The potential of historical cisterns as paleoenvironmental and geoarchaeological archive: The Negev Highlands, Israel

在过去，以色列的内盖夫高地的特点是强烈的定居振荡。这些波动是否由人口、（社会）经济、政治或气候变化引起，目前仍存在争议。由于内盖夫高地缺乏适当的环境档案，并且由于从周围地区进行古环境重建的外推有问题，过去的气候变化不能作为定居活动变化的一个因素加以评价。需要建立新的沉积物档案，以便可靠地重建内盖夫高地的古环境。该地区的干旱与部分高沉降活动相结合，导致建造了大量不同类型的蓄水池来收集和储存降水。在水箱使用期间，邻近斜坡的侵蚀沉积物积聚在水箱内，并被清除以维持装置。废弃后，这些设施成为理想的沉积物捕获器，记录了未受干扰的沉积物。蓄水池内的沉积物积累具有与古环境重建高度相关的潜力。用于建设设施和维护的沉积物包含了地质考古研究的重要信息。而储水池沉积物的年龄测定对于将其作为地质考古和古环境档案至关重要。为了建立一个可靠的时间框架，光学激发发光（OSL）测年和微观形态分析的结合似乎是选择的方法，因为它们可以限制被调查装置的建造、使用和废弃的时间框架。根据这些年代地层结果，可以讨论这些设施对定居、农业活动和放牧的重要性。此外，通过沉积学、地球化学和孢粉学分析，对水库作为沉积档案的评价提供了不可缺少的信息。在这方面，该提案旨在评估水池及其沉积物作为古环境和地质考古研究的新型沉积物档案的潜力。

In the past, the Negev Highlands in Israel were characterized by strong settlement oscillations. It is still under debate, if these oscillations were caused by demographic, (socio-)economic, political or climatic variations. As a result of the lack of suitable environmental archives in the Negev Highlands and as consequence of the problematic extrapolation of palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from the surrounding areas, climate variations in the past cannot be evaluated as a factor for changes in settlement activity. New sediment archives need to be established to enable a reliable palaeoenvironmental reconstruction for the Negev Highlands. The aridity of the region in combination with the partially high settlement activity caused the construction of large numbers of cisterns of different types to collect and store precipitation. During cistern usage, the eroded sediments from adjoining slopes accumulated within the cistern and were removed to maintain the installations. After their abandonment, the installations served as ideal sediment traps with undisturbed sediment records. The sediment accumulation within the cisterns bear the potential to be of high relevance for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. The sediments removed to construct the installations and for maintenance purposes contain important information for geoarchaeological research. However, age determination of the cistern’s sediments is of crucial importance for using these sediments as geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental archives. For establishing a reliable chronological framework, a combination of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating and micromorphological analyses appears to be the method of choice, since they allow to constrain a time frame for the construction, use and abandonment of the investigated installations. Based on these chronostratigraphic results, the importance of the installations for settlements, agricultural activity and herding can be discussed. In addition, the chronostratigraphy of the cistern’s sediment refill provides information indispensable for the evaluation of water reservoirs as sedimentary archives by means of sedimentological, geochemical and palynological analyses. In this respect, the proposal aims at evaluating the potential of cisterns and their sediments as novel types of sediment archives for palaeoenvironmental and geoarchaeological research.