This study employs an array of quantitative methods to analyze village agricultural practices during a time of regional urban abandonment at the end of the Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant. Coordinated cluster and canonical discriminant analyses of stratified archaeobotanical assemblages from the village of Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, Jordan support a detailed portrait of changing crop management at a sedentary agrarian community during Early Bronze IV, a period marked by widespread mobile pastoralism. Our quantified analyses of carbonized plant remains are augmented with stable isotope composition data for major cultigens to offer an innovative perspective on Early Bronze IV agrarian life in the northern Jordan Valley. Seeds from seven occupation phases spanning the time period from about 2500 to 2200 cal BC indicate increasing primary reliance on Hordeum vulgare (hulled barley), and only modest cultivation of wheat, mostly Triticum dicoccum (emmer) over this time span. Constrained incremental sum of squares (CONISS) cluster analysis and canonical discriminate analysis (CDA) illustrate significant shifts in crop cultivation, and possibly related animal management, including a major transition at about 2375 cal BC. Our analyses further highlight the most important plant taxa that contributed to these shifts. Cultivated crops, wild species and chaff are more ubiquitous in the earlier phases at Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, while percentages of H. vulgare and ubiquities of Lens culinaris (lentil) increase in the later phases. Lower seed densities, weed ubiquities and chaff to cereal ratios suggest more distant crop processing after about 2375 cal BC. Values of Δ¹³C for the major cereals, which provide a proxy for water availability, indicate dry farming of barley and preferential watering of wheat. This study proposes that a suite of changes occurred between the earlier and later phases at Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, which portray generally diminished, more remote crop production, possibly amid greater drought stress, leading to village abandonment. We illustrate a multi-faceted analytical approach suitable for interpretation of comparable archaeobotanical evidence and inference of agrarian dynamics elsewhere in prehistory.

本研究采用了一系列定量方法来分析黎凡特南部早期青铜器时代末区域城市废弃时期的乡村农业实践。约旦 Tell Abu en-Ni'aj 村的分层古植物组合的协调聚类和规范判别分析支持了青铜器 IV 早期（一个以广泛的流动畜牧业为标志的时期）久坐农业社区作物管理变化的详细描述。我们对碳化植物遗骸的量化分析增加了主要栽培种的稳定同位素组成数据，以提供有关约旦河谷北部青铜四世早期农业生活的创新视角。大麦（去壳大麦），在这段时间内只种植适度的小麦，主要是小麦（二粒小麦）。约束增量平方和 (CONISS) 聚类分析和典型判别分析 (CDA) 说明了作物种植和可能相关的动物管理的重大转变，包括公元前 2375 卡左右的重大转变。我们的分析进一步突出了促成这些转变的最重要的植物分类群。栽培作物、野生物种和谷壳在 Tell Abu en-Ni'aj 的早期阶段更为普遍，而H. vulgare 的百分比和Lens culinaris 的普遍存在（扁豆）在后期增加。较低的种子密度、杂草无处不在以及谷壳与谷类的比例表明在公元前约 2375 卡路里后进行了更远距离的作物加工。主要谷物的 Δ ¹³ C值代表了可用水量，表明大麦旱作和小麦优先浇水。这项研究提出，在 Tell Abu en-Ni'aj 的早期和后期阶段之间发生了一系列变化，这些变化描绘了普遍减少、更偏远的作物生产，可能是在更大的干旱压力下，导致村庄被遗弃。我们说明了一种多方面的分析方法，适用于解释可比的古植物证据和对史前其他地方的农业动态的推断。