Deforestation
In my previous post I mentioned the book, The Road to el-Aguzein by Veronica Seton-Willaims, the sharp-tongued participant in many digs in Palestine and Turkey before the Second World War. Among the objects of her acid observation is Dame Kathleen Kenyon; talking about the two weeks she spent working with John Garstang in Jericho in 1936 Miss Seton-Williams remarks:
While I was there we were going through eight metres of Neolithic houses. These had burnished floors covered with red and cream plaster; the whole floor was beautifully constructed, with carefully rounded corners and set on 4 to 4(sic) centimetres of limestone chippings. The buildings were made of a type of plano-convex brick of which Kathleen Kenyon later made great play when she came to work the site. Although Kathleen Kenyon's archaeological methods were impeccable, her domineering character and the behaviour of her dogs often made life at the old Institute in Regent's Park unbearable. The dogs were strays from the Battersea Dogs' Home who kept on straying, were extremely vocal and over whom she had little control, so converation when they were around was difficult.
The Road to elAguzein, p. 50
Later on in the book she makes a further unflattering reference to Kathleen Kenyon and her dogs!
Kathleen Kenyon - later Dame Kathleen Kenyon - was the archaeologist who demolished the conclusion reached by Garstang that Jericho provided clear evidence in support of the Biblical story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho. Kenyon claimed that more careful excavation revealed that the walls which Garstang attributed to the final Late Bronze city - which according to conventional chronology would be the city destroyed by the Israelites - should be dated to the end of the Early Bronze Age.
In fact, Kenyon concluded that following the end of the Early Bronze period, Jericho was deserted right through to the Iron Age and that the city which Joshua was supposed to have destroyed simply didn't exist. At the end of the Late Bronze Age Jericho was a deserted ruin and had been so for some considerable period of time.
If you have explored the Digging Up the Past website at all, you will be aware that Kenyon's result is very gratifying for us, for we believe that Joshua was at the end of Early Bronze and the Israelite invasion marks the first stage of Middle Bronze. Various names have been given to this period: MBI, Intermediate Middle Bronze, or, as Kenyon calls it, "Intermediate Early Bronze-Middle Bronze".
I need not go into the detailed arguments by which she supports her conclusion that Garstang's walls should belong to Early Bronze IV. As Ms Seton-Williams remarks, Kenyon was an archaeologist with impeccable methods and so far as I know no one disputes the accuracy of her finding. However it is another aspect of her excavations that intrigues me. I quote from her book, Digging Up Jericho.
I believe that we now have evidence that the deforestation of Palestine occurred during the Early Bronze Age, in the third millennium.
On the one hand we have the evidence of the very considerable use of timber at Jericho. Jericho was only one of a large number of towns, many of which were founded at this stage. Not only did these towns need timber for structural purposes, but those in the hill country no doubt needed to clear forests to obtain ground for agriculture. But this is not all. It is well known that deforestation leads to soil denudation; the hills of Palestine are today largely bare of soil because they have lost their forest covering. The Jericho excavations have provided evidence of erosion, very nicely dated to the third millennium.
I have already mentioned that all the tombs of the Proto-Urban period and the Early Bronze Age are found roofless. Evidence that they once were roofed comes from those in which the beginning of the curve-over of the roof survives, and from the fact that their entrances were approached by shafts. On the other hand, the tombs of the Intermediate Early Bronze-Middle Bronze period are intact. It must therefore be presumed that, at a date probably between about 2400 and 2100 BC there was sufficient erosion of the soft limestone rock into which the tombs are cut to remove at least three feet of the rock.
There is a very interesting piece of confirmatory evidence. The finds - bones and pots - of tomb K2, one of these roofless tombs of the Proto-Urban period, were found to be set in an extremely hard concretion of soil. They had literally to be chipped out of it, almost as the finds in a cave of the Palaeolithic Period have to chipped out of breccia. Professon Zeuner identified this material as gypsum, which he explained as having been desposited in the tomb owing to a gradual lowering of the water-table. A lowering of the water-table is one of the results of the erosion, which itself results from deforestation.
The date of this tomb falls within the period 3200-2900 BC and gives a terminus post for the erosion, while the fact that tombs of the Early Bronze III period have also lost their roofs shows that the main erosion did not take place until after a date of perhaps 2400 BC. A terminus ante is also neatly provided by tomb K2. Into the gypsum concretion in which the contents of the tomb were embedded was dug a tomb of the Intermediate Early Bronze-Middle Bronze period, to be dated between c. 2300 and 1900 BC. The concretion was by then so hard that the diggers of the new tomb could excavate in it a perfectly normal shaft and vaulted chamber and, as one crouched in the chamber, one could look up at the roof and see, projecting from it, the bones belonging to the earlier burial.
Therefore, at the end of the Early Bronze Age there was at Jericho a period of major erosion of the surface of the surounding slopes. It is very unlikely that this was a local occurrence only, and archaeology can show that the probable cause - urban development and the parallel needs for structural timber and for clearer fields - is found all over Palestine at this period. It thus seems probable that it was the Early Bronze Age, the first period of widespread urban development, that created the modern physical appearance of Palestine. it is even not beyond the bounds of possibility that the resultant drastic erosion of soil, which the evidence of Jericho suggests took place within a few hundred years, may have so weakened the economy of the cities as to render them easy victims to the invaders who apear in the next chapter of the history of the country.
Digging Up Jericho, p. 184, 185
Dame Kathleen appears a little confused in her thinking, for in the last paragraph quoted above she states that "at the end of the Early Bronze Age" there was significant erosion, while in the first paragraph she is equally definite that the erosion took place during the Early Bronze Age. I think that she means that the erosion took place after the Early Bronze Age, but as a consequence of activities that took place during the Early Bronze.
I would also question her assertion that "at least three feet of the rock" was eroded away in the short interval between Early Bronze and Middle Bronze. The figure of three feet comes from her assumption that these tombs were buried as deeply as other similar tombs, but it is impossible to say what was eroded away or how much was eroded. Even if we allow the figure of three feet, it is far more likely that the material eroded was hard-packed soil rather than limestone, however soft.
We may also question her analysis of the causes of this erosion. That it was caused by deforestation is highly likely, but reasons other than an insatiable demand for timber are quite possible. For example, the demise of the famous Cedars of Lebanon is not down to too great demand for wood, but rather to the introduction of goats - voracious feeders that devour the young cedar seedlings before they have a chance to grow into maturity. The result is that no new cedars have grown up and the old ones have gradually succumbed to old age.
However in the case of Palestine we do have a documentary record of what caused the deforestation of which Miss Kenyon complains.
The people of Joseph said to Joshua, "Why have you allotted us only one portion of land and one share for an inheritance? We are a numerous people, and the Lord has blessed us abundantly."
"If you are so numerous," Joshua answered, "and if the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites."
The people of Joseph replied, "The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have chariots fitted with iron, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel."
But Joshua said to the tribes of Joseph – to Ephraim and Manasseh – "You are numerous and very powerful. You will have not only one portion of land allotted to you but the forested hill country as well. Clear it, and its farthest limits will be yours; though the Canaanites have chariots fitted with iron and though they are strong, you can drive them out."
Joshua 17:14-18
Owing to their inability to permanently conquer the Canaanites, who were already in occupation of the best land in the fertile plains and valleys, the Israelites were commanded to get up into the hills and clear the forests. In other words, it was not the Early Bronze period people who required significant new areas for agriculture, but the invading Israelites.
The result is seen at Jericho, where the topsoil that covered many of the Early Bronze Age tombs was eroded away, filling in the cavities of the tomb chambers with silt or percolating through the thin limestone to leave thick deposits of gypsum. In this regard I think we can dismiss Kenyon's claim that wood was taken for building purposes.
Limestone erosion can be greatly speeded up by increasing the acidity of the water running over it. Carbon-dioxide, one source of which is burning wood, combines with water to form carbonic acid, which reacts with the calcite (calcium carbonate) in limestone to form calcium bicarbonate. If the forests of Palestine were cut down to provide rafters and furniture for the houses of Jericho, the wood would not produce carbon dioxide. However if large numbers of trees were cut down and burned - as would happen when land was being cleared for agriculture - significant amounts of carbon dioxide would be produced that might, indeed, speed up the erosion of limestone.
From the point of view of our belief that the Middle Bronze people were the Israelites, it is interesting that page 186 is the start of a new chapter dealing with that period and the title of the chapter is, "Nomadic Invaders". I shall comment on that in a later post.
© Kendall K. Down 2014
