Journal of Arid Environments 210 (2023) 104906 0140-1963/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The utilization and extinction of Juniper trees from the Negev desert (Israel) - Data from a late 6th–5th millennia site of Har Harif J. Vardi a, * , D. Yegorov a , D. Degen-Eisenberg a , E. Boaretto b , D. Langgut c , Y. Avni d , V. Caracuta e a Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel b Weizmann Institute, Max Planck-Weizmann Center for Integrative Archaeology and Anthropology, Weizmann Institute of Science, 7610001, Rehovot, Israel c The Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Ancient Environments, Institute of Archaeology, The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel d Geological Survey of Israel, Israel e Institute of Evolution Science of Montpelier (ISEM), CNRS University of Montpellier, 34090, France A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Juniper tree Juniperus phoenicia Extinction Paleoecology Negev desert Late pottery neolithic Chalcolithic Anthropogenic pressure Holocene ABSTRACT The excavation of Har Harif 45, a campsite radiometrically dated to the 6th–5th millennia BCE, in the Negev highlands (Israel) uncovered many charcoals determined as Phoenician juniper (Juniperus phoenicea). Today, Phoenician juniper is absent from the Negev desert and can only be found on the ridges of northern Sinai (Egypt) and Jordan. Based on the relative abundance of polished stone axes and adzes found in Har Harif 45 in comparison to other contemporaneous sites, we suggest that the extinction of juniper trees from the Negev highlands was caused mainly by intensive and selective cutting of this highly benefcial woody species. On a wider view, the disap- pearance of Juniperus phoenicea from the Negev Desert provides a good example of human impact on the natural environment during the transition from hunter-gather societies to late Pottery Neolithic (and later periods of the 6th–5th millennia BC) pastoralist societies, where a greater population density increased the demand for natural resources such as juniper wood. We show that the archaeological evidence from Har Harif 45 combined with the archaeobotanical data sheds new light on the human infuence on the Negev highland environment during the late 6th and 5th millennia BC. 1. Introduction Man-environment interactions are a key aspect in the research of prehistoric societies and numerous archaeological reports focus on this topic. These studies either describe the impact of local environmental conditions on ancient societies and its manifestations in the material culture or, in reverse, the impact ancient man had on his environment (Balter, 2013; Roskin et al., 2022). One of the best examples for this interplay in late prehistoric societies of the Levant is the observed change in the lithic toolkit composition between areas situated within the Mediterranean climatic zone to marginal semi-arid, or arid areas during the Neolithic period (Bar-Yosef, 1981a, 1982; Borrell and Vardi, 2022; Goring-Morris, 1993). Another aspect is that the analysis of the material culture remains also enhance what is known about the use of the local environmental resources as they are refected in the organic remains of the fora and fauna uncovered in the archaeological sites. Although the preservation of organic fnds differs between different climate zones and is often rather limited in parts of the arid regions, such fnds are beyond doubt the most direct evidence to the local site envi- ronments. The following case study describes a possible relation of the material culture from a 6th–5th BC millennia site in the central Negev desert highlands of Israel (Fig. 1) with the local fora or, to be more specifc, the arboreal species within that environment. During the Epipaleolithic the arid regions of the southern Levant were populated by groups of mobile foragers (i.e hunter-gatherers) whose remains include mostly lithics, occasionally small faunal assem- blages and rarely charred plant remains (Goring-Morris, 1987; Vardi et al., 2015; Yegorov et al., 2015). Foraging (i.e hunting and gathering) remained the only mode of subsistence throughout most of the Neolithic period in the desert (Borrell and Vardi, 2022; Gopher and Goring-Morris, * Corresponding author. POB 586, 91004, Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail addresses: jacobv@israntique.org.il (J. Vardi), dmitry@israntique.org.il (D. Yegorov), degendavida@gmail.com (D. Degen-Eisenberg), Elisabetta. Boaretto@weizmann.ac.il (E. Boaretto), langgut@tauex.tau.ac.il (D. Langgut), yavni@gsi.gov.il (Y. Avni), v.caracuta@gmail.com (V. Caracuta). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Arid Environments journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaridenv https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2022.104906 Received 20 June 2022; Received in revised form 23 November 2022; Accepted 25 November 2022