This chapter addresses the relationship between Byzantine Archaeology and early climate science in the Negev. It first examines how Biblical models of environmental decline and desolation were used by early European explorers and archaeologists to critique and delegitimatise Ottoman rule over the region. It then examines how such models facilitated the reception of Byzantium as an era of environmental and economic prosperity, which provided valuable data for the regreening of the region under European colonial rule. The latter part of this chapter explores how the recovery and publication of the Nessana papyri further contributed to reifying Byzantine rule as a period of agricultural prosperity and the value of Byzantine Archaeology to the aims of British officials under the Mandate government and early Zionist leaders. It concludes with a discussion of the legacies of the Colt Excavation results following the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the continuing importance of those legacies to recent approaches to the Byzantine Negev.