http://www.newsweek.com/ancient-trash-mounds-byzantine-empire-reveal-how-disease-and-climate-change-1374932

An ancient, 1,500-year-old pile of trash has given archaeologists an insight into the downfall of the Byzantine Empire.

To uncover what may have contributed to the decline of the Byzantine Empire, researchers studied mounds of garbage in the ancient outpost city of Elusa, in the Negev Desert, Israel. The authors of the study, published in the journal PNAS found that the disposal of refuse stopped around a century before the empire collapsed.