Ancient trash mounds unravel urban collapse a century before the end of Byzantine hegemony in the southern Levant

A century before the end of Byzantine hegemony in the southern Levant, urban collapse in the Negev Desert was triggered by societal response to rapid climate change. This is revealed through a multidisciplinary analysis of ancient trash mounds surrounding the Byzantine settlement of Elusa. The study, combining survey, excavation, sediment analysis, and geographic information system (GIS) assessment, demonstrates that organized trash collection—a proxy for high-level municipal functioning—ceased around the mid-sixth century, coinciding with the onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) and the Justinian Plague outbreak in 541 CE. Carbon dating of charred seeds and ceramic analysis established this terminal date, linking societal decline to broader urban dysfunction across the Byzantine Levant during this period. The research underscores the sensitivity of trash mounds as indicators of social response to environmental stress, shedding light on the time-space dynamics of urban collapse in frontier regions with diminished resilience.

Bar-Oz, G., Weissbrod, L., Erickson-Gini, T., Tepper, Y., Malkinson, D., Benzaquen, M., Langgut, D., Dunseth, Z. C., Butler, D. H., Shahack-Gross, R., Roskin, J., Fuks, D., Weiss, E., Marom, N., Ktalav, I., Blevis, R., Zohar, I., Farhi, Y., Filatova, A., et al. (2019). Ancient trash mounds unravel urban collapse a century before the end of Byzantine hegemony in the southern Levant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(17), 8239–8248. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900233116