Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

How to supply a large urban population in the desert during Antiquity? Archaeobotanical multi-proxy analyses on the caravan city of Thāj

Résumé

The archaeological site of Thāj (Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia) is usually considered as the earliest city in eastern Arabia, settled from the late Iron Age to the Early Islamic period, with a peak in the ‘Hellenistic’ period (4th to 2nd c. BC). Yet in Antiquity, northeast Arabia was characterized by arid climatic conditions quite like those of today, with a very limited vegetation cover. This raises numerous questions regarding the acquisition strategies of plant resources (food, fodder, fuel…) that made it possible to support the growth of an urban population over the long term. The archaeological excavations conducted at Thāj by a Saudi French project from 2016 to 2022 therefore provide a unique opportunity to document these strategies through multiple archaeobotanical investigations (seeds/fruits, wood charcoal, phytoliths). The first results allow us to identify agrarian productions such as cereals (barley, wheats), pulses (grasspea), and fruit trees (date palm, grapevine), which suggest the existence of vertically organized date palm gardens near the site, fed by ground water tables. Other crops may have been imported, showing the integration of the city in long-distance trade networks. High concentrations of some wild plants associated with dung highlight the intensive exploitation of such plant formations, suggesting that over-grazing practices might be responsible for environmental degradation at a regional scale.

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Dates et versions

hal-05065363 , version 1 (13-05-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-05065363 , version 1

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Vladimir Dabrowski, Aline Garnier, Jérôme Rohmer, Ibrahim Al-Mshabi, Fabien Lesguer, et al.. How to supply a large urban population in the desert during Antiquity? Archaeobotanical multi-proxy analyses on the caravan city of Thāj. 57th Seminar for Arabian Studies, Jun 2024, Institut national d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA) - Paris, France. ⟨hal-05065363⟩
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