Middle Bronze Age transition and the aquifer geography in the Near East

Journal of Archaeological Science 69 (2016) 1e11

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The Early Bronze Age/Middle Bronze Age transition and the aquifer geography in the Near East Konstantin Pustovoytov a, b, *, Simone Riehl a, c a

Institute for Archaeological Science, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation, University of Hohenheim, Emil-Wolff-Str. 27, 70599 Stuttgart, Germany c Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 19 August 2015 Received in revised form 12 February 2016 Accepted 26 February 2016

Groundwater often remains a neglected natural resource in archaeological studies in the Near East. Here we examine the potential role of aquifers in transitional phenomena in the eastern Mediterranean at the Early Bronze Age (EBA) e Middle Bronze Age (MBA) boundary using geographic relations between aquifers and archaeological settlements. As a basis for this analysis, the aquifer areas within buffers zones of 5, 10 and 20 km around the sites were used. For comparison, the total watercourse lengths within the same zones were calculated. Although no substantial changes in watercourse lengths could be found, the aquifer geography around EBA and MBA sites did show regional differences. The proportion of settlements with aquifers in upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant doubled during the transition from EBA to MBA, whereas in the southern Levant this proportion decreased. We propose several explanatory models for these results: environmental (desiccation regional trend around 4.2 ka BP), nonenvironmental (changes in strategic importance, subsistence economy or hygienic requirements) and combined (human-induced transformation in the vegetation, changes in soil properties or changes in human perception of the environment followed by changes in behavioral attitudes). This study further emphasizes the potential of GIS-based spatial analysis applications in archaeology. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Aquifers Groundwater Bronze Age Near East GIS

1. Introduction The transition from the Early Bronze Age (EBA) to the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) represents one of the central milestones in the history of the Near East. It was accompanied by considerable changes in political, economic and cultural life. The most prominent features of this period were the decline and abandonment of urban settlements, decentralization of political power, increase in nomadism and pastoralism (Weiss, 2012; Weiss et al., 1993; Schwartz, 2007; Ur, 2010; Amiran, 1969; Parr, 2009). These changes are often considered as signs of ‘collapse’, not only among researchers but also in popular science literature (Diamond, 2005), although the criteria for the term ‘collapse’ as well as ‘crisis’ are still a matter of debate (Meijer, 2007; Schwartz, 2007; Yoffee, 2010). The driving forces of these processes are controversial. Increased aridity through climatic fluctuation has become the most frequently

* Corresponding author. Institute for Archaeological Science, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Pustovoytov). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.02.005 0305-4403/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

proposed explanation (Weiss, 2012; Weiss et al., 1993; Hole, 1997). This is, among others, due to the fact that paleoclimate records in the eastern Mediterranean region indicate a cyclic climate history with an aridification trend around 2 ka cal BC, amplified by several drought peaks (Bar-Matthews et al., 1997; Bar-Matthews and Ayalon, 2004, 2011; Staubwasser and Weiss, 2006; Pustovoytov et al., 2007; Kuzucuoǧlu, 2007; Roberts et al., 2011; Riehl et al., 2013). Archaeobotanical data suggest considerable changes in subsistence economy (Riehl, 2008, 2012) alongside an increase in drought stress for this period (Fiorentino et al., 2008; Riehl et al., 2008, 2014). Few paleoclimate reviewers, however, question the extent and abruptness of the 4.2 ka cal BP climate event (Finne et al., 2011). Along with climate, the decline of urban civilizations in the Near East has been attributed to other external factors, such as earthquakes (Schaeffer, 1948), volcanic eruptions (Weiss et al., 1993; Zielinski, 2000) and even cosmic impact (Courty and Coqueugniot, 2013). A purely ecological shift, whatever its nature, cannot explain, however, all the features of the EBA/MBAtransition. The urban demise seems to have had a complex geographical and chronological pattern (Schwartz, 2007; Hole, 2006). An array of centers in relatively arid sectors of the Fertile

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Crescent show a continuous occupation (Abay, 2007; Marro, 2007; Mazzoni and Felli, 2007) or even expansion (Marro and Kuzucuoǧlu, 2007) during the transitional period. Also at the desert margin, stable urban settlement existed for centuries at the EBA/MBA boundary (Castell, 2007). The urban “collapse” has been also explained in terms of population growth and overexploitation of landscape resources (Wilkinson et al., 2005), but only rarely have the developmental processes been addressed with a holistic approach (Hole, 2006). The potential environmental impact on the societal development during the EBA/MBA transition, in the above citations and other works, is most frequently considered on the basis of paleoclimate archives and the geographical position of the sites in relation to isohyets and surface hydrography. By contrast, the role of groundwater is rarely taken into account (Wilkinson, 1999, 2003; Geyer et al., 2010). In this paper, we address the role of aquifers as potential contributors to the phenomena observed at the end of EBA and the beginning of MBA in the eastern Mediterranean sector of the Near East. An aquifer is defined as ‘a water-bearing or saturated formation that is capable of serving as a groundwater reservoir supplying enough water to satisfy a particular demand, as in a body of rock that is sufficiently permeable to conduct groundwater and to yield economically significant quantities of water to wells or springs’ (Poehls and Smith, 2009). One of the essential features of aquifers is that they can accumulate precipitation water and release it back, conducting within a very broad range of velocities, depending mostly on the depth below the land surface but also other factors (Domenico and Schwartz, 1998). In arid to semiarid regions, the turnover time of water within an aquifer from the recharge to the discharge zone may be as long as tens or even hundreds of millennia (Alley et al., 2002; Scanlon et al., 2006; Gholam et al., 2006; McMahon et al., 2011; Gassiat et al., 2013). In the Near East, early Holocene to mid-late Pleistocene ages have been shown for groundwater on the basis of 3H, 14C, U/Th dating techniques and the stable isotope composition (Bajjali and AbuJaber, 2001; Dabous et al., 2002; Kazemi et al., 2006; Avrahamov et al., 2010; Burg et al., 2013). Aquifers represent an essential terrestrial water resource in arid regions (FAO, 2003). With allowance for aquifer geography, the picture of potential regional water availability can substantially deviate from what can be expected from the distribution of modern precipitation and surface water bodies alone (BGR & UNESCO, 2008). Furthermore, groundwater is a relatively conservative water resource. Although the productivity of an aquifer may vary in time, its geographical configuration obviously remains stable as long as the principal geological structure of the landscape does not change. As long-term buffer stores of rainfall water, aquifers usually are less sensitive to climate fluctuations than the patterns of atmospheric precipitation (Clifton et al., 2010; Treidel et al., 2011). Specific responses of an aquifer to climate change depend on the aquifer type (Rosenberg et al., 1999; Scibek et al., 2008; Barron et al., 2011). Today, aquifers frequently become a political issue both at the national (Weinthal et al., 2005; Barron et al., 2011; Tanji and Kielen, 2002) and international level (Foster and Loucks, 2006; GWP INBO, 2009; Foster, Ait-Kadi, 2012; Jarvis, 2013). Likewise, it appears reasonable to assume that their importance has been similarly paramount, if not greater, in the past. The goal of this paper is to compare the distributional patterns of the Early and Middle Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean with the geographical location of major aquifers in the region. This analysis further should provide an insight into the potential role of groundwater in the economic and political transformations at the EBA/MBA boundary.

2. Materials and methods This work analyses the interrelation between the locations of archaeological sites from the EBA and MBA periods and the substantial aquifer areas in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. The data on archaeological sites were taken from ADEMNES, the archaeobotanical database of eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern sites (www.ademnes.de). The database currently embraces 1206 data sets from 352 archaeobotanically investigated sites covering a time sequence between the Epipalaeolithic and the Medieval periods. Although these are obviously not all sites known to archaeologists, the sites in the database are provided with a detailed occupation history and an established chronology. Attribution of the sites to either the Early or the Middle Bronze Age is according to typology and absolute chronology as provided by the excavators. For a rough orientation, calendar chronology used in the database for the EBA and MBA periods is c. 3200e2000 BCE and c. 2000e1500 BCE respectively. A total of 96 EBA and 46 of MBA sites were taken into consideration. The site locations are presented in Fig. 1A. The localization of aquifers is based on the hydrogeological map € ler et al., 1990). For of the Tubingen Atlas of the Near East (Scho analysis, extensive and highly productive aquifers, both intergranular and fissured, were taken into consideration (Fig. 1B). Additionally, for comparison purposes, the watercourses for the same territory were displayed (Fig. 1C). No differentiation between perennial, periodic or episodic water flows was made. In a GIS application (ArcGIS 10), concentric buffer zones with distances 5, 10 and 20 km around the point symbols of archaeological sites were created (Fig. 2). These sizes of buffer zones were chosen according to the radiuses of 5 km and 10 km around settlements used in site catchment studies (Bailey, 2005). Distances of order of 20 km may have been common between neighboring urban settlements in densely populated areas of the Bronze Age Near East (Wilkinson, 2003; Wilkinson et al., 2010). Subsequently, the intersection of these zones, with the aquifer polygons (Fig. 2aec) and the clip of the watercourses by the buffer zones were generated (Fig. 2def). The total area of the intersection shape features and the total length of the clipped watercourses around the sites for every buffer zone were calculated. 3. Results 3.1. Aquifer distribution around the Early Bronze Age sites All results of the site counting and area quantification are presented in Table 1. Fig. 3 displays the total of aquifer areas within the buffer zones around the sites. For reasons of detailed comparison, the map fragment for the Levant and upper Mesopotamia with siterelated diagrams is presented in Fig. 4: top for EBA and bottom for MBA. Among all the EBA settlements under consideration, 28 (21%) sites were located directly on principal aquifers or in their vicinity, whereas 68 (79%) were beyond the 20-km aquifer proximity (Table 1, Fig. 4, top). Considering all the EBA sites, the averages of 16, 59 and 194 km2 were found for the aquifer areas within the 5, 10 and 20 km buffers respectively. For the sites with aquifers only, the same parameter increases to 54, 203 and 665 km2 respectively. Around the aquifer-related sites, the total aquifer area varied between 2 and 79 (5 km buffer), 34 and 315 (10 km buffer), 129 and 1257 km2 (20 km buffer). It stands out that an aquifer, if available at a site, is present in all three buffer zones. The rest of the sites do not have any aquifers closer than 20 km to a site at all. By contrast, every settlement showed water flows within the buffer zones (Fig. 3d). The total water flow length was on average 9, 30 and 109 km inside the 5, 10 and 20 km buffers respectively. If only sites

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Fig. 1. Location of the sites (a), principal aquifers (b) and watercourses (c) in the study area.

with aquifers are taken into consideration, these values do not change considerably: 9, 35 and 135 km respectively. 3.2. Aquifer distribution around the Middle Bronze Age sites At first sight, the aquifer characteristics of the MBA sites in general appear similar to those in the EBA period: the aquifer areas within 5, 10 and 20 km zones are 0e79, 0e314 and 21e1257 km2 with the averages 17, 64 and 198 km2 respectively or, when considering only the sites with aquifers, 49, 183 and 568 km2 respectively (Table 1, Fig. 3a). However, the site-aquifer distributional pattern in the MBA period differs from that in the EBA. The increase of the proportion of sites associated with aquifers in the northern Fertile Crescent is especially remarkable (Table 1, Fig. 4, bottom). Here, the average aquifer area around the MBA sites is roughly two times higher compared to the EBA sites (Table 1, Fig. 3b). The total length of water flows does not show substantial changes compared to the EBA, showing averages of 6, 19 and 62 km within 5, 10 and 20 km buffer zones respectively (11, 30 and 100 km if referred to the sites with aquifers only) (Table 1, Fig. 3d). 3.3. A comparison of aquifer distribution around the Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age settlements in the northern Fertile Crecent and southern Levant The changes in site-related distribution of aquifer areas at the

EBA/MBA transition appears especially interesting for two regions of paramount importance in the Near Eastern history: upper Mesopotamia with the northern Levant and the southern Levant (Table 1 and Fig. 4). Obviously, the character of the EBA/MBA transition in terms of aquifer distribution was different in these two regions: the pronounced increase of the proportion of sites connected to aquifers in upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant from 29 to 50% versus a decrease in the southern Levant from 65 to 46%. Accordingly, the aquifer areas within the 5, 10 and 20 km buffer zones in upper Mesopotamia show a substantial increase from 14 to 24, from 46 to 91 and from 128 to 248 km2 respectively (Fig. 3b). By contrast, in the southern Levant these changes for 5 and 10 km buffer zones are almost negligible: from 19 to 21 and from 74 to 75 km2 respectively, whereas the 20 km buffer zone shows a decrease of aquifer areas from 307 to 260 km2 (Fig. 3c), although, if considering the aquifer-associated sites only, the average aquifer area experienced a slight increase (Fig. 3c). No substantial changes in the watercourse length can be found for the northern Fertile Crescent (Fig. 3e), whereas considerably lower values are shown for the southern Levantine MBA sites (Fig. 3f). 4. Discussion 4.1. General trends during the EBA-MBA transition Although the sites considered in this study do not represent all

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Fig. 2. Illustration of calculation of the aquifer areas and the sum length of watercourses around the sites. Buffer zones with 5, 10 and 20 km radius are shown by different lines. (a), (b) and (c) e geometric intersection of the territory occupied by an aquifer at a site with the buffer zones with 5, 10 and 20 km radius respectively; (d), (e) and (f) e watercourse fragments within the buffers zones with 5, 10 and 20 radius respectively.

the settlements that existed during the EBA and MBA periods in the Near East, they very likely can serve as a representative selection and therefore are useful for a first approach to test the role of aquifers in ancient settlement patterns and to better understand the EBA/MBA transitional processes. The most striking feature of the settlement dynamics in relation to aquifer distribution is that the proportion of aquifer-related sites in upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant increases considerably during the transition from EBA to MBA (Table 1, Fig. 4). This shift is paralleled by an appropriate increase in the averaged aquifer areas (Fig. 3b). However, the changes in aquifer areas calculated for the aquiferassociated sites separately are much less pronounced (Fig. 3b). The averaged sum length of watercourses around the sites does not notably change, which indicates that upper Mesopotamian populations were continuously and consistently settling along available river banks (Fig. 3e). By contrast, in the southern Levant the EBA-MBA transition is accompanied by a one-third decrease in the proportion of sites with aquifers (Table 1, Fig. 4). At the same time, the average aquifer area decreases much less dramatically and even increases if calculated for the sites with aquifers separately (Fig. 3c). The water course lengths within the buffer zones show a general decrease, especially the average for the 20-km buffer zones (Fig. 3f). These data suggest that the aquifer significance in upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant increased during the transition from the EBA to the MBA period. At the same time, the dependence on aquifers in the southern Levant seems to have had a more complex character: at the regional level, the settlement pattern appears to have become less aquifer-dependent, but at the level of

an individual settlement the significance of groundwater seems to have been similar to that in the northern Fertile Crescent. What could have caused these shifts? A complete answer to this question is most probably a long way in the future, having regard to the complexity of human-ecosystem interactions (Low et al., 1999) and the scarcity of geoarchaeological information available for the time slice in the region (Wilkinson, 2003). However, in the following we consider theoretical possibilities to explain the phenomenon. They may be classified into three categories: environmental, nonenvironmental and combined. 4.2. Environmental explanatory options The transition between the EBA and MBA periods coincides with the time of profound environmental changes in the Near East. Paleoclimate data for the northern hemisphere indicate a general southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and a weakening of the Afro-Asian monsoon system in the second part of the Holocene (Wanner et al., 2008). As a result, a broad-range aridification trend from the mid- to late Holocene in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East took place (see Finne et al., 2011 for a review). The proxy records suggest that regional and local patterns of this general trend were complex. A shift to more arid conditions around 4000 cal BP has been shown for western Iran (Stevens et al., 2006; Wasylikowa et al., 2006), southeastern Turkey (Wick et al., 2003; Pustovoytov et al., 2007), and central Anatolia (Roberts et al., 2008, 2011). Geoarchaeological evidence in northern Mesopotamia points to destabilization of water streams, increase in erratic flow and drying out of swamps around MBA sites when

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Table 1 Numbers of sites with and without aquifers, aquifer areas and sum watercourse lengths within the buffer zones around the sites (a site is considered without aquifer if the aquifer area in any buffer zone is 0 km2). Early Bronze Age

Middle Bronze Age

n

%

n

%

96 28 68

100 29 71

46 16 30

100 35 65

Buffer distance, km 5

The whole study region

Upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant

The southern Levant

all sites sites with aquifers sites without aquifers average aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (total) average aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (sites with aquifers only) min-max of aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (sites with aquifers only) watercourse length within buffer zones, km (total) watercourse length within buffer zones, km (sites with aquifers only) all sites sites with aquifers sites without aquifers average aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (total) average aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (sites with aquifers only) max-min of aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (sites with aquifers only) watercourse length within buffer zones, km (total) watercourse length within buffer zones, km (sites with aquifers only) all sites Sites with aquifers Sites without aquifers average aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (total) average aquifer area within buffer zone, km 2 (sites with aquifers only) Max-min of aquifer area within buffer zone, km2 (sites with aquifers only) watercourse length within buffer zones, km (total) watercourse length within buffer zones, km (sites with aquifers only)

41 12 29

23 15 8

10

20

Buffer distance, km 5

10

20

16 (29)

59 (105)

194(348)

17 (28)

64 (101)

198 (315)

54 (29)

203 (91)

665 (319)

49 (26)

183(84)

568 (270)

2e79

34e315

129e1257

0e79

0e314

21e1257

9 (6)

30 (18)

109 (57)

8 (6)

27 (18)

97 (57)

9 (6)

35 (21)

135 (69)

11 (7)

30 (23)

100 (65)

100 29 71

18 9 9

100 50 50

14 (27)

46 (88)

128 (225)

24 (31)

91 (108)

248 (277)

47 (32)

159 (92)

436 (195)

48 (26)

182 (80)

496 (158)

0e79

0e302

124e806

4e79

42e302

224e806

11 (5)

31 (13)

97 (30)

11(6)

30 (15)

91 (40)

10 (4)

29 (15)

99 (41)

13 (7)

32 (16)

98 (44)

100 65 35

13 6 7

100 46 54

19 (30)

74 (107)

307 (351)

21 (29)

75 (100)

260 (341)

28 (33)

113 (114)

470 (333)

46 (26)

162 (84)

563 (273)

0e79

0e314

37e1257

0e73

0e224

21e719

7 (6)

32 (18)

125 (56)

6 (6)

21 (24)

94 (72)

8 (6)

37 (18)

144 (55)

7 (8)

23 (30)

89 (90)

The mean values and standard deviations are given in bold type and in brackets respectively.

compared to the EBA (Rosen and Goldberg, 1995; Rosen, 1997; Wilkinson, 2003; Deckers and Riehl, 2007). Furthermore, the d13C values of barley grains showing an increase of drought stress signals in cereal crops at the EBA-MBA boundary in the northern Fertile Crescent (Riehl et al., 2014). In the southern Levant the desiccation tendency is more ambiguous. In general, the isotope sequences from Soreq Cave shows a comparatively stable climatic regime during the last 7 ka (Bar-Matthews et al., 1997, Bar-Matthews, 2014), but a more detailed consideration suggests several dry periods within the Holocene, among others between 4200 and 4050 yr cal BP (BarMatthews and Ayalon, 2011). Fluctuating moisture availability with a decreasing trend has been provided by a 300-year long Tamarix tree-ring record for the 2265e1930 years BC interval from the Sedom mount at the south-eastern Dead Sea shore (Frumkin, 2009). By contrast, a speleothem stable isotope record from central Lebanon within the border range of the northern and southern Levant indicates relatively dry conditions from 5.8 to 1.1 ka BP interrupted by a wet period between 4 and 3 ka BP (Verheyden et al., 2008). The pollen data from the Dead Sea indicate an expansion of deciduous oak forests, which is suggestive of cooler and wetter climate in the region for the Middle Bronze Age (Neumann et al., 2007), elsewhere extended to 6.3e3.2 ka BP (Litt

et al., 2012). The reconstructions of water levels in the Dead Sea display a general increase between 6 and 3.5 ka BP, which is disrupted by several distinct drops, one of them at 4.2e4 ka BP (Frumkin and Elitzur, 2002; Migowski et al., 2006). At the same time, aridification about 4 ka BP in the southern Levant is inferred from the geomorphology of wadis in Jordan (Cordoba et al., 2005) and in the plains around the Dead Sea (Donahue et al., 1997). On the whole, the difficulties encountered in the search for a generalized baseline of climate history of the southern Levant can be related to a highly complex physical geography of the region. A more correct way to treat the environmental development of the southern Levant may involve a subdivision of the entire territory into several units with individual climate scenarios. This, in turn, will depend on the progress in investigations of local paleoclimate archives in the future. As mentioned above, the so-called 4.2 ka event and its function as a trigger of urban demise in the Near East have been controversially discussed over the last two decades (Weiss et al., 1993; Dalfes et al., 1997; Marro and Kuzucuoǧlu, 2007). Paleoclimate records are still insufficient to provide a clear picture of the scale and spatial impact of this occurrence (Finne et al., 2011). Several marine and coastal sediment sequences display an anomaly at 4.2 ka BP (Cullen et al., 2000; Staubwasser et al., 2003; Arz et al., 2006;

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Fig. 3. Bar diagrams showing the aquifer areas (top) and sum watercourse lengths (bottom) within the buffer zones around the sites. (a) and (d) e the whole study region, (b) and (e) - Upper Mesopotamia, (c) and (f) - the southern Levant. Whiskers show the standard deviation, the legend in (bef) is as in (a).

Edelman-Furstenberg et al., 2009). Continental proxy records suggest in fact a series of drought events on the background of a longterm aridification trend in upper Mesopotamia and the central Fertile Crescent with the onset at about 4.4 ka BP (Marro and Kuzucuolu, 2007). In the southern Levant, apart from the waterlevel drop in the Dead Sea (Frumkin and Elizur, 2002; Migowski et al., 2006), event-like signals about 4.2e4 ka BP are less pronounced (Bar-Matthews et al., 1997; Bar-Matthews, 2014) or completely absent (Verheyden et al., 2008). By and large, the 4.2 event in the Near East can be considered as an about 300-years long climate shift, to which precipitation-sensitive continental sectors of the region responded earlier and more dramatic than the shore areas, which are generally better supplied by moisture (Roberts et al., 2011). The observed changes in site-aquifer relationships at the EBAMBA transition can be explained in terms of the climate change mentioned above. In general, the greater distance of the northern parts of the Fertile Crescent to the Mediterranean Sea and the lower occurrence of aquifers in this domain compared to the southern Levant (Fig. 1a) suggest principal differences in sensitivity to moisture deficit between these two regions. The desiccation trend about 4.2 ka BP could have made this gradient even stronger. As a consequence, upper Mesopotamia with a number of northern Levantine sites may have become faster and more desperately dependent on additional and/or alternative water resources than the southern Levant. It appears likely that the availability of groundwater in non-coastal locations rapidly grew in importance at that time. Although a detailed analysis of the river network and its dynamics in the region is beyond the scope of this study, the fact that the length of water courses within the buffer zones does not show a change for upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant during the EBA-MBA-transition, but does show for the southern Levant deserves mention. It is attributable to the high and practically immediate responsiveness of rivers, especially those with relatively restricted catchments, to changes in atmospheric moisture (Meirovich et al., 1998; Rimmer and Salingar, 2006; Soulsby and Tetzlaff, 2008). In the course of climate change, small rivers could

have progressively desiccated and lost their importance as a water resource. Such a situation was very likely for the southern Levant, because the majority of sites under consideration are placed in mountain valleys with comparatively small and dynamic catchments. A more substantiated explanation can be expected from a differentiated investigation of the hydrography of the region (for example, differentiating between perennial, periodic and episodic rivers). As remarked above, besides the climate, other environmental agents have been suggested in literature as governing forces in the late EBA crisis: earthquakes (Schaeffer, 1948), volcanic activities (Weiss et al., 1993; Zielinski, 2000) and a cosmic airburst event (Courty and Coqueugniot, 2013). At the current stage of our study, we do not offer their analysis. There could have been a relationship between these factors and historical developments, however, it appears unlikely that their role in the settlement-aquifer connection has been greater than the role of climate. 4.3. Non-environmental explanatory options Although the desiccating environmental trend can adequately explain the differences in the aquifer geography in the EBA and MBA periods, it is conceivable that the shift in site-aquifer relationship could have had non-environmental triggers as well. Here we offer three further interpretations, which, however, do not exhaust the whole list of explanatory possibilities. (a) Increase in strategic (military) significance of groundwater. Groundwater represented a critical survival resource for urban centers in the ancient Near East, especially in times of war. Underground constructions of highly complex design were created below the cities in different periods to supply the inhabitants with drinking water in case of siege (Issar, 1990, Issar and Zohar, 2007; Reich and Shukron, 2003, 2010; Bagg, 2012). Compared to the Early Bronze Age, the use of wells inside the fortification walls in upper Mesopotamia during the Middle Bronze Age appears to have been more common (Wilkinson, 2003). The stronger adherence to

Fig. 4. Maps showing the distribution of sites with and without aquifers, top - the Early Bronze Age, bottom - the Middle Bronze Age. Bar diagrams illustrate the percentages of sites with and without aquifers for Upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant and the southern Levant.

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aquifers may have been a response of the society to deteriorating political situation. It appears likely that an urban crisis such as the one in upper Mesopotamia about the end of the 3rd millennium BCE e whether under changing environmental conditions or not e could have been followed by measures to strengthen the military resistance of the cities. The reverse trend in the southern Levant is more difficult to explain from the point of view of strategic importance of groundwater. It is noticeable, however, that the systems of underground water supply became highly sophisticated in this region during the MBA (Peleg, 2001; Bagg, 2012). If the groundwater level was not available directly under the settlement, the wells were extended by tunnels and galleries to the next spring (Issar, 2001). These technological advances could warrant a secure water supply even from relatively scarce underground sources and thus declamp the dependence of settlements on productive aquifers. (b) Changes in the subsistence strategy. One of the prominent features of the EBA-MBA transitional period was an increase of pastoral nomadism (Buggellati, 1992; Weiss et al., 1993; Weiss, 2011; Akkermanns and Schwarz, 2003; Weippert, 1988). In a situation of political vacuum after the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, a new ethnic group broadly known as ‘Amorites’ took control of the Upper Mesopotamian plains (Porter, 2007). According to textual sources, the Amorites were steppe people “ignorant of grain” and threatening southern Mesopotamia, especially during the Ur III period (Sallaberger, 2007). They may have migrated from the western side of the Euphrates where they lived during the EBA or represented an offspring of the former urban population of the Akkadian empire (Sallaberger, 2007). The subsistence of the Amorites was based presumably on sheepbreeding (Ryder, 1993). Since pastoral nomadism is dependent on water springs scattered over long distances in the landscape, aquifer territories may have become more advantageous and secure for living. Independently of climate change, a shift from sedentary agriculture to pastoralism could have led to a preferential nucleation of new urban life on or close to aquifers. This would, however, not explain the reduction of settlements on aquifers in the southern Levant where similar changes in subsistence strategies have been noted starting in the final EBA phase (Weippert, 1988; Horwitz, 1989). The generally low amount of settlements in this area at this time makes a more comprehensive analysis difficult. (c) Changes in the hygienic requirements for water quality. One of the ecological consequences of the urban crisis at the EBAMBA transition e whatever its trigger e could have been deterioration of drinking water quality. Sewage of overpopulated areas, warfare and epidemics often increased the risk of water contamination in antiquity (Chew, 2001; Vuorinen et al., 2007). Obviously, surface waters are usually substantially more exposed to potential pollutants than groundwater. Because of relatively long turnover times of water in aquifers, filtering and absorbing capacity of soils and sediments (Langguth and Voigt, 2004; Poehls and Smith, 2009), groundwater represents usually (although not always) a relatively safe drinking water source (WHO, 2004). For this reason, the fact that the MBA settlements show a comparatively strong link to aquifers can reflect a response of the society to a deterioration of health-related aspects of urban life, which is likely to have had taken place under the EBA-MBA transitional stress. Again, this argument would not explain the patterns visible in the southern Levant. In

addition, it should be remembered that the settlements in the north of the Levant are often larger in size than in its south. The smaller settlement size could thus have served as a complementary drinking-water safety factor in the southern Levant.

4.4. Combined explanatory options When explaining the shift in the settlement-aquifer spatial patterns during the EBA-MBA transition, a clear differentiation between natural and human-induced causes is not always possible. An increase in the importance of aquifers could have been related to environmental change, which in turn may have been triggered by man. Three examples are provided to illustrate the possibility of such feedback explanatory options. (a) Human-induced vegetation change. A series of works provide evidence that anthropogenic deforestation occurred at different localities of the Near East in the mid-Holocene (Deckers and Riehl, 2007; Riehl and Marinova, 2008; Deckers and Pessin, 2010; Roberts et al., 2011). Forest clearance always changes the water regime of an ecosystem but its consequences for groundwater balance can differ dramatically. In the absence of interception of meteoric water by forest canopy, the general water yield of the catchment and groundwater recharge increase (Verry, 1987). However, the sum effect of different factors (microclimate, geology, land use etc.) on groundwater can be exactly the opposite € m, 1995; Wood, 2011). Frequent water shortages in (Sandstro the Near Eastern landscapes after deforestation could have forced their inhabitants to place a special emphasis on reliable access to aquifer water in the urban management. (b) Salinization of soils due to excessive irrigation. Another explanatory option for the EBA-MBA shift in settlementaquifer relationships is the possibility of soil salinization at that time. Although irrigation in arid regions is suggested to solve the problems of food supply in a relatively short time, in today's world numerous instances of incorrect irrigation practice exist. If the quantity of irrigation water is insufficient to satisfy both the plant requirements and the soil leaching requirements to keep the concentration of salts in the root zone under control, salinization processes are very likely to take place (Abrol et al., 1988; Tanji and Kielen, 2002; FAO, 2011). As a result, vast areas of formerly fertile land can become completely unsuitable for agriculture. In addition the quality of drinking water from wells deteriorates (Tanji and Kielen, 2002). A hypothesis that soil salinization could contribute to the urban crisis in the late EBA has been put forward more than half a century ago (Jacobsen and Adams, 1958) and repeatedly considered later on as one of the possible reasons for the economic and political transformations (Adams, 1981; Jacobsen, 1982; Artzy and Hillel, 1988; Wilkinson, 2003; Altaweel, 2008, 2013). A rigorous verification of this hypothesis remains difficult: the concentration of salts in soils around the sites could have changed during the last 4 ka, because the dynamics of soil salinity can be comparatively high (years to decades) depending on the combination of bioclimatic and pedological characteristics (Gardner et al., 1992; Bockheim and Gennadiev, 2009; Danierhan et al., 2013). However, it seems plausible that salinization could have played a role in the restructuring of settlement-aquifer patterns at the EBAMBA boundary.

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(c) Human perception of environmental change and resilience options. Faust and Ashkenazy (2007) reconstruct the EB II-III settlement decline along the coastal plain of modern Israel to have been caused by increased precipitation and flooding events. Such a pattern is also visible in the geographic distribution of the sites considered here. During the EBA relatively few sites are directly located along the coast, contrasting the MBA locations of settlements proportionally more frequently situated close to the coastline, and placed altogether in a region with modern mean annual precipitation between 500 and 800 mm (Fig. 4). Most of these sites (Tel Nami, Tell Yoqneam, Tell Taannach and ‘Afula) are not located on aquifers which would explain the decreasing proportion of sites on aquifers during the MBA in the southern Levant. For the MBA settlers of this region, the presence of an option to move settlements into the coastal areas with higher rainfall may have minimized the importance of aquifers in contrast to inland regions. With this possibility in mind, the increased aquifer area calculated for sites on aquifers fits well an interpretation of the patterns to reflect climatically increased aridity as reported in the palaeoclimate proxy records. A shift of MBA settlements towards the coast would also explain the decreasing water course lengths within the 20 km buffer zones (Fig. 3f). 5. Conclusions and outlook (1) The potential role of groundwater in the EBA-MBA transition in the Near East has not received particular attention up to now. In this study, we have performed a spatial analysis of the aquifer geography and the locations of EBA and MBA sites in the eastern Mediterranean. The intersect of the areas of principal aquifers with 5, 10 and 20 km buffer zones around the ancient settlements was calculated. A comparative consideration revealed regional differences in the settlement-aquifer geographic relationships. Specifically, for upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant, the proportion of aquifer-related settlements (located on aquifers or less than 20 km close to them) in the MBA is substantially higher that in the EBA. By contrast, the same proportion in the southern Levant shows a one-third decrease at the transition from EBA to MBA. The sum length of surface water flows around the sites in upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant does not profoundly change from EBA to MBA, whereas in the southern Levant it seems to have experienced a reduction. (2) We do not offer an ultimate interpretation to these findings here but rather argue that multiple explanatory options exist. The regional differences in the dynamics of settlementaquifer linkage during the EBA-MBA transition are attributable to the climatic gradient from the coastal to more continental territories. It appears likely that the stronger connection of the MBA sites to aquifers in upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant reflects a response of the society to the mid-Holocene aridification trend, documented by a number of proxy records throughout the Near East. The southern Levant might have been less sensitive to moisture deficits. Moreover, the technical progress in tunnel engineering might have improved the access to aquifers with low productivity. At the same time, alternative, not climatebased, ways to explain the observations can be suggested, such as an increase of the strategic importance of groundwater in warfare, changes in subsistence strategy or hygienic requirements to water. Furthermore, feedback explanatory possibilities, combining environmental and non-

9

environmental triggers, can be proposed: for example, human-induced vegetation changes or soil salinization through excessive irrigation. (3) The geographical relationships between ancient settlements and aquifers shown in this work highlight the potential of spatial analysis for archaeological science and on the other hand raise new questions for future research. In particular, the following issues deserve consideration. - First, we offered a generalized picture of aquifer geography, without analyzing low-productive aquifers and subtypes of productive aquifers. Further, only the sites available in one database were analyzed. It is obvious that a more complex linkage can emerge from a more detailed consideration. - Second, this study is based on the modern aquifer geography and productivity. Although these features are controlled by the geological structure of the region, which for most part remains unchanged on timescales of millions of years, the correspondence between modern and past groundwater regimes in aquifers remains to be established. - A comprehensive archaeological reappraisal of the explanatory options proposed for the findings in this study has to be conducted. Such an investigation, taking into account a detailed history of a single site or a group of sites, local natural archives, textual sources and other relevant data, will help in understanding the role of groundwater in the societal developments of the past. Acknowledgements We thank the German Research Foundation for financial support (Ri 1193/6-2). Further, sincere thankfulness goes to Dr. Heike €nder (Hohenheim University, Germany) Weippert and Sonja Maila for their support with GIS application. Particular thanks are due to the reviewer whose suggestions resulted in substantial improvement of the manuscript. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.02.005. References Abay, E., 2007. Southeastern Anatolia after the early Bonze age: collapse or continuity? A case study from the Karababa Dam area. In: Kuzucuoǧlu, C., Marro, C.  te s Humaines et Changement Climatique  me (Eds.), Socie a la Fin du Troisie naire: Une Crise A-t-elle eu Lieu en Haute Me sopotamie?, Varia Anatolica. Mille 19. Diffusion De Boccard, Paris, France, pp. 403e413. Abrol, I.P., Yadav, J.S.P., Massoud, F.I., 1988. Salt-affected Soils and Their Management. FAO Soils Bulletin No. 39, Rome. Adams, R.M., 1981. Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 363. Akkermans, P.M.M.G., Schwartz, G.M., 2003. The Archaeology of Syria. From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (Ca. 16000e300 BC). Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U. K, p. 467. Alley, W.A., Healy, R.W., LaBaugh, J.W., Reilly, T.E., 2002. Flow and storage in groundwater systems. Science 296, 1985e1990. Altaweel, M., 2008. Investigating agricultural sustainability and strategies in northern Mesopotamia: results produced using a socio-ecological modeling approach. J. Archaeol. Sci. 35, 821e835. Altaweel, M., 2013. Simulating the effects of salinization on irrigation agriculture in southern Mesopotamia. In: Wilkinson, T.J., Gibson, M., Christiansen, J., Widell, M. (Eds.), Models of Mesopotamian Landscapes: How Small-scale Processes Contributed to the Growth of Early Civilizations. Archaeopress, Oxford, pp. 219e239. Amiran, R., 1969. Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land: from its Beginnings in the Neolithic Period to the End of the Iron Age. Massada, Jerusalem. Artzy, M., Hillel, D., 1988. A defense of the theory of progressive soil salinization in ancient Mesopotamia. Geoarchaeology 3 (3), 235e238. Arz, H.W., Lamy, F., P€ atzold, J., 2006. A pronounced dry event recorded around 4.2 ka

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