The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data

Commercial production of luxury "Gaza wine" was long assumed to be the economic basis of Late Antique settlement in the Negev Desert. We present empirical evidence for local viticulture of scale and its connection to Mediterranean trade. Offering unprecedented testimony to the globalization of an ancient production economy in a marginal environment, our archaeobotanical and ceramic dataset illuminates the rise and fall of local viticulture in the fourth to sixth centuries of the common era (CE). Decline likely resulted from market contraction triggered by plague and climate change rather than Islamic conquest, exposing systemic vulnerabilities of Negev agricultural commercialization. In millennial-scale Negev history, the Late Antique commercial florescence is anomalous, lasting about two centuries before reverting to smaller settlement and survival-subsistence strategies.