Eastern Mediterranean

Cumin Seed. Cumin spice is the dried ripe fmit of Cuminum cyminum L. (UmbeUiferae). The seed-Uke fmit is elongated about 0.31 to 0.63 cm and is yeUowish brown. It is native to upper Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, but is now cultivated in Pakistan, Turkey, India, China, and Syria. It has a strong pecuhar aroma and flavor, pleasing to some and offensive to others. Cumin seed is used in chutney and curry, chili powders, chili con came, cheeses, and the pickling of cabbage. 

Mean tar concentrations on the Israeli coast of the Mediterranean Sea ranged from 884 to 4388 g m in 1975-76 (27). Chemical analyses indicated that 76% of the tar on Israeli beaches was weathered crude, 96% of it from Middle Eastern sources (28). Concentrations of tar on the beaches of Lebanon and Turkey appeared to be much lower than those at Alexandria, Egypt and Paphos, Cyprus, as a consequence of the orientation of these beaches relative to a site in the eastern Mediterranean Sea where dumping of oily sludge was permitted (27). 

Matthews A, Ayalon A, Bar-Matthews M (2000) D/H ratios of flnid inclnsions of Soreq cave (Israel) speleothems as a gnide to the Eastern Mediterranean Meteoric Line relationships in the last 120 ky. ChemGeol 166 183-191... 

FIGURE 22 Obsidian in the eastern Mediterranean Sea area. Studying the relative concentration of trace elements in obsidian makes it possible to identify the obsidian and to determine its provenance. Determining the relative amounts of barium and zirconium in ancient obsidian tools and in samples from different sources of the natural glass, for example, made it possible to identify the provenance of obsidian used in eastern Mediterranean Sea area sites (Renfrew and Dixon 1976). 

Ribera I, Blasco-Zumeta J (1998) Biogeographical links between steppe insects in the Monegros region (Aragon, NE Spain), the eastern Mediterranean, and central Asia. J Biogeogr 25 969-986... 

SOURCES OF OBSIDIAN IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND NEIGHBOURING REGIONS... 

For the reasons outlined above, outcrops of workable obsidian are relatively few in number and are restricted to areas of geologically recent lava flows. Most sources are therefore reasonably well known, and, because of these constraints, identification of new sources in the eastern Mediterranean region becomes ever more unlikely. This makes the exercise of characterizing archaeological obsidians an attractive proposition, since, unlike potential clay sources for pottery provenance, the existence of completely unknown sources can be (cautiously) ignored. This is, of course, subject to the requirement noted above for more detailed geochemical characterization of existing sources. 

In the absence of an assumed underlying normal distribution, simple bivariate plotting does not lead to an estimate of the true extent of the parent isotope field. This is particularly a problem if only relatively few samples are available, as is usually the case. Kernel density estimation (KDE Baxter et al., 1997) offers the prospect of building up an estimate of the true shape and size of an isotope field whilst making few extra assumptions about the data. Scaife et al. (1999) showed that lead isotope data can be fully described using KDE without resort to confidence ellipses which assume normality, and which are much less susceptible to the influence of outliers. The results of this approach are discussed in Section 9.6, after the conventional approach to interpreting lead isotope data in the eastern Mediterranean has been discussed. 

Figure 9.7 Map of some of the more important prehistoric copper sources in the eastern Mediterranean. (Adapted from Stos-Gale and Gale, 1990 Figure 1, in Thera and the Aegean World III, published with permission of the Thera Foundation, London, and the authors.)... 

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