Archaeological evidence of casual snacking and resource provisioning at Khirbat al-Jariya (ca. eleventh to tenth centuries BCE), an Iron-Age copper production site
Stroth, Luke Garvin Suero, Arianna Liss, Brady Howland, Matthew D. D'Alpoim Guedes, Jade
Stroth, Luke
Garvin Suero, Arianna
Liss, Brady
Howland, Matthew D.
D'Alpoim Guedes, Jade
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2023-08-02
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Book chapter
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Keywords
Paleobotany,Snacking behavior,Paleobotanical sampling,Wadi Faynan,Iron Age archaeology,Consumer-producer spectrum
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Citation
Stroth, L., Garvin Suero, A., Liss, B., Howland, M.D., D’Alpoim Guedes, J. (2023). Archaeological Evidence of Casual Snacking and Resource Provisioning at Khirbat al-Jariya (ca. Eleventh to Tenth Centuries BCE), an Iron-Age Copper Production Site. In: Ben-Yosef, E., Jones, I.W.N. (eds) “And in Length of Days Understanding” (Job 12:12). Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27330-8_48
Abstract
In this chapter we present the results of a paleobotanical analysis of Khirbat al-Jariya, an Iron-Age (ca. eleventh to tenth centuries BCE) copper smelting workshop in Faynan, Jordan. The macrobotanical collection was dominated by easily procured fruits and nuts that required little preparation, such as dates (Phoenix dactylifera), grapes (Vitis sp.) and figs (Ficus sp.) which we characterize as likely “snack foods.” Evidence for grain processing, in terms of cleaning and removal of chaff, is largely absent, and there is no meaningful spatial patterning to the discard of food debris. This suggests that food consumption was a casual process at Khirbat al-Jariya and that food products requiring preparation were processed elsewhere. Comparing this data to that of contemporary sites indicates that this dominance of snack foods is particular to the Faynan region. It is possible that Khirbat al-Jariya was only seasonally occupied, under which circumstances a practice of casual snacking supplemented by prepared foods from elsewhere was sustainable. This complicates the typical binary of “consumer” and “producer,” and we argue that such distinctions may be as much a result of sampling strategies and spatial patterning. We also evaluate how sampling strategies played a role in interpreting the data from Khirbat al-Jariya, which may represent the casual snacking behavior associated with an itinerant industrial community rather than the full spectrum of subsistence during the Iron Age of the Wadi Faynan. Although all societies are some combination of producer and consumer, we argue that the inhabitants of Khirbat al-Jariya were much closer to the consumer end of the spectrum based on both positive evidence for the dominance of snack foods and the negative evidence for food preparation. Their diet consisted of convenient, although seasonal, snack foods, for which the archaeological signal is high, and prepared foods that have not preserved, for which the archaeological signature for local production is almost negligible.
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Publisher
Springer, Cham
Journal
Book Title
“And in length of days understanding” (Job 12:12): Essays on archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond in honor of Thomas E. Levy
Series
Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology