Following Vainer et al. (2025), we propose to analyze a suite of sedimentological, geochemical and isotopic proxies to attempt to decipher the changing past environment and climate of the southern to central coastal plain of Israel at a resolution of sub-archaeo periods – hundreds of years. The principal challenge lies in developing a sufficiently high-resolution and well-constrained record capable of resolving environmental changes on centennial timescales while accounting for dating uncertainties and variable sedimentation rates. We target closed basin, seasonal paludal sediments where accumulation is relatively high for coastal ponds currently the Agamim waterbody by Ashkelon.

Team: Nitai Golovaty, Joel Roskin, Revital Bookman, Tanya Klimova, Aren Maeir and collaborators.