultivated areas are utilized to provide for, and are replenished by, the agricultural and human systems. Each aspect is interrelated in complex ways. This contrasts with the singular use (as in the modern more “monoculture” plant genetics and lack of replenishment of resources). Laureano contrasts modern global food distribution systems with which we are more familiar with the very localized “worldview” necessary for the sustainability of this type of agro-pastoral community. In our globalized system, where producing mass amounts of agricultural products is dependent on large farms that have what is called a “monoculture” of grain or produce genetics we may have lost sight of some of the requirements of small-scale agriculture. The extremely limited varieties of plant genetics that is made available by international seed agribusiness companies is a completely opposite system to the biodiversity that occurs in more pristine settings that are the model for traditional agriculturalists. A schema representative of the realization of the community’s integration with the environment is presented here: Slide # 9

(source: Laureano P., 1998, Proper Uses of natural resources, Environmental architecture and hydraulic technologies for self - sustainable and resource-sparing projects, in Human Evolution, Vol. 13 - N. 1 (29-44), 1998.

Both cultivated and uncultivated areas have shrubs or occasional trees providing shade areas, which assist in retaining water in the soil, and also in their root systems so that they survive the hot, dry season. Modern replications of this small-plot agriculture in these dryland ecologies have affirmed that initiating domesticated plant growth is difficult on unbroken drylands unless there is already enough of these stands of a variety of sizes of trees, bushes and grasses. These interstitial “breaks” continue to be set aside from cultivation in order to provide windbreaks and fallow lands. In hilly or terraced areas, these breaks help nutrients in the soil “leach” to plants growing in adjacent fields or gardens, and anchor the soil so as to allow it to survive any heavy, flooding rainy season without washing away the soil. These methods promote the increase of soil nutrients over a number of years. It doesn’t take much agricultural experimentation to discover that even if one constructs a terracing system for your food source plants, it is advantageous to leave interstitial areas or strips of uncultivated shrub-type perennials (possibly on parts of every other terraced level) since they perform the essential actions of anchoring the soil and retaining moisture and nutrients in the soil, preventing washouts during the cool rainy season. Laureano affirms that if the areas of wild and domesticated plants can be maintained properly, the entire ecology, including the human habitation, becomes a self-perpetuating system, and can increase exponentially up to the point of maximum carrying capacity. For example: Any moist plant matter organic waste (or human and animal dried waste) that is put back into the soil is broken down into nutrients that further nourish the soil, providing greater ability for the soil to retain moisture which supports the growth of more new plant material the following season, and increases the fertility of the soil, thereby increasing the amount of land that can safely be cultivated in these drylands. Any organic matter that is correctly added to sandy soils makes them less alkaline and more fertile. Essentially, the tribal village communities of early Israel may have taken their cue from their observation of the local, natural environment, wherein each phenomena feeds or causes another without anything going to waste. The cycles of nature and seasons do not result in landfills of waste unless these “fills” will be used for part of the cycle’s purpose. Every product of the local ecology is utilized to maintain the ecology, even piles of broken ceramics may have been used to shelter moist soil or springs/cave creek entrances. Laureano describes that rocks or ceramics can be piled up in rows both to provide a little extra shade at certain times of the day and to collect dew that condenses and adds extra moisture for the plants. Increasing the levels of moisture in the soil because of this type of management that actually improves the environment as it is used, does lead to more productivity and biodiversity. The information provided here could lead us to consider the possibility that there was probably a greater diversity of wild and domesticated plants in the undeveloped or restored ecology of the hill-country than exist today, or have been identified to date from archaeological studies of this area. Laureano states that every successful society that developed into more urbanized systems, adopted these traditional techniques of the efficient utilization of natural resources based on the exigencies of the environment itself. My original question for this study regarding what features may have promoted the sustainability of Israel’s tribal village communities in this dryland ecology” has been addressed here by the combination of perspectives from ethnobotany, conservation ecology and social anthropology This snapshot of traditional and indigenous knowledge about the local environments upon which early Israel depended (and may have learned about by observation of, or socioeconomic interaction with, their Canaanite neighbors) may tell us more about that society’s eras of success, and also reveal poor decisions made in the transition to an archaic kingdom society that resulted in environmental, social or ethical failures, all of which are also documented in the biblical stories about this cultural group. Perhaps the wisdom that is in biblical texts about care of the community and all of creation is fleshed out further or enlightened by this study. And most probably, both early Israel and some of our modern urbanites have lost sight of these values and perspectives, as Laureano states, for: “the capacity of enhancing environmental resources and managing them at a local scale; multi-purposeness and integration between technical, ethical and aesthetic values; and production which is not considered a value in itself but is targeted to the well-being of communities. (This way of life) relies on the principle that each activity shall feed another one without any waste, and the use of all materials and energy of the ecosystems of which we are a part, is based on continually renewable cycles.”[10] BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jonathan Adams, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA (topographical image, Israel). Chernoff, Miriam Confronting Natural Disaster: Engaging the Past to Understand the Future, G. Bawden and R. Reycraft, eds., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 75-98 2000. William Dever Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? William Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003, p. 110-112. B. Ertter and M. Blumler, (1992) Seed Weight and Environment in Mediterranean-type Grasslands in California and Israel. PhD-dissertation, UC Berkeley, Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services. Ertter, B. A Comparison of Plant Ecology of Western United States and the Central Plateau of Iran, University of California Botanical Museum, Santa Barbara, Calif. 1999. “Intellectual Imperatives in Ethnobiology,”NSF Biocomplexity Workshop,icMissouri Botanical Garden publications, St. Louis, MO, 2003. (available at: www.econbot.org/pdf/NSF_brochure/pdf.) Use and Potential of Wild Plants in Farm Households, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, FAO Information Division, United Nations, NY, NY.10020, 1999. Hopkins, David “Life on the Land: The Subsistence Struggles of Early Israel” The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 50, No. 3. (Sep., 1987), p. 176. JBG-----Jerusalem Botanical Gardens QEN, materials on site: www. qen/_____. The Younger Dryas was the most extreme climate change, suggested by Harvey Weiss to possibly be the result of large empire mono-agriculture and resulting environmental degradation, along with associated fires, earthquakes & other unknown variables.

Laureano Pietro, 1998, Proper Uses of natural resources, Environmental architecture and hydraulic technologies for self - sustainable and resource-sparing projects, in Human Evolution, Vol. 13 - N. 1 (29-44), 1998.

Pietro Laureano United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Report of the Science and Technology Committee, 1999. FAO, NY, NY 10020) Anthony and Margaret Mansueto, Seeking Wisdom and Doing Justice: Ethics, Ecologies and Community. available at: Donald A. Messerschmidt, editor, Common Forest Resource Management, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Information Division, Rome, Italy, 1999.
Ollendorf Amy Phyto---
Ray Sterner, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, 1995, available at: http://geography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/nm%5F0.html. (New Mexico).
Yakar, Jak Ethnoarchaeology of Anatolia: Rural Socio-Economy in the Bronze and Iron Ages Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, No. 17, Tel Aviv 2000. Yudkin, J. “Archaeology and the Nutritionist” pp. 547-554 in P.J. Ucko and G.W. Dimbleby (eds), The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals London: Duckworth 1969. COMBATING DESERTIFICATION TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND MODERN TECHNOLOGY FOR THE SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF DRYLAND ECOSYSTEMS PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ELISTA, REPUBLIC OF KALMYKIA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION 23–27 June 2004 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)(Man & The Biosphere Programme)MAB “Traditional knowledge as a factor of ecological consciousness: formation and conservation of the environment. The Republic of Kalmykia experience” Nina G. Ochirova ********LEAVE OUT!!!The importance of attention to the community’s interaction with the interstitial or “wild” areas between tribal villages is emphasized by modern observations. Donald Messerschmidt’s Wildlands Resource Management Project group of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has utilized the following schema to describe the importance of tree stands, and scrubland multispecies land areas that serve many purposes for the maintenance of tribal agropastoral communities:[11] SLIDE # ?????********** When small-plot agriculture is combined with the use of animals on grazing land, hunting and gathering from the wild areas are part of the picture of this agro-pastoral economy. Grazing lands in arid and semi-arid steppes or savannah grassland usually contain interstitial stands or scrubland with bushes, small trees and wild grasses and provide wild foodstuffs such as berries and other fruits, tubers and edible leaves or succulent plants. These areas are also home to small to medium-size animals that can be hunted or trapped for food, and the meat can be dried and preserved for future use during the winter season. # 2 – The 5 Ecosystems of Israel

AREA NUM	COLOR	AREA DESCRIPTION	SPECIES IN AREA
1		The Mediterranean woodlands and shrublands	2209
2		Semi-steppe shrublands	1434
3		Shrub-steppes	1062
4		Deserts and extreme deserts	1058
5		Montane vegetation of Mt. Hermon	991

Source: University Botanical Garden of Jerusalem, available at: http://www.botanic.co.il/A/indexe.htm Described here are the modalities of tribal village-based societies with economic bases of animal herding and small-plot agriculture, referred to in general, agro-pastoral communities. I use these additional socioeconomic and philosophical perspectives here because it is important for fleshing out a picture of the lifestyle and particular social mores and interactions with the tribal village’s local environment that support its health and sustainability. . Even though there may be smaller amounts of wild food plants in any one geographical area, the management of grazing by moving animals through a number of pasture areas throughout the year, and these areas having a number of interstitial stands of trees, bushes, vetches & small animals, also allows the harvesting of wild foods that are adjacent to these grazing areas. A hypotheses that we are currently exploring in one of these comparative ecologies is that, after the collapse of the Egyptian dynastic of 12empires, the land management techniques of tribal villagers were able to gradually restore higher productivity (“fertility”) to the land. One of these practices occurs is a tradition of leaving “fallow” or uncultivated areas. If one combines this custom with one or two years of average precipitation and traditional water management techniques, this practice allows the land to retain more moisture, the resulting next year’s crops, biodiversity and more vigorous ****growth allows the interstitial areas of uncultivated areas and the neighboring cultivated lands to be more productive and less vulnerable to pests, diseases and extremes of weather, and for the human and animal population to increase[12]. The 21st century extant model of “agricultural monoculture” gives us a far too limited view of the diversity of plants and animals available in a pristine geography, or in lands that may have been only partially developed for agriculture. There are many conservation ecology projects around the world that have demonstrated that a geographical area that has been developed or over-developed by human use, is able to return to resemblance of a pristine ecology, with the use of commonly-held traditional agro-pastoral village land management practices. ////Biodiversity is the natural form of ecologies that are left to themselves, as the detailed botanical analyses of these comparative dryland ecologies show. It is known that earlier empires had practiced a version of agricultural monoculture comparable to the percentage of land use of modern cultivation over a large geographical area of the northern curve of the Levant.[13] Botanical data is incomplete or sparse at many archaeological sites; however, evidence of a variety of seeds and carbonized remains of many genetically various plants is accumulating in the record.[14] ********* Even though other studies (such as Barbara Ertter’s) have compared the plant ecologies of the southwestern United States and areas of the Middle East,[15] this study takes another step in proposing a scenario based on what we know about present-day agro-pastoral communities and their land and animal management practices. In particular, I’ve looked at the wide variety of native plants that grow in these ecologies, and therefore, what plants could be harvested from the wild, dried and stored for future use as foods or medicines. MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS OF TWO COMPARATIVE DRYLAND ECOLOGIES

Both regions are near the same latitude (between the 32nd and 36th parallels).
Both have large central plateaus with interior-draining river basins, and similar average annual precipitation.
Both have Mediterranean-type climates, with the majority of precipitation falling in the winter.
Both regions have complex geological histories, resulting in a great diversity of current geological, geographical, ecological and topographic features.

Societal Forms and Their Associated Ecologies Band societies: Found in a variety of ecosystems Hunter-gatherer technology Clan-based kinship systems Tribal societies: Open steppes or grasslands w/ Large populations of ungulates Advanced hunter/gatherer and/or Pastoral nomadic Communitarian: Ecosystems that support cultivation Land owned by clan or village Strong kinship system cross-cut by religious & economic ties Archaic societies: Riverine ecosystems; Complex Agriculture/ Horticulture; Surplus centralized & Reallocated by pre-urban/urban centers; Concept of private property leading to: Defense and weaponry becoming important

[1] QEN, materials on site: www. qen/_____. The Younger Dryas had some extreme climate change, suggested by Harvey Weiss to possibly be the result of large empire mono-agriculture and resulting environmental degradation, along with associated fires, earthquakes & other unknown variables.

[2] Use and Potential of Wild Plants in Farm Households, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, FAO Information Division, United Nations, NY, NY.10020, 1999.

[3] Ertter, B. A Comparison of Plant Ecology of Western United States and the Central Plateau of Iran, University of California Botanical Museum, Santa Barbara, Calif. 1999.

[4] Erttrer, Barbara,

[5] These satellite and topographical views of our comparative geographies are compiled and edited by Ray Sterner, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, 1995, available at: http://geography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/nm%5F0.html. (New Mexico); and Jonathan Adams, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA (Israel).

[6] Hopkins, David “Life on the Land: The Subsistence Struggles of Early Israel” The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 50, No. 3. (Sep., 1987), p. 176.

[7] Anthony and Margaret Mansueto, Seeking Wisdom and Doing Justice: Ethics, Ecologies and Community. available at:

[8]William Dever Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? William Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003, p. 110-112.

[9] “Intellectual Imperatives in Ethnobiology,”NSF Biocomplexity Workshop,icMissouri Botanical Garden publications, St. Louis, MO, 2003. (available at: www.econbot.org/pdf/NSF_brochure/pdf.) *The term pristine, in this case, refers to the minimal impact that these ecologies have received from modern urbanization and other industrial development. 2003, Missouri Botanical Garden

[10] Laureano, P. Science and Technology Committee Report, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, New York, NY 10020, 2003, p. 18.

[11] Donald A. Messerschmidt, editor, Common Forest Resource Management, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Information Division, Rome, Italy, 1999.

[12] See Riane Eisler and Sarah Hrdy for information on how and why early cultures living close to the land were able to maintain stable and adequate populations (“zero population growth”) via breastfeeding and other fertility-inhibiting actions, if needs be.

[13] Confronting Natural Disaster: Engaging the Past to Understand the Future, G. Bawden and R. Reycraft, eds., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 75-98 2000.

[14] Chernoff, Miriam C, Samuel Paley, “Dynamics of Cereal Production at Tell el Ifshar, Israel during the Middle Bronze Age” Journal of Field Archaeology Vol. 25, #4, Wtr, 1998, 397-416; Ollendorf, Amy L., “Phytolith Study at Tel Miqne, Israel” Journal of Field Archaeology Vol. 14, 1987, 453-459.

[15] B. Ertter and M. Blumler, M. (1992) Seed Weight and Environment in Mediterranean-type Grasslands in California and Israel. PhD-dissertation, UC Berkeley, Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services.

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Research Paper: Social Ecology of Tribal Village Agriculture

(source: Laureano P., 1998, Proper Uses of natural resources, Environmental architecture and hydraulic technologies for self - sustainable and resource-sparing projects, in Human Evolution, Vol. 13 - N. 1 (29-44), 1998.

Laureano Pietro, 1998, Proper Uses of natural resources, Environmental architecture and hydraulic technologies for self - sustainable and resource-sparing projects, in Human Evolution, Vol. 13 - N. 1 (29-44), 1998.