Archaeological Remains from the Medieval Islamic Occupation of the Northwest Negev Desert

Abstract

Test excavations and a regional surface survey in the vicinity of Tell Jemmeh, in the northwestern Negev Desert, revealed a previously undocumented Mamluk occupation. Investigations focused on one room of a small peasant house that was built of recycled Byzantine architectural elements. It contained gray and red ware ceramics of a pottery industry whose roots were early Islamic in northern Palestine and Jordan and which continue to the present in Gaza. Burnished, handmade cooking vessels, painted and glazed wares, and an assortment of coins, ornamental objects, and animal bones were also recovered. Similar sites found widely dispersed along the Wadi Ghazza and its tributaries demonstrated a resurgence of small peasant communities after the post-Byzantine depopulation. Historical and ethnographic data indicate that those communities must have existed within the sociopolitical sphere of local bedouin tribes.

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