Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem
The Village of Beit Mazmil, its Occupants and their Industry over Five Centuries
Edited by Bethany J. Walker
Hardback (Published)
(November 2025)
ISBN: 9781800505544
7.99 x 10 inches
Price: $120.00
In stock
Studies of Jerusalem in the post-classical periods have traditionally centered, unsurprisingly, on the Old City, isolating it from the regional setting in which it operated on a daily basis. The agricultural hinterland of Jerusalem – comprising a network of smaller settlements, agricultural terraces, fields, cisterns, watch towers, and local marketplaces that together fed the city – have not been a focus of archaeological research until very recently. Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem offers a rare glimpse into the daily life of a single rural household and its intimate, but ever-evolving, relationship with Jerusalem from the 14th through the early 20th centuries. It does so through a tightly integrated, multi-disciplinary study of the astonishingly well-preserved remains of a village in its agricultural setting, showing how both settlement and farmland developed together over time, and how these changes impacted the socio-economic development of Jerusalem during the Mamluk and Ottoman Sultanates. The life history of this place is thus written on the basis of archaeological, botanical, and geological data, all interpreted against a rich textual record of land sales, field development, conflict, and cooperation.
Table of Contents
List of Figures vii
1 On Farmsteads and Terraced Fields: The Origins of the Medieval JerusalemHinterland Project 1, Bethany J. Walker
2 Peasant Decision-Making in the Jerusalem Highlands: A Landscape Perspective 16, Yuval Gadot and Gideon Avni
3 The Earliest Settlement on Telegraph Hill 24, Benjamin J. Dolinka, Nicolò Pini, and Zubair ʿAdawī
4 Remnants of a “Feudal” Past: The Mamluk Estate 66, Benjamin J. Dolinka, Nicolò Pini, Bethany J. Walker, and Benyamin Storchan
5 The Making of a Family Farmstead: Emergence and Demise of the Ottoman ‘Ezbeh 130, Bethany J. Walker, Benjamin J. Dolinka, Nicolò Pini, Roy Marom, and Benyamin Storchan
6 Jerusalem’s Farmland Transformed: The Expansion of Agricultural Terracing 219, Omer Zeʿevi-Berger and Nitsan Ben-Melech
7 Land Use and Foodways 237
7.1: Evidence from Phytoliths 237, Sofia Laparidou and Georgia Kasapidou
7.2: The Macrobotanical Record 253, Annette M. Hansen
7.3: The Zooarchaeological Remains 306, Chiara A. Corbino
8 Market Gardening in Medieval Jerusalem 316, Bethany J. Walker
9 What Makes a Village? Social Networks and Resilience 334, Bethany J. Walker
Appendices 341
App. 1: Full site plan 342, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
App. 2: Plan of North Building of the Northern Sector 343, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
App. 3: Plan of Stratum III (pre-Mamluk) 344, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
App. 4: Plan of Stratum II (Mamluk) 345, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
App. 5: Plan of Stratum Ib (Early Ottoman) 346, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
App. 6: Plan of Stratum Ia (Late Ottoman/Mandate) 347, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
App. 7: Summaries of representative entries on Beit Mazmīl in the Jerusalem sijills 348, courtesy of Ahmad al-Ghizawat
App. 8: Chart of radiocarbon and OSL dates 358, courtesy of CologneAMS
App. 9: List of critical loci 364
App. 10: Sketchfab—access to the three-dimensional models and instruction for use 367, courtesy of Nicolò Pini
Index 369
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmil excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology.
- Edited by Bethany J. Walker
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