Dear Colleagues,
This summer we are going into the second season of our joint
archaeological and ethnographic partnership with our Tunisian
counterparts outside of Jarzis, southern Tunisia. Our permit grants
broad coverage of southern Tunisia, essentially from Gabes down to the
Libyan border. This allows us to collect diverse data, and we are
especially interested in paleoenvironmental reconstruction, partially
through pollen cores.
The reason that we are contacting this list is to see if there is
anyone or team interested in conducting the cores and analysis of
pollen. For additional information, I forward the relevant research
questions below, as well as links to our websites. Thanks very much
and please feel free to contact me with any questions.
The major questions that we want to address using pollen cores are:
1) Archaeologically we see abandonment of our site in the third
century CE. In order to test if ecological factors had something to do
with this, a series of pollen cores will be necessary.
2) A major portion of the economy today is olive production, and other
horticulture such as almonds. The name of the site, "Zita," actually
means Olive City in Punic. We are curious as to when olives were
introduced into the region, and what types of flora did they displace?
3) An inscription to the Semitic grain deity Dagon was found in 1903
by a French team, and we excavated two instances of wheat iconography
this past summer. Could it be that wheat was grown in what is now a
semi-arid environment, or was it rather valued as an import commodity?
Zita Project in the Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ethnography of
Southern Tunisia
ifrglobal.org/programs/af/tunisia-zita
facebook.com/zitatunisia
Yours,
Hans BARNARD MD PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor Archaeological Sciences
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Assistant Researcher, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
UCLA
308 Young Drive N; Box 951510; A331 Fowler Museum
Los Angeles, California 90095-1510
(310) 267-5550; fax: (310) 206-4723
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www.archbase.org - www.barnard.nl/fotos.html
<https://ucla.academia.edu/HansBarnard>
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