Life on the Farm in Medieval Jerusalem

<p>Studies of Jerusalem in the post-classical periods have traditionally centered unsurprisingly on the Old City isolating it from the regional setting in which it operated on a daily basis. The agricultural hinterland of Jerusalem-comprising a network of smaller settlements agricultural terraces fields cisterns watch towers and local marketplaces that together fed the city-has not been a focus of archaeological research until very recently.</p><p></p><p><em>Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem</em> offers a rare glimpse into the daily life of a single rural household and its intimate but ever-evolving relationship with Jerusalem from the 14th to the early 20th centuries. It does so through a tightly integrated multi-disciplinary study of the astonishingly well-preserved remains of a village in its agricultural setting showing how both settlement and farmland developed together over time and how these changes impacted the socio-economic development of Jerusalem during the Mamluk and Ottoman sultanates. The life history of this place is written on the basis of archaeological botanical and geological data all interpreted against a rich textual record of land sales field development conflict and cooperation.</p>