Joel Roskin

Bar Ilan University | BIU · Department of EnvironmentPlanning and Sustainability

By reviewing traditional, sunken, groundwater-harvesting agroecosystems (SGHAS) in coastal and inland aeolian sand situated in Iran, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Algeria and Iberia, coupled with image interpretation and geospatial analysis, we study the innovation and function of recently excavated Early Islamic (EI; tenth-twelfth century), Plot-and-Berm agr...

The Middle Epipalaeolithic Ramonian culture, endemic to the Negev-Sinai desert, incorporates highland occupations alongside lowland dune-associated localities. The lowland sites, dominated by microlithic tools, have been hypothesized to be prime hunting settings. Here we investigate this hypothesis based on the data from Mizpor Ashalim - a new Ramo...

The article by Al-Najjar et al. (2022a) possesses abundant flaws in geopolitical, geographical and hydrological contexts. The paper ignores a vast body of scientific literature about the study region of the Negev Desert, Israel, in general, and Nahal Besor (Wadi Gaza) in particular. The paper’s methodology lacks data collection from the field. Thes...

Since the late Spanish Enlightenment, the agroecosystem of the Atlantic coast of Andalusia, through which coastal dune systems are cultivated via sunken gardens between sand berms, have attracted scholarly attention. The environmental history of these systems, known as Navazo, is the focus of this article. Through analysis of historical aerial phot...

Plot-and-Berm (P&B) Agroecosystems are traditional agricultural systems developed in dune ecosystems. These systems display a common landscape pattern, characterized by sunken cultivation plots surrounded by man-made sand berms or natural dunes. This form brings the plot surface closer to a superficial aquifer often supplying moisture directly in...

Importance of military geologists for studying tunnel growth by Islamic and other anti-West actors, based on analysis of decades of Hamas guerilla-murderer underground build up in the Gaza Strip ABSTRACT For four decades, terrorists in the Gaza Strip have been furnished with weapons smuggled from and through the northern Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. Isl...

Due to mounting social and environmental pressures, the demand for efficient and secure urban and rural land uses has noticeably increased. Thus, planners and policymakers are called upon to work with diverse policy and management structures, as well as NGOs, private business actors, issue-oriented interest groups, locally based citizen groups and...

Using geospatial analyses complemented by ground-truthing, we investigate several factors that possibly influenced the evolution of the residential, agricultural and open areas of the village of Bet Safafa. We suggest that the geological conditions that were unresourceful with regard to flowing water and mediocre for agriculture were not factors th...

Aeolian-Fluvial interactions range from aeolian-to fluvial-dominated processes, often resulting in unique morphologies and complex stratigraphies along dunefield margins. In the Northwestern Negev dunefield (Israel) desert, a key factor influencing transitions from aeolian-to fluvial-domination, is the basin size. While medium-sized (40-200 km 2) a...

The main sources of Israel's sand bodies are the Nile River system and the Dead Sea Rift valleys. The main dune fields are along the Mediterranean coast, in the northwestern Negev desert and in the southern Arava valley. Altogether, the sand bodies and sandstone exposures cover ~ 7.5% of the area of Israel. Studies of the dune fields of Israel have...

The presentation was given by Dr. Lotem Robins on April 17, 2024 in session GM9.2 https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/session/48147

The presentation was given by Prof. Joel Roskin on April 17, 2024 in session GM5.5 https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/session/48073

During the Early Islamic period, several emerging agricultural innovations enabled the cultivation of summer crops in unproductive Mediterranean lands. This necessitated the development of water harvesting methods. This study delves into the creation of the Plot-and-Berm (P&B) agroecosystem along the sandy coast of Caesarea, Israel. From the early...

The site of Dimona South is a knapping locality in the Negev desert of Israel, situated at the raw material source. A test excavation followed by a salvage excavation conducted during 2020 revealed a partly buried archaeological layer that was exposed over an area of ~ 40 m² and yielded a well-preserved lithic assemblage. Optically stimulated lumin...

Thousands of circular, sediment-infilled, round, palaeokarst collapse depressions, known as dayas, dot the carbonate rock plateaus of Saharan Africa representing a past wetter climate and karstic activity. Today the dayas serve as closed basins that collect sporadic runoff, which make them still prone to collapse. In addition, accumulation of fine...

The encroachment of dunes over drainage basins in cold and hot deserts diverts and dams existing fluvial systems. Fully dune-blocked basins following floods form seasonal, reservoir-like, dune-dammed waterbodies that deposit suspended fluvial sediments. These waterbodies and their fine-grained sediment floors may become micro-ecological niches and...

After the most horrific and tragic day since the holocaust, we here in Israel are living through a precariously existential threat to our county and nation. Palestinian Hamas terrorists continue to shoot thousands of deadly rockets into all parts of Israel. Joined by civilians in Gaza, three thousand terrorists breached the borders of our agricultu...

Planetary Aeolian-Fluvial interactions - an example of dune-damming at the northwestern Negev dunefield margins

Limekilns, common throughout the southern Levant in carbonate rock highlands, were rare in aeolian sand terrains. This study presents for the first time a limekiln within an archaeological landscape of an Early Islamic groundwater harvesting Plot-and-Berm agroecosystem, in an anthropogenically modified Mediterranean coastal dunefield near the ancie...

Thinking positively, these times can serve as a grand opportunity for academics to sound a moral stand and clearly and vocally denounce the theoretical and proven purely evil actions and intentions of radical Islam and its disastrous intentions upon Israel, Europe and America.

בתקופה האסלאמית הקדומה המאות ה 11-10- התפתחה חקלאות יחודית בחולות קיסריה המבוססת על אקוויפר רדוד, שננטשה בתקופה הצלבנית ומאז לא עובדה מחדש. חלקות חקלאיות רבועות מוקפות סוללות נבנו ותוחזקו מחומר אשפתות עתיר ממצאים אנתרופוגניים מהעיר קיסריה 1,3 . פני החלקות והסוללות עורבבו עם כמות גדולה של חומר האשפתות, ליצירת קרקע חולית אפורה כהה – אנתרוסול (קרקע שמ...

We did not find a difference in richness or abundance between different facing slopes (i.e., east vs west or north vs south) and berm tops in any of the units. This indicates that at present day these structures are not substantial enough to disturb or protect plants from the abiotic factors (e.g., sea-spray, radiation, wind) and especially, when m...

Clandestine and underground activity and guerrilla warfare in the Gaza Strip have been continuously developing over the past four decades. Underground activity began in the 1980s with the establishment of a smuggling route via clandestine tunnels between the Egyptian and Gazan sides of the divided city of Rafah. Today Hamas oversees a vast network...

Cross-Border Tunnels between Lebanon and Israel Geography, Geology and Underground Hezbollah Invasion Strategies

The Israeli-Egyptian border, which was established through the 1979 peace treaty and based on the superficial 1906 Rafah-Taba, British-Turkish boundary, separates the cultural hinterlands of Israel and Egypt and runs along a climatic gradient between the southeastern Mediterranean Sea coast and the Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba). It dissects the Sinai-Negev...

Open-air surface accumulations and scatters of material cultural remains are often perceived as less reliable archaeological archives, where it is difficult to distinguish anthropogenic vs. geogenic formation processes or to assess their specific effects on the integrity of archaeological records. Here we analyze the depositional histories of three...

Port-OSL coupled with geochemical and sedimentological analyses to study Hellenistic burials in coastal sand and aeolianite

Aeolian-Fluvial (AF) stratigraphic sequences record the bilateral impact of aeolian and fluvial systems upon each other. Along dunefield margins, AF sequences document shifts from fluvial-dominated environments to aeolian-dominated environments mainly in the form of dunes damming and impounding fluvial systems. We report on a 200 m-long exposure, d...

An 8th century CE earthquake severely damaged inland cities across the southern-central Levant, but reported evidence of this earthquake along the coastline is scarce. In Caesarea Maritima, archaeologists have found contemporaneous anomalous sand and shelly layers within nearshore structures and interpreted them as construction fill, aeolian accumu...

Abstract book from Workshop on: Continuity and Discontinuity of Agrotechnological Transfer in the Eastern Mediterranean Region between Late Antiquity and Early Modern Times – Plot-and-Berm Agroecosystems as a Case Study 6-8/2/2023

his study reviews Plot-and-Berm (P&B) agroecosystems other than those along the southeastern Mediteranean coast (Roskin and Taxel, 2021), highlighting similarities and differences between them, and speculates on their origins and distribution.

Partial presentation of 2 seasons of excavations and some interpretations

It is proposed that an extremely warm, humid climate existed in the Tibetan Plateau (TP), including the currently hyper-arid Qaidam Basin (QB), during Marine isotope stage 3 (MIS 3). A detailed luminescence study of aeolian, fluvial and aeolian-fluvial records from the Tiekui Dunefield (TKD) and its margins in the eastern QB reveals paleoenvironmen...

One of the largest prehistoric settlements in Israel and Jordan was uncovered by the Motza salvage excavation in the largest and deepest drainage basin of the Judean highlands in central Israel. On a fan-shaped piedmont-like slope probably developed from Neolithic waste and materials and covering more than 0.5 km, the Motza “megasite” comprises mor...

relative age of terrace fills along wadi near Bet Shemesh, Israel

Dunefield margins are sensitive to aeolian-fluvial processes that record local environmental conditions and climatic events. A common aeolian-fluvial process along dunefield margins is dune-damming—marking aeolian domination over a fluvial system. This study reports on the character, controls, and chronology of a transition from a pre-dunefield env...

3. METHODOLOGY • Time-series of aerial photographs of the first 2 km downstream of the Nahal Oz reservoir. • Six repetitive cross-sections where there was significant morphological change. • Characterization of gully morphologies and properties. • Pre-and post-dam-break flood data (from Bergman et al., 2014). Figure 8. Schematic model of Nahal Yare...

Based on the mostly unpublished finds of a 1970s excavation and the initial results of a 2020 sur-vey and excavation of the remains of an Early Islamic Plot-and-Berm (P&B) agroecosystem south of ancient Caesarea/Qaysāriyya, this study discusses the agricultural incorporation of refuse ina pristine aeolian sand environment. The P&B agroecosystem, ch...

This paper presents the results of the salvage excavations at Netzer Sereni in the Mediterranean Coastal Plain of Israel. The site was uncovered within alluvial sand. The sand infills a depression between two aeolianite (kurkar) ridges, where local runoff accumulated probably due to local sand damming, redepositing sandy and clay-rich sediments. Sl...

During the Early Islamic period, groundwater-harvesting agroecosystems in sand appeared along the southeastern Mediterranean coast in the form of plot and berm (P&B) agroecosystems. P&B agroecosystems are agricultural utilizations of shallow, perched rainfall-fed groundwater tables within loose aeolian sand sheets of agricultural hinterlands. These...

Vegetated Linear Dunes (VLDs) are elongated dunes whose construction is controlled by vegetation and wind. Common in southern hemisphere drylands, they were mainly active in the late Pleistocene. VLDs vertically accumulate sand during elongation episodes and their internal stratigraphy thus serves as a proxy for major periods of strong winds. Howev...

This study presents a new methodological approach by which to identify the function, relative age, and field relations between buried walls at two sites in the valley of Nahal (wadi) Zanoah along the morphological contact between the Judean Highland Hills and Foothills. Sedimentology and relative pulsed-photon stimulated luminescence (PPSL)-based c...

Levantine adaptive water subsistence and exploitative water management studies concerning late pre-and proto-history have intensified since 2000. This comes in the wake of findings concerning domestic water (e.g., groundwater wells and surface irrigation systems) in particular in the eastern Mediterranean basin. Excavations conducted over the last...

The following analysis of the contribution of terrain and terrain evaluation to eight Israel Defense Forces military engagements since the late 1960s, mostly against guerrilla forces, demonstrates that terrain and the application of terrain analysis significantly affect battles. Nowadays, following the growing imbalance in military technology betwe...

Much has been written about the intelligence fiasco of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with respect to the 1973 Yom Kippur (October) War. Less than a handful of papers have highlighted what led to the intelligence blunder, namely, the main intelligence research agencies’ refusal to accept geographic intelligence. This paper, based mainly upon the 2...

A pit containing knapping refuse associated with preliminary stages of bifacial tools production was found during a salvage excavation at Givat Rabi East. Located in close proximity to raw-material outcrops, this newly found pit is part of an extensive complex of flint workshops that has been revealed in the last decade in the Lower Galilee, northw...

Salvage excavations took place in a large flint workshop and quarry site near the town of Mitzpe Ramon, Negev Desert Highlands, Israel. Within the site a well-preserved Neolithic quarry and blade production workshop were excavated. Chronologically, technological traits of the blade production place the recovered flint assemblage in the transitional...

Loess accumulated in the Negev desert during the Pleistocene and primary and secondary loess remains cover large parts of the landscape. Holocene loess deposits are however absent. This could be due low accumulation rates, lack of preservation, and higher erosion rates in comparison to the Pleistocene. This study hypothesized that archaeological ru...

Significance Historians have long debated the role of climate in the rise and fall of empires of the 1st millennium CE. Drastic territorial contraction of the Byzantine Empire, societal decline, and beginning of the European Middle Ages have generally been linked to the Islamic conquests of the seventh century. This multidisciplinary archaeological...

A salvage excavation took place in a well-preserved Neolithic quarry and blade production workshop near the town of Mitzpe Ramon, Negev desert, Israel. The quarry is part of a larger flint extraction site, where series of knapping localities from different periods were identified along a flint outcrop from the Zafit formation. While all other local...

Salvage excavations were carried out on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority in the fall of 2016 south of Ze'ev Wienhaus Street, located within the municipal boundaries of the modern city of Yehud in the central Coastal Plain of Israel. Numerous excavations have been carried out in the past in Yehud, with finds ranging from the Chalcolithic t...

This study examines the remains of an agricultural complex found in the Yavneh coastal dunefield, central Israel. Known as a plot-and-berm agroecosystem, the complex consisted of earthworks in a crisscross pattern of sand berms and sunken agricultural plots that were used for groundwater harvesting. The plots, which provided easy access to the high...

This study presents distinct and small task-specific sites associated with the Middle to Late Epipalaeolithic period exposed during a salvage project at the site of Ashalim at the fringe of the northwestern Negev desert dunefield (Israel). Six areas spanning the Geometric-Kebaran to Harifian periods were systematically collected upon a unique 4 m h...

Open tension fractures attaining depths of over 10 m in horizontally-bedded hard carbonate strata along the western plateau margins of the Dead Sea Rift, and west of the Rift fault escarpment, form unique geomorphic expressions. The fractures strike parallel to sub-parallel to the fault escarpment and were mapped, classified, and their propagation...

Rapid assessment of luminescence signals of poly-mineral samples by a pulsed-photon portable OSL reader (PPSL) is useful for interpreting sedimentary sections during fieldwork, and can assist with targeted field sampling for later full OSL dating and prioritize laboratory work. This study investigates PPSL signal intensities in order to assess its...

The open-air site of Nahal Hesi, located on northwestern Negev desert fringe of Israel, is one of the few primary-context late Acheulian localities in the Levant. Late Acheulian sites in the Levant rarely provide faunal assemblages and radiometric ages, leaving large gaps in our knowledge of the Lower Paleolithic palaeoenvironment, ecology, subsist...

The late Middle Palaeolithic (MP) settlement patterns in the Levant included the repeated use of caves and open landscape sites. The fossil record shows that two types of hominins occupied the region during this period—Neandertals and Homo sapiens. Until recently, diagnostic fossil remains were found only at cave sites. Because the two populations...

Conference Presentation: Oral Session: GM7.3/CL1.09/SSS3.11 Geoarchaeology: Human impact, adaptation & response to climatic & environmental change from the past to the present (co-organized)

Conference Presentation: Poster Session: GM6.4/CL1.16/SSS3.10 Palaeoenvironmental evolution, connectivity & geomorphological dynamics in dryland areas: New approaches, challenges, pros & cons (co-organized)

Salvage excavations at the Middle Paleolithic flint workshop Giv'at Rabi East, Lower Galilee, Israel aimed at obtaining chronometric ages for the site's exploitation, reconstructing the process of its formation and collecting an assemblage of diagnostic flint items for testing the conjectured connection with nearby Qafzeh Cave. The excavations reve...

A late Pleistocene aeolian-fluvial record within a rare vegetated linear dune-like structure at the fringe of the northwestern Negev dunefield, Israel, provides direct evidence of dune-damming dynamics within the structure and its environs. Study methods included high resolution morphology and stratigraphy, micromorphology and sedimentological anal...

The stratigraphic architecture of coastal plains is determined by the interactions between local (e.g. fluvial processes and topography), regional (e.g. climate) and global (e.g. sea level) forcing factors, primarily during the Late Quaternary Period. Detailed stratigraphic and sedimentological analyses of boreholes, cored between coastal ridges in...

This study reveals an attempt to condition agriculture in coastal aeolian sand holding a high water table. Twenty-six small sites, clustering in topographic lows of the Yavneh dunefield, southern Israeli coastal plain, yield surficial Early Islamic finds, and eroded 1-2 m high berms built of grey sand partially covered by parabolic and transverse d...

A salvage excavation at the Lower Paleolithic site of Kefar Menahem West in the interior of the Israeli coastal plain yielded a flake industry devoid of handaxes and their byproducts. The archeological finds covering an area exceeding 2000 m 2 , are found at the contact of two distinct sedimentological units: Quartzic Brown and hamra (red clay loam...