Introduction

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Background - South Levant in the Iron Age

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  • Different interpretations of settlement dynamics in IA II
  • Local kingdoms in IA I-IIA, then Assyrian conquest in VIII cent. BCE
  • Narratives of Samaria and Judah as examples of the destructive nature of the Assyrian Empire
After Palmisano et al. (2019); Sharon (2013); Mazar (2011)
Arch. Periodization Dating (BC)
Iron Age I 1150-980
Iron Age IIa 980-830
Iron Age IIb 830-720
Iron Age IIc 720-539
Iron Age III 539-333

Research Questions

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  • RQ 1: What are the long-term demographic trends of the two sub-regions of Samaria and Judah and how they are related to climatic fluctuations?

  • RQ 2: How can a long-term approach contribute to the ongoing debate on the Iron Age historical trajectories of the two sub-regions?

Aims

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  • Reconstruct demographic fluctuations and the sub-regional level over a long range (6500-2200 BP)
  • Evaluate cycles of climate-population relations
  • Tackle the current debate on the Iron Age dynamics in the region
  • Recently published as Titolo and Palmisano (2026)

Data and Methods

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Data

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  • Smaller subset (6500-2200 BP)
  • 3153 arch. sites and 6331 site-phases
  • 1378 radiocarbon dates
  • 4 Paleoclimate proxies
  • Limitations: temporal uncertainty, data distribution and quality

Methods

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  • Probabilistic methods to account for data limitation:

Results and Discussion

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Archaeo-demographic Proxies

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  • Combined SPDs and cKDE (Crema 2022; McLaughlin 2019)
  • “Booms and busts”:
    • Positive trend in Chalcolithic, EBA, and Iron Age
    • Negative trend in MBA (from 4300 BP)
  • The drop after 2700 BP is likely artificial - Hallstat Plataeu (Plicht 2004)

Regional Variations

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  • Permutation Test (Crema et al. 2016)
  • Measures the sub-regional divergences from the regional curve, accounting for sample size
  • SPDs do not show any difference between Samaria and Judah
  • Statistically significant deviations only in EBA

Multi-proxy results

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  • Archaeo-demographic proxies generally agree on most parts of the investigated time-frame
  • Samaria: population booms in Chalcolithic and EBA I-II, decline in EBA II-III, stagnation in IBA and peak in MBA II
  • Judah: After cycles between Chalcolithic and EBA II, gradual decline until MBA II. Closer to SPDs.
  • Both: increase in IA I, decline during IA II-III, with different timings

Paleoclimate and Demography

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  • Cyclical relationship
  • Five 750-year regular cycles from 6250 to 2500 BP
  • First four shows positive correlation between climate and population
  • Final cicle (3250–2500 BP) displays a negative correlation (decoupling)

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Discussion - Climate and Population

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  • What are the long-term demographic trends of the two sub-regions of Samaria and Judah and how they are related to climatic fluctuations?
  • Cyclical correlations, but climatic conditions are likely not the only explanation
  • Hinted by the generally low correlations

Discussion - Climate and Population

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Region 5.2k 4.2k 3.2k
Samaria moderate severe negligible
Judah moderate severe negligible


  • 5.2k: moderate effect, higher societal resilience and partial mitigation from irrigation technologies (Chesson 2018)
  • 4.2k: more substantial, but gradual decline and lower resilience (Marston 2023), return to more sustainable population levels, not a sudden collapse
  • 3.2k: minor effects, population increase and clear decoupling

Discussion - The Iron Age II

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  • How can a long-term approach contribute to the ongoing debate on the Iron Age historical trajectories of the two sub-regions?
  • Samaria: decline in ∼2670 BP less substantial than what usually described
  • Imperial settlement restructure after kingdom of Israel
  • Context: occupation of specific regions (“islands of control”) and ruralization

Discussion - The Iron Age II

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  • How can a long-term approach contribute to the ongoing debate on the Iron Age historical trajectories of the two sub-regions?
  • Judah: more gradual growth (∼ 2600 BP) and later, but more substantial decline, combination of:
  • Settlement expansion, imperial control of the arabian trade, political stability
  • High-risk high-gain local economy, and “overshoot” (Cumming and Peterson 2017; Marston 2023; Roberts 2021)

Conclusions

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Conclusions

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  • The sub-regional lens coupled with a high-quality dataset can reveal more nuanced patterns than a regional analysis
  • The multiproxy approach reveals positive cycles of climate-settlement relations, until the decoupling in the Iron Age
  • The decline visible in Samaria is nowhere near the scenario of desolation depicted by a certain biblical narrative

Conclusions

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Next Steps:

  • Long-term settlement patterns and systems (in preparation)
    • Aspects of centralisation, spatial distribution, and political integration
  • Adaptive Cycles models within Resilience theory framework

References

Chesson, M. S. (2018). The Southern Levant During The Early Bronze Age I–III. In A. Yasur-Landau E. H. Cline and Y. M. Rowan (eds.), The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Crema, E. R. (2012). Modelling Temporal Uncertainty in Archaeological Analysis. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 19: 440–461.
Crema, E. R. (2022). Statistical Inference of Prehistoric Demography from Frequency Distributions of Radiocarbon Dates: A Review and a Guide for the Perplexed. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 1387–1418.
Crema, E. R., Habu, J., Kobayashi, K. and Madella, M. (2016). Summed Probability Distribution of 14C Dates Suggests Regional Divergences in the Population Dynamics of the Jomon Period in Eastern Japan. PLOS ONE 11: e0154809.
Cumming, G. S. and Peterson, G. D. (2017). Unifying Research on Social–Ecological Resilience and Collapse. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 32: 695–713.
Finné, M., Woodbridge, J., Labuhn, I. and Roberts, C. N. (2019). Holocene hydro-climatic variability in the Mediterranean: A synthetic multi-proxy reconstruction. The Holocene 29: 847–863.
Lawrence, D., Palmisano, A. and Gruchy, M. W. de (2021). Collapse and continuity: A multi-proxy reconstruction of settlement organization and population trajectories in the Northern Fertile Crescent during the 4.2kya Rapid Climate Change event. PLOS ONE 16: e0244871.
Marston, J. M. (2023). Modeling Resilience and Sustainability in Ancient Agricultural Systems. Journal of Ethnobiology 35: 585–605.
Mazar, A. (2011). The Iron Age Chronology Debate: Is the Gap Narrowing? Another Viewpoint. Near Eastern Archaeology 74: 105–111.
McLaughlin, T. R. (2019). On Applications of Space–Time Modelling with Open-Source 14C Age Calibration. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 26: 479–501.
Palmisano, A., Woodbridge, J., Roberts, C. N., Bevan, A., Fyfe, R., Shennan, S., Cheddadi, R., Greenberg, R., Kaniewski, D., Langgut, D., Leroy, S. A. G., Litt, T. and Miebach, A. (2019). Holocene Landscape Dynamics and Long-Term Population Trends in the Levant. Holocene, The 29: 708–727.
Plicht, J. van der (2004). Radiocarbon, the calibration curve and Scythian chronology: NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Impact of the Environments on Human Migration in Eurasia. In E. M. Scott A. Y. Alekseev and G. Zaitseva (eds.), Impact of the Environment on Human Migration in Eurasia, University of Groningen, Centre for Isotope Research, Amsterdam.
Roberts, N. (2021). Boon or Curse? The Role of Climate Change in the Rise and Demise of Anatolian Civilizations, in WINDS OF CHANGE Environment and Society in Anatolia, edited by Christopher H Roosevelt and John Haldon. pp.5–35.
Sharon, I. (2013). Levantine chronology. In Killebrew, E. and Steiner, M. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: C. 8000-332 BCE, Oxford University Press.
Titolo, A. and Palmisano, A. (2025). From Villages to Empires: Archaeological Settlements of the South Levant from the Chalcolithic to the Byzantine Period. Journal of Open Archaeology Data 13:
Titolo, A. and Palmisano, A. (2026). A tale of two regions: Cyclical human-climate interactions in the South Levant from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age (6500–2200 BP). Quaternary Science Reviews 375: 109777.