This article explores property and dune cultivation in Late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine as exempliled by Rimal Yibna and al-Nabi R & umacr;bin/Yavneh-Palmachim dune leld on the southeastern Mediterranean coastal plain. The study describes native agricul-tural practices from synchronous and diachronous perspectives, while proposing a way of bridging the epistemological gaps between native typologies ofdune agriculture and modern scholarly analytical taxonomies. The article shows that land improvement among the dunes was not a one-way process. Rather, it was a never-ending battle against the encroaching sand. Using cadastral maps, land settlement records, oral testimonies, and some archaeological and arboreal evidence, the article argues that land improvement in the region signilcantly expanded following British colonial land tax reform and land settlement initiatives in the 192os-193os despite the a priori legal precepts and colonial classilcations of these peripheral, sandy lands as uncultivable/mawat. Thus, this study provides a key test case for assessing the influence of environmental conditions, legal and economic superstructure, and local sociodemographic dynamics on the development of traditional agriculture.