Seasonal and multi-functional use of industrial space at Iron Age Tel Shiqmona, Israel

Iron Age industrial complexes in the Southern Levant are frequently perceived as static, mono-functional spaces. This study challenges such perceptions by reconstructing the dynamic life history of the 8 th -century BCE level of the industrial compound at Tel Shiqmona, the largest known Iron Age purple-dye factory in the Mediterranean and a state-controlled economic asset of the Kingdom of Israel. We conducted a high-resolution investigation of the site’s industrial complexity using micro-geoarchaeological methods, including FTIR spectroscopy, sediment micromorphology, and quantification of micro-remains. The results demonstrate that these spaces were used for a diverse, non-simultaneous range of activities, and they support a model in which this use was structured by the seasonal cycle: olive pressing in late autumn, livestock sheltering in winter, and textile production in spring. Purple-dye production was most probably integrated into this cycle during complementary temporal windows. Additionally, the sequences show evidence of periodic floor management, where wood ash was used as a neutralizing agent to maintain the industrial space between seasonal shifts. We argue that this documented multi-functionality was a manifestation of the sophisticated management and optimization of the kingdom’s economic assets. Ultimately, these findings reveal that the economy of the Kingdom of Israel relied on advanced space-time management, where high-prestige industries and agricultural needs were interwoven into a singular, highly efficient economic machine. More broadly, these findings highlight a systematic interpretive distortion: the archaeological characterization of industrial spaces tends to privilege their most visible activity, even when that activity was constrained to a narrow seasonal window. The operational logic of ancient economic spaces — how they were managed, repurposed, and sustained across the full annual cycle — is recoverable only through high-resolution archaeological analysis in which micro-geoarchaeological methods provide a critical additional layer of resolution that conventional macroscopic analysis alone cannot supply.