The eastern Mediterranean region of the Byzantine Empire had seen a remarkable downfall, said archaeologists who analyzed an ancient trash dump near the administrative center in the city of Elusa in the Negev Desert.
The urban waste management system ended abruptly in the mid-6th century, which coincides with the late-old ice age and the beginning of what is known as the Plague of Justinian, researchers wrote in the journal Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences.
The Roman Empire was divided into two parts in 395, during which the Byzantine Empire ruled the eastern region of the Mediterranean.
This empire reached its peak in near 550, when it extended to Constantinople, (Istanbul today), the capital of the empire, before it shrank later. Scientists attribute the empire's downfall to different reasons including the so-called little ice age in mid-6th century AD, as well as the Plague of Justinian era, and then the Islamic expansion in the seventh century.
In the study, the researchers refigured the ascension and the downfall of the Elusa city based on the analysis of four waste dumps in the north and southeast of the town, where inhabitants used to throw their garbage. According to the German News Agency, the archeologists considered "the waste management system a sign of a well-organized social life in this urban grouping."
The size of these dumps was remarkable with an estimated capacity of about one million and 200,000 cubic meters, distributed over an area of more than 10 hectares. The researchers found in these dumps some 15,000 pieces of broken ceramics, some of them belonging to the pottery vessels that contained famous Negev wine.
The researchers noted that the bulk of this garbage accumulated over two centuries, from 550 to 350 BC, equaling 6000 cubic meters of waste per year.
The radiocarbon (C14) found during the analysis showed that the top layers of these dumps date back to the sixth century, which means, according to the archeologists, that the city's organized waste management system ended up abruptly "a century before the Islamic invasion of the South Levant region, and coinciding with a series of volcanic eruptions, as well as with several manifestations of the cold climate and the beginning of Plague of Justinian.”
The period of garbage peaks took place in line with the ascension of urban construction activity in the Negev desert, just before the downfall of the city.
