Geoarchaeology around the Early Islamic Caliph's Palace Khirbat al Minya (Irael) - Preliminary remarks

Autor

• Hans-Peter Kuhnen 
  • website
  • academia.edu
  • kuhnen [at] uni-mainz.de (email)

Institution

Institut für Altertumswissenschaften, Arbeitsbereich Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche / Biblische Archäologie, Schillerstrasse 11, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, D - 55116 Mainz / Germany

Abstract

Degradation of soils and desertification have become controversial issues in the debate about Near Eastern landscape change between Late Antiquity and the Islamic Middle Ages. The role of agriculture in this process is still poorly understood. With these aspects in mind the Institute of Ancient Studies of Mainz University returned to the 8th century caliph’s palace of Khirbat al Minya. The site served as an Early Islamic agricultural estate on the NW shore of the Lake of Galilee (Israel). It was excavated by a German expedition in the years 1932 to 1939, but no final report has appeared yet. Therefore our research focussed on the stratigraphy of the site and its geographical context. Stratigraphic soundings and corings revealed that the foundations of the palace cut into gravel deposits of Roman-Byzantine age which covered earlier building remains. At the near by lake shore site of Ginnosar similar deposits covered a 1st / 2nd century A.D. shipwreck. This seems to indicate strong erosion and deposition yet before the palace was built in the Early Islamic period. Future work will have to furnish additional dating evidence.

Literature

• Hans-Peter Kuhnen, Dated Evidence of Landscape Change around Khirbet al- Minya between the Hellenistic and the Early Islamic periods: Archaeological contributions to a field survey in geoarcheology by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz/FRG in cooperation with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In: H.-P. Kuhnen (Hsg.), Khirbat al-Minya: Der Umayyadenpalast am See Genezareth. Mit Beiträgen von F. Bloch, K. Cytryn, M. Dotterweich, J. Häser, H.-P. Kuhnen, M. Ritter, Ch. Schneider und W. Zwickel. Orient-Archäologie 36 (Rahden / Westf., 2016), 23 – 58. – idem, Khirbat al-Minya / Horvat Minim: Trial excavations in the Early Islamic Palace (License G 81/2016). Hadashot Arkheologiyot – Excavations and Surveys in Israel 2016 . www.hadashot-esi.org.il (in press).