The Levantini Podcast
The Levantini Podcast is a show about the ancient Near East with a focus on biblical archaeology, Judaism and Islam.
The Levantini Podcast
Philistine Invasion Biology
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Sue Frumin is a post-doctoral researcher at Bar Ilan University and archaeobotanist. Sue works in the archaebotany lab run by Professor Ehud Weiss at the university. She is one of the co-authors of a 2015 paper that examined the impact of the Philistine migration on biodiversity in the Southern Levant. You can check out the paper here
I'm your host, Alex, and welcome to the Levantine Podcast, a show about Near Eastern history, language, and culture. To learn more about the show and get in touch, you can visit our website at Levantinepod.com. In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Sue Friman, who's a postdoctoral researcher at Barylon University and an archaeobotanist. She's one of the co-authors of a 2015 paper that examined the impact of the Bronze Age Philistine migration on biodiversity in the southern Levant. You can find a link to the paper in the description of the podcast and also on our website. I had a great time talking to her, and I hope you enjoy the show. Okay, we're live. Thanks for agreeing to come on the show today. Thank you for the invitation. So for people who are not familiar with your field, can you please tell me what an archaeobotanist does?
SPEAKER_01Archaeobotany is a science of plants, of vegetation, and its history actually. So we are trying to identify plant remains from the archaeological sites. And when we can do that, and we often can do that, so we can actually reconstruct ecology of the environment, we can reconstruct diet of the settlement, we can tell probably what plants they were using in the temples or in the everyday life, what difference they had in the lighthouses or in just uh commoners, what was the difference if it was, what kind of agriculture they had. So for botany, it is important because we apply in archaeological data. We can study evolution of agriculture, we can study development of agriculture. This is very important for the human history, and for the archaeologist, we can make the walls and the cities alive. We can give some taste and smell and everything like that.
SPEAKER_00So, what attracted you to become an archaeobotanist as opposed to some of the more traditional specialties that are associated with archaeology?
SPEAKER_01I think myself as a botanist working now in archaeology. So what is interesting for me, again, is a history of vegetation. But as you know, vegetation is very old, much older than we are on the earth. And in geology and in paleobotany, the variable of factors affecting geography of plants and evolution, these are geological factors and climatic factors. In archaeology, we suddenly have people who can bring some plants, who can develop agriculture, and that is actually very fascinating to see a role of human, to see a role of different people in changing the world, in changing the forest and the meadows and the fields. Everything is changing when people touch it, and that's what is very interesting in archaeology for botanists.
SPEAKER_00So you've done a lot of work working on Philistine sites in in what's today Israel along the coast. And in 2015, you were one of the co-authors of a study that looked at the impact of the Philistines' migration on biodiversity in the southern Levant. When did the Philistines arrive to that area?
SPEAKER_01The dates for Telesaphigat, I was working uh on Telesafigat in the excavation team of Professor Araneir. And the dates for the appearance of Philistines at the Telesaphigat are very early. So it's a believed that the dates are telling us that they appeared there in the 12th century BCE. It probably among the first appearance of Philistines in Southern Levant.
SPEAKER_00And what's the general consensus on where these people came from?
SPEAKER_01There are many theories. What brought these people to Southern Levant and actually who they are? And that actually is the question. So the general trend or general data is telling us that something has been changed on the southern shore of Europe, and something happened, and people moved. So it was a huge human migration at the end of late Bronze Age, and that's how we have Philistines in Southern Levant. But we don't know where they came from, and for many years people were searching for one specific village or city where they came from to Southern Levant. This is apparently not true and not possible to find. This is a very huge migration from different places to different places. And what is very interesting, they are very entangled people, as uh there are many different words for that, but entangled is a nice word to say what they were. For me, it was very interesting because I came from USSR to Israel, and it was very interesting for me to understand that it's kind of very similar for me, Philistines and uh immigrants, now nowadays immigrants, because USSR was a big country, huge country, and when we are in Israel, everybody is saying, Oh, you are Russians. Okay, I've never been Russian in my own country, and people who is coming from Uzbekistan or Kamchatka or from St. Petersburg, they are bringing different culture to Israel. We are all very different. But for people living in Israel, we are just the same, we are Russians. So this is very interesting, and I decided that using this approach I can study Philistines, and this approach is actually helping me to think about them.
SPEAKER_00So as an archaeobotanist, when you're examining the findings in the field, what are some indications on where they came from in terms of the plants and seeds and things that they brought with them?
SPEAKER_01Definitely, they brought different techniques for land use and for the approach for the environment. That's what we can detect in archaeological data. It's very difficult to ask archaeological data about one specific historical event when someone is coming out from an airplane, what they have in the pockets, what kind of sandwich they have, or something. It's almost impossible. But we were searching for that, and what we found is first of all, we have three different cultivated plants that were not in use by people in Southern Liban during the Bronze Ages, and suddenly with Philistines we see, we see sycamore tree, we see cumin, and we see opium puppy. That was very interesting to find. And then you're asking yourself as a botanist and as a geographer what this actually data is telling us. And when you see when we look at the natural distribution of these plants, you get confused because the sycamore is the eastern African plant, opium poppy was domesticated in Europe, and cumin, we still don't know where it was domesticated. This plant still has no place of origin. So we know who was using cumin in the late Bronze Age. Again, this is Egypt and Mesopotamia, quite a huge area to tell about Philistines, and it was not what we were expecting to find. And the opium poppy is very interesting. It is the only find of opium poppy seed in the late Bronze Age, it was made in Tyrin, in continental Greece. So it connects Philistines with Greece. And that was very interesting. Again, we we found out again that it was an entangled culture, and it is connected with the whole Mediterranean world.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. What are some other historical examples of mass human migrations and how it can really impact the biodiversity of a place?
SPEAKER_01Think about corn, how we use it now in Europe, because it's an American plant, but uh now in every cinema where you can go after COVID 19 or before, you we're using popcorn and a potato and tomato, all these plants are coming from Americas to Europe, and you cannot imagine a European uh kitchen without these plants. And again in America you have now wheat, which is the plant from the old world. So everything is changed. All migration is bringing something. Sometimes without migration, like rice, we have in Europe without human migration. It's just a connection with different parts of the world. It is a huge interest in this plant. So plant invasion is not always connected with human migration, but human migration is a huge vector for moving species around the world.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned a little bit that you referenced that they brought with them different agrarian practices or different farming technologies and practices to the southern Levant that weren't there before. What were those?
SPEAKER_01For instance, with Philistines, we see extensive use of olives for oil and the olive installations. We don't know whether what was the origin of that technology, but we see that what happened. We see these Philistines appearance of the white wine in Southern Levant. This is also very interesting. But probably it was brought before by Egyptians. We see not just peeps, not grape peeps, and not what you usually have when you someone is eating peeps, eating grapes. In Afec, you suddenly see at the end of Late Bronze Age peeps with fruit skin. That kind of waste you have when someone is cleaning grape juice from the waste. And that's what you will do when you want to prepare white wine. So this is new use or novelty.
SPEAKER_00Those practices were they limited to the Philistine size, or is there evidence that that indigenous peoples adopted it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's the problem with indigenous peoples in the early Iron Age in South Levant, because the huge migration is from everywhere to everywhere. And Canaanites are kind of a minority maybe at that time. So it's very difficult to say what was in indigenous people. But what we saw that actually opium, poppy, sycamore, and cumin are found only in the Philistine sites. There are many other plants that appeared also with Philistines, the henban and wild reddish, and there are many different other plants, but when you check what happened in the eastern part of Southern Levant, where you have no Philistines, but you have the Israelites and you have Assyrians, you see in the Iron Age the novelties are like Apricot, like European apple tree. So you see all these some changes.
SPEAKER_00What does that tell us then if cumin and other things that are characteristic of Philistine sites? What does that tell us if we don't see it in other settlements in the southern Levant that they certainly had some contact with these other communities? I mean, does it speak to a lack of trade relations? Is it a location and climate factor? How come we don't see these things spread to other settlements?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is very interesting. And for instance, Tel Efik was a case study to check if it was a difference in the climate and in soil. So you can tell, okay, say that it's not a Philistine, it's a difference in climate changes from late Bronze Age to the Iron Age. So when we have one site, settlement, one settlement, Tel Afik, and we have several layers from the Iron Age, we can compare these layers and we can say, okay, the river is the same river there, and the climate should be apparently the same climate within 100 years or 200 years. The difference we can see there should be detect uh connected with the people and not with the changes in soil or climate. And we saw in effect that archaeobotanical plant assemblage is different in the layer in the stratum of Philistines, is different from the stratum of non-Philistines. And that was actually the proof that what we see in other Philistine sites, it's not just time changes or climate changes, it is cultural choice. So the difference in telefic, what we see is the changes in plant use is definitely connected with uh cultural changes and not with geological or climatic changes and the time. That was the proof for us at least. And if we don't see the differences in another site, we cannot actually say that they were not uh consuming these plants. You know, in archaeology what we see is these are just uh fragments of the history. So it's probably we just don't see because it's demolished. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Right. So it's possible that the Philistines were continuing to grow and cultivate these plants and possibly sell them when they were finished products and other people and communities were consuming them, but they weren't cultivating themselves.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I agree with you. It's like I go sometimes to a Chinese restaurant, but I'm not uh making this food at home. But I do consume it sometimes. So it it's okay. Neighborhood connections are things like that. So what is actually was interesting to check is it's a whole set of Philistine sites and the whole set of Philistine strata, that's what we did. It's not one spot change on a map. So we checked everything we know about Iron Age archaeobotany in Israel. And what is great in Israel, actually, we are very lucky. We have Professor Mordehai Kislev, a professor in the Bahilan University. He was working in Archaeobotany for some 40 years, and he worked in many, many different sites. So we have very good reference data to address questions like what Philistines did for the biodiversity in Israel. Because we have a huge amount of data, we can apply statistics, we can apply scientific tools, not just say, okay, probably, you know, we found something, one thing, maybe it tells something. We are actually lucky. You can say that it was a we have a bias because it was one person or one lab who was working with archaeobotany. But sometimes a good bias actually is an advantage. So we can say, okay, if someone is doing all this like that, we see the same bias across all sites and all strata and all historical time periods. So this is very good.
SPEAKER_00What are some of the plans and things that they brought with them that grow naturally now in Israel?
SPEAKER_01Naturally growing in Israel. Coriander. We have it in the north part of the country, growing in wild, and suddenly we have it in Philistine sites, which are not in the north part of the country. We have parselain, we have wild radish, salt wart, handban, and vigna. You know, handben is a medicinal plant. Vigna is edible, reddish, and uh parslin are just plants that traditionally collected in the wild as green legumes. We know it now. So it is somehow remained here, but we don't see these plants in plant use, in human plant use before Philistines. So this is very interesting. So maybe what we do now, tradition that we received from Philistines. That is also very interesting.
SPEAKER_00And where does coriander come from originally?
SPEAKER_01Originally, we have it in a forest. So it's plants just growing in carmel. Once you've been in Israel, you go to walk in a on Carmel in Ramat Nadiv, and you can find the coriander.
SPEAKER_00Right, but originally it wasn't growing naturally in what's today Israel, correct? It was brought by the Philistines. Or are you saying they're the first to cultivate it?
SPEAKER_01All these four plants, wild radish, porcelain, saltwort, and henban, and vigna, these are wild plants growing in Israel now. They are natural vegetation of Israel. But somehow, before Philistines, we don't see these plants in archaeobotany. People choose from forest or from meal what to bring home. This is my conscious choice what to do. And surprisingly, in Bronze Age time, people did not brought these plants to their homes. And the Philistines did that. So I have no other explanation that was a choice. That they were looking in the forest for these plants. Why they did that? It's a good question. It's maybe good to go and check around Israel where these plants are growing and who was using them. But from the first glance, I can tell you that uh burstland, vigna, and the rare dishes, these are Mediterranean plants. It's not coming from Mesopotamia, probably not from Egypt, it's somewhere from the Mediterranean climate.
SPEAKER_00So, what you're saying is essentially that some of these plants were definitely brought from other Mediterranean regions that were not native to what's today Israel, but others were grew in the wild, but for whatever reason, the indigenous populations didn't consume them, or at least in a mass way, that that left an impact. But when the Philistines arrived, they went out actively searching for these herbs and plants to incorporate into their diet. Correct. What were some of the impacts of the Philistines introducing European pigs into the southern Leban?
SPEAKER_01Somehow Near East pigs uh ended with Philistines, and apparently they brought European pigs because they needed it here. So nowadays, pigs of Israel are genetically different from the other Near Eastern pigs.
SPEAKER_00Before the Philistines arrived to their region, what was the primary agrarian base of the local peoples? What what did they farm and what did they eat?
SPEAKER_01Intrigually, all Eastern Mediterranean diet is based on same plants. But in some places people prefer one crop and in other places people prefer another crop. So we ask actually this question because you we hear a lot about salinization of soils, problem of salinization of soils in Mesopotamia and in Egypt. And as we know, barley is more salt-tolerant crop than wheat. And in many cases, barley replaced wheat in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, where agriculture was based on irrigation. So we asked the same question about Southern Levant. If we see this exchange, you know, first when the agriculture is just started, you can cultivate everything, and then you have weeds, some kind of plants from the natural vegetation that adapted to grow in the fields, and you see them more and more. That is also very interesting to see in archaeological data. And then you see that the soil is just depleted, and you cannot cultivate anything, just you want, you have to choose carefully where and how to cultivate and what. So we asked this question about Sassan Legend, and we saw that we don't see any difference from wheat to barley. We always have wheat. And this is very interesting because it's kind of it's not an empire and during the Bronze Age here. It's an agrarian suburb of Egypt. So you can expect here a low-level diet, but in contrary, we see here that people eat wheat when in the middle of empire people eat barley. And that is very interesting. And again, here geography is helping us to answer the question. We don't have any great river here, so we cannot use it for extensive irrigation for years and years. That's probably the explanation why we don't see clearly here problem with soil salinization. We see a little bit of this problem in Beit Sharan Valley. We see there are more barley than in other places, and also in Arad, where of course agriculture is under irrigation, but in all other places we see wheat is the predominant staple food here. So maybe we don't have too much of a population. Population may be not very dense, but they can eat good bread.
SPEAKER_00Well, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to speak with me. It's been really interesting, and look forward to seeing what else you research in the future.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Alex.