Clearing Land for Farmland and Fuel in the Ancient Near East

In a wooded region, clearing land of trees is probably the simplest way to expand farmland and provide fuel for a growing population. As long as there is sufficient wooded land people will be able to collect fuel. As land clearance proceeds, it will take more effort to collect fuel. Vegetation Joss may lead to a permanent drop in the water table, increased runoff and wind erosion, and loss of seed sources for vegetation renewal. Such processes ultimately transform the landscape. Continued disturbance may eventually necessitate changes in settlement, agricultural production, and fuel procurement. These forces are clearly at work in today's world, but dramatic changes in the landscape are by no means restricted to modern times. For example, a recent study of environmental change in the southwestern United States showed that periodic abandonment of Anasazi villages resulted from the depletion of fuel resources near settlements, and that local changes induced by tree cutting, along with population growth, may eventually have led to agricultural intensification (Kobler and Matthews 1988). Land clearance can have a variety of effects, many of which leave traces in the archaeological record. In the Near East, people have been actively modifying the vegetation formillennia (Kohler-Rollefson 1988; Miller 1991). The pace of change probably quickened during times of population expansion in areas of intensive settlement, and the third millennium B .C. was such a time. Although it is difficult to date episodes of land clearance, we can use several lines of evidence to trace landscape change, including texts (Rowton 1967; Hansman 1976) and sedimentology (Diester-Haass 1973; Ntitzel 1976). AlthoughDiester-Haass attributes increased sedimentation in the Gulf to climate changes, one can easily imagine that deforestation in the Tigris-Euphrates drainage caused increased runoff and erosion. Archaeological and pollen evidence discussed below yields further evidence of deforestation. Wood was cut primarily to create agricultural fields and to provide fuel for domestic and industrial 71 purposes. As trees were cut down near settlements, the composition of the woodlands changed, and alternative fuel sources were used more frequently. Detailed paleoethnobotanical analysis atMalyan, an urban centerin the highlands of southern Iran, illustrates the environmental implications of an increased demand for fuel. Preliminary paleoethnobotanical results from Kurban Hoyiik, a small town in southeastern Turkey, suggest a similar pattern of tree cutting (Fig. 1). Since fuel remains from archaeological sites reflect local vegetation and plant use, one can assess the degree of environmental disturbance caused …