Extensification in a Mediterranean semi-arid marginal zone: An archaeological case study from Early Iron Age Jordan's Eastern Karak Plateau

• Reasons for extensification into marginal lands are unpredictable.
• The Early Iron Age Eastern Karak Plateau witnessed an episode of extensification.
• Producers were organized in nucleated settlements positioned along canyon edges.
• Producers practiced a low-intensity agro-pastoral system dependent on riparian zones.
• The Early Iron Age system differed from later systems on the Eastern Karak Plateau.

The extensification of agricultural systems into marginal lands is a common response to environmental, economic, and political pressures for more cultivable land. Yet the course that extensification takes in particular instances is unpredictable given the choices available to producers. This article investigates an instance of extensification during the late second millennium BCE on the semi-arid Eastern Karak Plateau in west-central Jordan. Architectural, faunal, and archaeobotanical evidence is presented from Khirbat al-Mudayna al-'Aliya, one of several communities that participated in an extensified settlement system on the edge of the Wadi al-Mujib and its tributaries. Producers practiced agriculture and pastoralism in a low-intensity subsistence economy that supported a nucleated settlement of households. Faunal analysis determined goats were kept, and wild animals supplemented diets. Archaeobotanical analysis of charred plant remains from storage bins in a building destroyed by fire indicated that barley was stored in a semi-processed state and that harvesting by uprooting was practiced, thus resulting in the maximization of the straw harvest. The riparian zone beneath the settlement was a key venue for subsistence activities. This Early Iron Age example contrasts with later episodes of extensification whose settlement systems were more dispersed and agro-pastoralist regime more integrated.

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