How Ancient Man First Utilized the Rivers in the Desert

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In Rivers in the Desert, the famous American archaeologist and rabbi Nelson Glueck reported the results of his archaeological site survey in the Negev Desert from 1952 to 1964. Glueck himself explains the allure that drew him to this work: “A blank space on a historical map is a constant challenge to the explorer and archaeologist. Its emptiness disturbs him. What role, if any, did it play in the development of civilization? … “Every area on the face of the earth, be it seemingly ever so waste and empty, has a story behind it which the inquisitive sooner or […]

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Footnotes

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) are the scholarly alternate designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D.

As I later learned, David Alon had visited the site around 1950. He called it Geomaise, which in Arabic means sycamore. This was the name the local Bedouin had given to an old Turkish well located about one half mile upstream from the site. Although there are no sycamore trees in the immediate vicinity of the site, one lone sycamore still thrives near the Geomaise well. We decided to retain the name Alon had given to the site, but translated into Hebrew—thus Shiqmim (sycamores).

The Haganah was the underground self-defense organization of Jews formed in Palestine in 1920, during Ottoman rule; it continued to operate during British rule until, when the state of Israel was created in 1948, it became the regular army of Israel.

Since 1987, this project has been sponsored by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Israel Antiquities Authority (formerly called the Israel Department of Antiquities), and supported by grants from the United States National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society and the C. Paul Johnson Charitable Foundation. The excavation is affiliated with the American Schools of Oriental Research.

In some areas of the northern Negev where the salt accumulation layer is as little as 12–16 inches below the surface shallow plowing that doesn’t reach the salt layer is preferable to deep plowing.

Endnotes

Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert—A History of the Negev (New York: Norton, 1968), p. ix.

Philip J. King, American Archaeology in the Mideast—A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987), p. 97.

W. James Judge, James I. Ebert and Robert K. Hitchcock, “Sampling in Regional Archaeological Survey,” in Sampling in Archaeology, ed. James W. Mueller (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1975), pp. 82–123. Surveys had been conducted in the region by Eann Macdonald, David Alon, Dan Gazit, Rudolph Cohen, Ram Gophna Yohanan Aharoni and others prior to the mid-1970s.

David Alon and Thomas E. Levy, “Preliminary Note on the Distribution of Chalcolithic Sites on the Wadi Beersheva and Lower Wadi Besor Drainage System,” Israel Exploratzon Journal 30 (1980) pp. 140–147; Levy and Alon, “Chalcolithic Settlement Patterns in the Northem Negev Desert,” Current Anthropology 24 (1983), pp. 105–107.

Levy and Alon, “Settlement Pattems Along the Nahal Beersheva-Lower Nahal Besor: Models of Subsistence in the Northem Negev,” in Shiqmim I, ed. Levy, Intemational Series 356 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1987), pp. 45–138.

Paul Goldberg, “The Geology and Stratigraphy of Shiqmim,” in Levy, Shiqmim I, pp. 35–43.

Arlene Rosen, “Phytolith Studies at Shiqmim,” in Levy, Shiqmim I, pp. 243–249.

Charles L. Redman, The Rise of Civilization—From Early Farmers to Urban Society in the Ancient Near East (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1978), p. 268; Andrew Sherratt, “Plough and Pastoralism: Aspects of the Secondary Products Revolution,” in Patterns of the Past: Studies in Honour of David Clarke, ed. Ian Hodder, Glenn Isaac and Normand Hammond (Cambridge, UK Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 261–305.

Sheratt, “Plough and Pastoralism The Secondary Exploitation of Animals in the Old World,” World Archaeology 15 (1983), pp. 90–104.

10.

Similar camps have been excavated by Isaac Gilead and Yuval Goren in the sand dune areas south of the Nahal Beersheva where spring pasture is available each year. See Goren and Gilead “Qualemary Environment and Man at Nahal Sekher, Northern Negev,” Mitekufat Haeven 19 (1986), pp. 66–79.