Annette M Hansen

A.M. Hansen, B.J. Walker, F.B.J. Heinrich. Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie 56 (2017): pp. 58-69. In this paper we present the results of the archaeobotanical analysis of impressions of plant remains encountered in the profile and on the surface of clay fragments of ṭāwabīn. The fragments originate from Mamluk contexts at the site of Tall Hisban located in southern Bilad as-Sham (modern Jordan and Palestine). This study models the formation process of the botanical component of the ṭābūn as a context and explores the underlying processes explaining the presence of the different kinds of impressions. After providing a description of the ṭābūn and consulting historical and ethnographic descriptions, we present our model and interpret the results of the archaeobotanical analysis through it. Furthermore, the archaeobotanical data obtained from the analysis of ṭābūn fragments helps contribute to the knowledge of the Tall Hisban food economy. The importance of barley at the site during this period is not only reflected through ṭābūn fragments, but more importantly are proxies for economic activities in the village.

Over the past decades, the disciplinary boundaries between Roman history and archaeology have begun to fade, as archaeological proxy data started playing an important role in studying socioeconomic processes and phenomena. This is especially true for several key debates such as those on Roman economic performance, diet and nutrition, and migration and mobility. More recently, archaeological sciences, such as stable isotope studies, have increasingly started contributing to these debates too. This paper is aimed at reviewing the valuable contributions stable isotope studies can make to these debates from the economic historian’s perspective and focuses on the interpretative side of such studies: what sort of economic meaning is attributed to certain results? It will be ascertained that there sometimes seems to be a divergence between the interpretations made by isotope experts and what many economic historians would conclude. The main cause for this lies in differences in the underlying assumptions as to the working and performance of ancient economies. We will provide examples where the same isotope results can be interpreted completely differently by switching between sets of underlying assumptions. We will argue that greater interaction between economic historians and stable isotope experts is desirable so as to avoid the emergence of parallel debates and to facilitate the construction of stronger, well-integrated narratives.

DOI of Vol. XX: 10.6082/M1J10184. See http://hdl.handle.net/11417/727 to download the full volume or individual articles. See http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/msr.html for more information about copyright and open access. 10.6082/M1H1304R http://hdl.handle. net/11417/736 Did the Mamluks Have an Environmental Sense?: Natural Resource Management in Syrian Villages University of Groningen University of Sheffield Annette Hansen Chiara Corbino Did the Mamluks Have an Environmental Sense?

Project Description:

This project aims to reconstruct the development of the agricultural economy in Islamic Jordan between the 6th and 16th centuries, through the lens of intertwined choices for technologies, crops and other innovations against the background of political, cultural and demographic developments.

First a model will be constructed in which the factors that determine a crop and practice-choices are related. This will be done using available data on local climate and geography as well as data on crop requirements and performance parameters, but also with incorporation of known ancient and medieval farming practices and technologies. Then, the model will be tested using two main types of data: 1.) Arabic textual sources, such as farming manuals and administrative documents, some of which will be for the first time be translated by the candidate, and 2.) archaeobotanical data (both published and to be collected) from archaeological sites in Jordan and can then be used to interpret the observed changes in crop and practice-choices. Part of this material will be collected by the candidate in person at the Tall Hisban excavation site in Jordan.

The interdisciplinary combination of textual and archaeobotanical evidence make the proposed research the first genuinely interdisciplinary approach to Jordanian Islamic agriculture, with not only the potential to resolve a current debate on the nature of economic development in the Islamic Empires at large, but will also shed a new light on the agricultural component of the Roman-Byzantine/Islamic transition and allow for cross-period comparisons. To this effort it would contribute a large, homogenous and well-evidenced case study stretching over one thousand years.

Title: Introduction to Archaeobotany, Seminar and Laboratory Practical

18/03/2016: ASK Spring School – “Environmental Methods in Mamluk and Islamic Studies”.
(Venues: 15-17/3/2016 - Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg “History and Society during the Mamluk Era, 1250-1517”, Heussallee 18-24; 14 and 18/3/2016 – Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology, 7 Brühler Strasse)

07/03/2016 -  Fellows’ Seminar, 4:00-6:00 pm

Annette Hansen (University of Groningen) and Chiara Corbina (Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow, University of Sheffield): Collaborative research: Agriculture and Animal Husbandry in Mamluk Syria

(Venue: Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg “History and Society during the Mamluk Era, 1250-1517”, Heussallee 18-24)