Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

606 21b. syria, palestine and mesopotamia
unknown) in the southern H · aurān and Soboda (Subeita) in the Negev have
common characteristics: there is no formal urban planning at all, and the
streets are narrow winding lanes, without porticoes and bordered by the
mostly windowless outer walls of the houses. The only public buildings are
churches, of which all the settlements have two or more, but the houses are
sometimes large and well-built, centred on internal courtyards. All these
settlements expanded greatly during the fifth and sixth century, and most
of the surviving building can be dated to these centuries. The unplanned
village-town is the characteristic feature of late antique settlement in the
near east.
The economic foundation of this prosperity was clearly agriculture,
though some towns, notably Tyre, were probably in some sense industrial. 58
The apparent prosperity of communities in such unpromising agricultural
areas as the limestone hills of northern Syria has been the subject of some
discussion. In his pioneering work on these areas, Tchalenko 59 suggested
that this wealth was based on a monoculture of olives, and that the hill villages
exported oil to Antioch and the Mediterranean world and bought in
grain and other necessities from the rest of Syria. All this prosperity, he
claimed, was brought to an abrupt end by the Persian and Muslim invasion
of the early seventh century, which cut off the area from its Mediterranean
markets. This vision of a specialized, market-orientated agricultural
economy is attractive but has been challenged more recently, and it now
seems that agriculture was probably more mixed than Tchalenko suggested.
Tate has pointed out that very few olive presses have been found in
the area, certainly no more than would be needed for local consumption;
that finds of animal bones suggest that animal husbandry was an important
element in the local economy; and that settlement did not come to an
end in the early seventh century but continued into the early Islamic
period. 60 He argues for mixed peasant farming rather than a specialist
economy based on cash crops, but this does not entirely explain the evident
prosperity of the area in late antiquity in contrast to a lack of detectable
settlement during the first three centuries a.d. and the apparent depopulation
of the eighth, ninth and tenth. Villeneuve 61 notes the importance of
vineyards in the H · aurān, and this is supported by references in the early
Islamic sources to the trade in wine and other agricultural products
between the H · aurān and Arabia in the late sixth century. 62
There were also significant regional variations. In the limestone massifs
of northern Syria and the H · aurān, most of the evidence comes from
inscriptions on standing buildings. In the area of modern Jordan, however,
58 See Rey-Coquais (1977) 152–61; for prosperity see also Walmsley (1996).
59 Tchalenko, Villages: his general theories are discussed in i.377–438.
60 See Tate (1992). See also the extended excavation report from Déhès, a small village in the limestone
massif, Sodini et al. (1980). 61 Villeneuve (1985) 121–5. 62 See Paret (1960).
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