Home Is Where the Hearth Is: One aspect of human intelligence is the ability to organize our living and working spaces. It was generally thought that this capability arose with modern humans in the past 100,000 years or so. However, Alperson-Afil et al. (p. 1677 ) found evidence of domestic organization 800,000 years ago at a Pleistocene hominin campsite in the Jordan Valley. Around patches of burnt debris, the remains of a wide range of plant and animal foodstuffs were found, including fruits and seeds, as well as remnants of turtles, elephants, and small rodents. Specific types of stone tools appear to have been made around the hearths, where there was also evidence of nut roasting and consumption of crabs and fish. In a more distant area there were signs of intensive flint knapping and food chopping.

Significance: Historians have long debated the role of climate in the rise and fall of empires of the 1st millennium CE. Drastic territorial contraction of the Byzantine Empire, societal decline, and beginning of the European Middle Ages have generally been linked to the Islamic conquests of the seventh century. This multidisciplinary archaeological investigation of trash mounds in the Negev Desert establishes the end date of organized trash management in the Byzantine-period city of Elusa and demonstrates urban collapse a century before the Islamic transition. Our findings, taken together with other evidence for Byzantine urban dysfunction, the Justinianic Plague, and recent research on the Late Antique Little Ice Age, flesh out the impact of the sixth century on broad historical trajectories.