Life in ancient Elusa was once quite orderly. Even for the garbage they had thought of something in the place in the Eastern Roman Empire, he was transported to specially equipped dumps.

But in the middle of the 6th century, the cleanliness was abruptly over. Traces of a speedy descent suggested themselves. And this at the height of the then administrative center in the Negev desert. Archaeologists conclude this from the analysis of ancient rubbish dumps. The place is located in today's Israel.

In terms of time, the end of garbage disposal coincides with Late Antiquity's Little Ice Age, a drastic cold spell that reached Eurasia and severely affected life. In addition, the Justinian plague, which spread around the Mediterranean in the period, added to people. This is reported by a team led by Guy Bar-Oz of the University of Haifa in the "Proceedings" of the US National Academy of Sciences ("PNAS").

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The Eastern Roman Empire had formed in 395 AD. At that time, the Roman Empire was divided into two parts, the Western Roman and the Eastern Roman - also called Byzantium. With the capital Constantinople, today's Istanbul, Byzanz reached its greatest expansion around the year 550. Then it went downhill with the region on the eastern Mediterranean, the empire broke up gradually.

The Israeli archaeologists examined the remains of Elusa in northwestern Negev. The 39-hectare city has a population of up to 15,000 people, according to Bar-Oz. With schools, theaters, public baths, potteries and churches, it formed a center in whose dry land with the help of terraces and irrigation agriculture and wine was grown.

Rise and decline of Elusa reconstructed the team from four garbage dumps in the north and southeast of the city, to which the rubbish of the inhabitants was brought. "We regard organized waste disposal as a sign of social functioning in the urban complex," write the authors.

The size of the four garbage dumps alone is striking: The researchers estimate their total volume to be over one million cubic meters, spread over an area of ​​more than ten hectares (100,000 square meters). In it they found about 15,000 pottery shards, some of jugs with the estimated in Byzantium Negev wine. The majority of the waste was accumulated in two centuries from about 550 to 350 BC, write the authors. From this, they calculate an annual amount of waste of 6000 cubic meters.

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Radiocarbon datings show that the top layers date back to the middle of the 6th century - so regulated urban waste disposal ended quite abruptly then. "Almost a century before the Islamic conquest of the southern Levant, parallel to a series of well-dated volcanic eruptions, cold climatic events and the beginning of the Justinian plague," the researchers note.

The time of the maximum amount of rubbish marks the peak of settlement activity in the Negev desert - after the long descent of the city began. The place existed until at least the 7th century, but without much importance. "Until the early Islamic phase, Elusa had lost its rank as provincial capital to the coastal city of Gaza."