Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader 9781575065472

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Near Eastern Archaeology A Reader

Near Eastern Archaeology A Reader

Edited by

Suzanne Richard

Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2003

Copyright ç 2003 by Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data Near Eastern archaeology : a reader / edited by Suzanne Richard. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57506-083-3 1. Archaeology—Middle East—History. 2. Middle East— Antiquities. I. Richard, Suzanne DS56.N395 2003 939u.4—dc21 2003012571

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.†‰

Second Printing, 2005

Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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William G. Dever

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Suzanne Richard

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Part I Theory, Method, and Context Geography of the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

Barry J. Beitzel

Paleoenvironments of the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Arlene Miller Rosen

Archaeozoology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17

Paula Wapnish and B. Hesse

Paleoethnobotany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Peter Warnock

Method and Theory in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

John S. Holladay, Jr.

Bible and Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Walter E. Rast

Levantine Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Thomas. W. Davis

Text Sources for Levantine Archaeology: The Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 J. Maxwell Miller

Writing and Scripts (with Special Reference to the Levant) . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Gary A. Rendsburg

Semitic Languages (with Special Reference to the Levant) . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Gary A. Rendsburg

Writing: The Archaeology of Writing (Writing Materials) . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Alan Millard

Northwest Semitic Epigraphic Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Alan Millard

Chronology of the Southern Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 William G. Dever

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Survey of Preclassical Architecture in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 G. R. H. Wright

Bronze and Iron Age Burials and Funerary Customs in the Southern Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith

Subsistence Pastoralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Øystein S. LaBianca

Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 David C. Hopkins

Roads and Highways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 David A. Dorsey

Nautical Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Deborah N. Carlson

Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Gloria London

Ethnicity and Material Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Gloria London

Women in the Ancient Near East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Susan Ackerman

Everyday Life (Customs, Manners, and Laws) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Victor H. Matthews

Archaeological Survey in the Southern Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 E. B. Banning

Restoration of Ancient Monuments: Theory and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 G. R. H. Wright

Metalworking/Mining in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 James D. Muhly

Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Syria–Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Graham Philip

Ceramics/Kilns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Gloria London

Jewelry in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Elizabeth E. Platt

The Mosaics of Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Michele Piccirillo

Numismatics (Minting and Monetary Systems/Coinage) in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Kevin Butcher

Scarabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 William A. Ward

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GIS and Archaeological Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 Gary L. Christopherson

Computer Applications in Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 E. B. Banning

Part II Cultural Phases and Associated Topics The Paleolithic in Syria–Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Geoffrey A. Clark and Nancy R. Coinman

The Neolithic Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Gary O. Rollefson

Prehistoric Chipped-Stone Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Gary O. Rollefson

The Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Thomas E. Levy

The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 Miriam Tadmor

Negev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 Mordechai Haiman

The Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 Suzanne Richard

Southern Sinai in the Early Bronze Age II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Itzak Beit-Arieh

Theory in Archaeology: Culture Change at the End of the Early Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 Jesse C. Long, Jr.

Archaeology of the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Walter E. Rast

The Middle Bronze Age (circa 2000–1500 b.c.e.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 David Ilan

Canaanite Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 Beth Alpert Nakhai

The Late Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Albert Leonard, Jr.

El-Amarna Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Victor H. Matthews

Trade and Exchange in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 Eric H. Cline

The Iron Age in the Southern Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 Randall W. Younker

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Religion and Cult in the Levant: The Archaeological Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 William G. Dever

Goddesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Susan Ackerman

Syria–Palestine in the Persian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 Charles E. Carter

The Samaritans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Terry Giles

The Hellenistic Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 Andrea M. Berlin

Nabateans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 David F. Graf

Classical Text Sources in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 David F. Graf

Jewish Art and Iconography in the Land of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 Rachel Hachlili

Synagogues in the Land of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455 Steven Fine

Golan Synagogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 Zvi ªUri Maºoz

Early Christian Iconography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 Linda Sue Galate

Early Christian Churches in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 Joseph Patrich

Foreword This volume is a “handbook” in the best sense: a convenient manual to which the reader may turn for succinct, authoritative information on a wide variety of archaeological topics. There is currently nothing like it. There are, of course, several general textbooks, such as Amihai Mazar’s Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 b.c.e. (1990); or the edited volume of Amnon Ben-Tor, Archaeology of the Land of Israel (1992). But these works are chronologically organized, and they can be very technical for the general reader. There are also several biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias that contain brief articles on certain aspects of Syro-Palestinian archaeology. But some of these are outdated, and the multivolume sets are too expensive for the average reader to buy. Thus, this volume is welcome because it fills a void. And it will be useful not only for lay people, students, and clergy but also for specialists who need to check something quickly. Since I have used the term “Syro-Palestinian” rather than “biblical” archaeology, a word of explanation is in order. From its beginnings in the late 19th century, archaeology in the Holy Land—modern Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and parts of sourthern Syria—has been closely identified with the Bible. This was especially true in America, where most archaeologists working in this part of the world were biblical scholars, often clergy, theologians, or seminary professors. Archaeology was typically considered not a discipline in itself but simply a branch of biblical studies. The “biblical archaeology” movement gained momentum from 1920 to about 1960 with the work of the legendary William Foxwell Albright (1890– 1971) and his protégé George Ernest Wright (1909–74). The latter was my teacher and simultaneously the leading American Palestinian archaeologist of his day and Parkman Professor of Old Testament in the Divinity School of Harvard University. By the 1960s, however, our branch of archaeology was undergoing a dramatic transformation. And by the 1970s–1980s, it had become a highly specialized, professional, largely secular discipline, with its own methods and goals, which extend far beyond the scope of traditional biblical studies. Meanwhile, the burgeoning Israeli and Jordanian national schools, which had never formed any alliances with biblical studies, had developed along the same lines. Elsewhere, I have detailed the story of our branch of archaeology’s “coming of age” and its separation from its venerable parents, ancient Near Eastern studies and biblical studies. 1

1. See, for instance, “Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters (ed. D. A Knight and G. M. Tucker; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985) 31–74; also see “Biblical and Syro-Palestinian Archaeology: A State-of-the-Art Assessment at the Turn of the Millennium,” Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 8 (2000) 91–116.

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At the very outset of the controversy about “biblical archaeology,” 30 years ago, I advocated (1) reviving Albright’s original alternate term, “Syro-Palestinian archaeology,” since it was more neutral; and (2) moving toward a real dialogue between two independent yet complementary disciplines, in the hope of writing new and better histories of ancient Israel. Unfortunately, that hope has thus far been only partially fulfilled. And in the past decade or so, a small but vocal school of “revisionist” biblical scholars has contended that archaeology is largely useless and that in fact no history of ancient Israel is possible, since the biblical stories are all myths—nothing but late Jewish propaganda of the Hellenistic era. As they put it, “the Bible is not about history at all.” Thus, a few of us archaeologists are now setting out to write our own “revisionist” histories of ancient Israel, based on facts rather than on faddish ideologies. 2 Meanwhile, the term “Syro-Palestinian archaeology,” while useful in signaling the changes in our discipline throughout the 1970s–1990s, may now be obsolete and in need of replacement. “What’s in a name?” Everything! (1) The first reason for an overall name change is that the national schools in the Middle East—who increasingly dominate the discipline in this postcolonial era—have already adopted alternate terms. Israeli archaeologists speak in Hebrew of the “archaeology of Eretz-Israel” (the “Land of Israel”). But this can be a highly charged term politically; and in any case it is too provincial. When speaking or writing in English, Israeli archaeologists still use the conventional term “Palestinian archaeology,” despite its now unfortunate associations. Alternatively, they employ our term “biblical archaeology” as a kind of shorthand for an international audience, even though in grammatical Hebrew it makes little sense. Jordanian archaeologists, many of whom are of Palestinian origin, favor neither “biblical archaeology” (for obvious reasons), nor “Palestinian archaeology”—although one would think that the latter would be congenial to them. They typically speak, rather, of “the archaeology of Bilad esh-Sham” (approximately “Greater Syria,” in Arabic), and this despite often hostile relations between modern Jordan and Syria. (2) The second argument for new terminology is that in the past few years there have emerged real “Palestinian” archaeologists—that is, those who, like none of the rest of us, are West Bank Palestinians, affiliated with the Department of Antiquities of the newly established “Palestinian Authority.” They are now excavating in their “Palestine” and even utilizing archaeology to justify their exclusive claims to that land. If all of the older terms are now compromised (and they are), what do we propose? I can only suggest that we speak deliberately and specifically of the archaeology of each modern region of the Middle East, despite the fact that many of these borders are recent and arbitrary. Thus, the archaeology of “Israel”; the 2. The controversy about “revisionism,” and the contradictory archaeological evidence, is aired fully in my What Did the Biblcial Writers Know, and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001).

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“West Bank” (not “Samaria and Judea”); “Jordan”; and “Syria.” If an adjective is required for us to identify ourselves individually and professionally, we can simply say: “I am a Near Eastern archaeologist, specializing in X.” All the above may be awkward, but we have little choice if we are to avoid further politicization of our discipline. Alternatively, we might speak of the archaeology of the “southern Levant” or simply the “Levant.” None of this shift in terminology, much less the revolutionary trends in our discipline over the past 30 years, diminishes the importance of archaeology for biblical studies. It merely redefines the relationship. Archaeology no longer seeks to “prove the Bible,” only to illuminate it by placing the biblical text in specific historical and cultural context that makes it more credible in some way. But archaeology at best can only help us to understand what really happened in the past. What these events mean, and may still mean, rests on one’s individual judgment—a question of faith, rather than of knowledge.

William G. Dever University of Arizona

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Introduction This volume is intended as a basic reference work for students, scholars, and the general public alike. As a one-volume multisubject work on Near Eastern archaeology, focusing on the Levant, this Reader serves as the perfect companion reference textbook for college classes in archaeology, history, and biblical studies. Scholars in archaeology and ancillary fields will find its surveys of cultural periods and related topics by specialists to be immensely helpful as a ready resource for summaries of an area or special topic. And the general public should find its forthright, nontechnical presentation of materials to be a refreshingly comprehensible journey into what may sometimes be a slightly intimidating and highly technical area of study. To facilitate use of the volume, the 63 essays have been grouped into two broad categories. Part 1: Theory, Method, and Context includes methodology, techniques, writing and language, and material culture. Part 2: Cultural Phases and Associated Topics focuses on surveys of archaeological periods and related cultural and textual subjects. The production of this reference work has a long history, which may be helpful for the reader to know. It began in 1992 with an invitation to William G. Dever to produce a one-volume encyclopedia on the archaeology of Syria–Palestine for a multivolume reference work on ancient Near Eastern archaeology, to be published by Garland Press in New York. Dever later forfeited his Garland assignment to become a section editor for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (New York, 1997). I inherited the original Garland assignment, drew up a list of over 400 entries, including field reports on major and minor sites, as well as specialized essays, all of which varied in length from 750 to 4,000 words. Originally, the intent was to invite native and foreign scholars working in Levantine Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan to contribute essays on their excavated sites as well as topical essays. The charge was to survey ancient Syria–Palestine from the Paleolithic Period to the Islamic Conquest. The series was to be distinctively by and for archaeologists and about archaeology as such, not archaeology as a subbranch of another discipline. This very ambitious plan, however, proved to be unfeasible for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the significant competition for the same contributors from both the massive Oxford Press four-volume project and the The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land ( Jerusalem, 1993), with the inevitable resulting duplication of excavation reports. When Garland canceled the project, I was left with many excellent manuscripts deserving of publication, but no publisher. With the help of Bill Dever, it was possible to salvage the project by recasting the encyclopedia into a Reader. The decision was made to eliminate all the individual-site essays—most of which

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by now had been published in a similar form elsewhere—and to publish only the topical essays. Recognizing the wealth and scope of the material, Jim Eisenbraun agreed to take on the project. The result is the present volume, much of the summarized materials of which are available elsewhere only in very technical and often inaccessible publications. Each entry in the Reader was commissioned, the authors being chosen for their acknowledged expertise on the subject as well as their ability to summarize and communicate clearly. The entries are brief, but all append bibliographies that will lead the reader to the basic data and to wider discusssion. In 1998, when Eisenbrauns took over the project, contributors were offered a chance to update their entries if they thought it necessary. Since that time there have been several new articles commissioned, and bibliographies have been updated by most authors. Due to the shift from a comprehensive volume of encylopedia articles on the archaeology of Syria–Palestine to a reader in Near Eastern archaeology, there obviously is an unevenness in the scope or length of the essays. For example, the separate articles for Syria and Palestine that were originally envisioned for various periods did not eventuate. Thus, although some of the entries on cultural phases span the broader area of Syria–Palestine (see the surveys by Clark and Coinman [Paleolithic] as well as Rollefson [Neolithic]), the remaining surveys for the most part concentrate on the southern Levant (Levy, Chalcolithic; Richard, Early Bronze Age; Ilan, Middle Bronze Age; Leonard, Late Bronze Age; Younker, Iron Age; Carter, Persian; and Berlin, Hellenistic). Though our cultural phase surveys end with the Hellenistic period, there are a number of articles that address topics of interest in the later periods generally. Graf surveys classical texts and discusses the Nabateans; Butcher surveys the field of numismatics; Giles discusses the Samaritans; and three authors provide an in-depth study of Jewish art and synagogues (Hachlili, Fine, and Maºoz). For the early Christian period, see the essays on churches (Patrich), mosaics (Piccirillo), and art (Galate). For readers interested in the development or evolution of a topic through successive historical periods, there are a number of relevant essays. Dever’s essay on chronology orients the reader to the cultural divisions generally accepted by the scholarly community from the Paleolithic through the Iron Age, although the reader may note differences among the various authors in this volume. G. R. H. Wright provides an excellent survey of architecture through the ages in Syria– Palestine, as Bloch-Smith does for tomb and funerary customs. Likewise, the essays on weapons and warfare, metalworking, jewelry, and scarabs by Philip, Muhly, Platt, and the late William A. Ward, respectively, discuss these subjects in chronological fashion. The history of the Negev by Haiman, Cline’s piece on trade, Dever’s “Religion and Cult,” and Ackerman’s two essays on women and goddesses also trace their important topics through multiple periods. An excellent introduction to the history of writing and to language can be found in a series of essays on Semitic languages, writing, and scripts by Rendsburg and Millard. Text sources include Miller’s treatment of the Bible, Matthews’ essay

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on the Amarna texts, and Graf ’s piece on classical texts, mentioned above. The essay on the relationship between the Bible and archaeology by Rast discusses the problems and controversies of text and artifact in the biblical lands. Very much related to text sources are the essays on religion and cult by Dever (mentioned above) and Canaanite religion by Nakhai. I must confess to a bias toward the Early Bronze Age and, thus, besides my overview, separate essays on EB II Sinai by Beit-Arieh, on the analysis of models for understanding the end of the EBA by Long, and on a survey of the Dead Sea Plain by Rast round out the late fourth and third millennia b.c.e. For an introduction into specialized fields and allied sciences, as well as method and theory and new techniques, see the works on geography (Beitzel), roads (Dorsey), paleoenvironment (Rosen), archaeozoology (Wapnish and Hesse), paleoethnobotany (Warnock), subsistence pastoralism (LaBianca), and subsistence agriculture (Hopkins); as well as Holladay’s method and theory, Banning’s two essays on surveys and computers, and Christopherson’s GIS piece. Finally, see the specialized essays by London on ceramics, ethnography, and ethnicity, Wright on restoration, Carlson on nautical archaeology, Rollefson on prehistoric chipped stone technology, Tadmor on the Nahal Mishmar hoard, Davis on a history of biblical archaeology, and Matthews on “everyday life.” I have no doubt that this volume will be of unique value to all who are interested in the archaeology of Syria–Palestine, the Levant, “biblical archaeology,” the archaeology of Israel, the archaeology of Jordan, or, as Dever so cogently suggests in the foreword, Near Eastern archaeology, with a specialization in X (the variety of terms used by scholars is readily apparent in this volume). I am pleased that he has used this Reader as a forum to elucidate and make explicit a tacitly agreed upon real problem in the field. Indeed, as a case in point, when Eisenbrauns accepted this project and asked for a title, it took a great deal of debate and discussion with a number of people to arrive at the conclusion that the only possibility was a version of Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader or the Archaeology of the Levant: A Reader. The down side of the latter term, however, is its lack of recognition among the general public. I fully agree with Dever that, at this particular time period, the identification of one as a “Near Eastern archaeologist, specializing in X,” is the only reasonable alternative to the politically-charged terminologies currently in use. Moreover, many of us have been calling outselves Near Eastern archaeologists for some time now, preferring the distinction from the Far East in studies of antiquity, on the one hand, and from the “Middle East,” in current political usage, on the other. Thus, we have decided on the title Near Eastern Archaeology for this Reader and note that its focus is primarily the Levant. As these excellent contributions finally see the light of day, I am wont to say that I never thought it would actually happen! Of course, I owe a great deal of gratitude to William G. Dever for helping to bring this volume to fruition and for gracing the Reader with a thought-provoking foreword. He has been helpful in soliciting a number of additional essays since 1998 and, yes, in editing too. A special note of thanks goes to Jim Eisenbraun for recognizing the value of bringing

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this project to publication and to Beverly McCoy, our editor at Eisenbrauns, who made the publication process amazingly smooth and easy. This project began while I was at Drew University and has been completed now at Gannon University. I would like to acknowledge both for providing support to work on the volume. Drew University graduate students at the time, Linda Sue Galate and Carolyn Buss, are due a special note of thanks for their advice, help with editing, typing, and photo-copying! Of course, the Reader would never have come about had it not been for the original support from Garland Press in the early stages of the project, and I would like to acknowledge that. I would very much like to thank all of the participants from the earlier venture for their contributions and their willingness to remain patient after the news of the collapse of the encyclopedia project. My very real regret—and one of the most difficult things I have had to do—is that I had to return articles to colleagues who had conscientiously met their commitments to complete their assigned articles. My apologies go to those who spent much time and effort on this project to no publication end (some of whom wrote as many as 8 essays). Nevertheless, it is gratifying to bring the project to closure with these 63 excellent essays. The cover photo of the ancient mound of Beth-shan and the new Roman city at its base aptly reflects the breadth of this volume on Near Eastern Archaeology.

Suzanne Richard Summer 2003

Contributors Susan Ackerman, Dartmouth College E. B. Banning, University of Toronto Itzak Beit-Arieh, Tel Aviv University Barry J. Beitzel, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Andrea M. Berlin, University of Minnesota Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, St. Joseph's University Kevin Butcher, American University of Beirut Deborah N. Carlson, Institute of Nautical Archaeology, University of Texas Charles E. Carter, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey Gary L. Christopherson, University of Arizona Geoffrey A. Clark, Arizona State University Eric H. Cline, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Nancy R. Coinman, Iowa State University Thomas W. Davis, Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute William G. Dever, Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona David A. Dorsey, Evangelical School of Theology, Myerstown, Pennsylvania Steven Fine, University of Cincinnati Linda Sue Galate, Drew University Terry Giles, Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania David F. Graf, University of Miami Rachel Hachlili, University of Haifa Mordechai Haiman, Israel Antiquities Authority B. Hesse, Pennsylvania State University John S. Holladay, Jr., University of Toronto David C. Hopkins, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C. David Ilan, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem Øystein S. LaBianca, Andrews University Albert Leonard, Jr., University of Arizona Thomas E. Levy, University of California, San Diego Gloria London, Burke Museum, Seattle

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Contributors

Jesse C. Long, Jr., Lubbock Christian University, Lubbock, Texas Zvi ªUri Maºoz, Archaeostyle, Qazrine, Israel Victor H. Matthews, Southwest Missouri State University Alan Millard, University of Liverpool J. Maxwell Miller, Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta James D. Muhly, University of Pennsylvania / American School of Classical Studies at Athens Beth Alpert Nakhai, University of Arizona Joseph Patrich, University of Haifa Graham Philip, University of Durham, England Michele Piccirillo, Franciscan Archaeological Institute, Madaba, Jordan Elizabeth E. Platt, University of Dubuque, Iowa Walter E. Rast†, Valparaiso University Gary A. Rendsburg, Cornell University Suzanne Richard, Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania Gary O. Rollefson, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington Arlene Miller Rosen, University College, London / Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Miriam Tadmor, Israel Museum Paula Wapnish, Pennsylvania State University William A. Ward†, Brown University Peter Warnock, University of Missouri, Columbia G. R. H. Wright, Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, Nicosia Randall W. Younker, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan

Geography of the Levant The Levant as Part of a Semitic Triangle Three dominant geographical forces have conferred upon the Near East what are its most eminently characteristic features. Two of these forces are essentially lateral in orientation, and both were impenetrable to civilization in antiquity, while the third is on a longitudinal axis and is unavoidable in both ancient and modern history. All three forces cast a long and defining shadow upon the area that they enclose, which in geographical terms may be called a “Semitic triangle,” and upon the civilizations that emerge on that triangular stage. Geography is vividly displayed here on a grand and dramatic scale. First, wrapped like a mantle around the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas, is a vast geologic formation of elevated and rugged mountains, known as the Alpine-Himalayan chain. From the Pyrenees Mountains of northern Spain, this rocky and convoluted landscape stretches eastward in a nearly unbroken line across more than 7,000 miles to the towering heights of the Himalayans of India and Nepal and the Tsinling Shan range of inland China. Near the center of this sprawling alpine uplift stand the lofty Pontus, Taurus, Caucasus, and Kurdistan Mountains of Turkey (rising at places to an elevation of nearly 17,000 feet with peaks snow-clad year round), as well as the Elburz, Zagros, and Suleiman ranges of Iran (a few peaks of which ascend over 18,000 feet, the highest in all the Near East). Whether Akkadian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Phoenician, or Hebrew, ancient Semitic civilizations were never fully able to transcend or penetrate such formidable terrain for imperial purposes. Indeed, all Near Eastern empires prior to the time of Julius Caesar were largely restrained by this northern barrier. Moreover, there always lurked in those dim and mountainous recesses fierce peoples who periodically threatened the northern frontiers of Semitic hegemony. Second, along the southern axis of the Semitic triangle stands the great obstacle of the desert, an enormous expanse of almost waterless terrain that begins on the Atlantic shores of North Africa. Known across that continent as the Sahara Desert, this barren and desolate environment stretches beyond the Red Sea and spans the entire Arabian Peninsula. As this arid zone reaches into Iran, it crosses over the aforementioned mountains to the north side and continues thereafter through the Tarim basin and into the Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia. Broadening at places to more than 500 miles in width, and stretching nearly 5,000 miles across two continents, this band of savage, foreboding sand also served as an impassable barrier to imperialism and civilization in antiquity. Third, flanking the western axis of this triangular stage and running essentially parallel to the eastern Mediterranean shoreline, there runs a section of the longest and deepest geological fissure in the earth’s surface. A sunken block confined by

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two parallel fault lines, this cleavage represents one of the most conspicuous, complex, and important continental rift systems known to geologists. Most likely it marks the splitting and slow separation of an underlying geological plate, though how and when this gash began to be formed remains a matter of scholarly dispute. In its full extent, this fissure is known as the Afro-Arabian Rift Valley. The fault line begins in southeastern Turkey at the Amanus Mountains and continues southward through western Syria and then through Lebanon. Farther on the rift divides Israel and Jordan as far as the Gulf of Aqaba (the northeastern finger of the Red Sea). From this point, the fracture continues southward on the line that runs parallel to the Red Sea as far as Ethiopia, resulting in the separation of the Arabian Peninsula from Africa. At the base of the Red Sea, the fault line itself splits. An eastern branch divides Arabia from the “horn of Africa” and extends far into the depths of the Indian Ocean; a western branch begins a diagonal penetration of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique. Known in these parts as the “Great African Rift Valley,” this geological dissection has been responsible for creating most of the elongated lakes of East Africa (Rudolph, Albert, Edward, Kivu, Tanganyika, Malawi), and it is responsible for shaping Lake Victoria and for severing the island of Madagascar from continental Africa. Chiseled into the earth’s crust this fault system extends continuously over more than 4,000 miles, across 60 degrees of latitude, or 1/6 of the earth’s circumference. What is more, this fault line also represents the deepest fissure presently known to exist in the surface of the earth. The deepest point along the continental depression lies on the shores of the Dead Sea. Here, beside the western shore, a tight succession of secondary faults running immediately parallel to the main fault line has allowed scientists to study and postulate displacement depths. Drill holes have demonstrated vertical displacements ranging up to 11,750 feet, and geophysical testing of the region has given rise to estimates as thick as some 22,966 feet. When one takes into account the fact that the area surrounding the Dead Sea already lies at an extremely low altitude itself (-1,300 feet), in fact at the lowest point on earth uncovered by water, this means that unconsolidated deposits overlying bedrock are estimated to descend below the level of the Mediterranean Sea to more than 24,000 feet. In other words, were one to begin digging at certain places along the Dead Sea, one would encounter only sedimentary alluvium down to 24,000 feet below sea level before encountering rock stratification.

The Effect of Geography on the Levant It is not an overstatement to assert that the presence of this rift system represents the single decisive factor in shaping the character of the western sector of the Semitic triangle—the Levant—and in nourishing and sustaining its occupants in every historical period. After all, the rift is ultimately responsible for catching and making accessible virtually all of the terrestrial and atmospheric water that is utilized and consumed in the Levant, without which life itself in an otherwise

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hostile and arid environment would be tenuous at best and Sahara-like. All of the major rivers and lakes of the Levant and nearly all of the wadi systems owe their genesis to this rift; meteorological systems generally deposit precipitation in relative quantity precisely because of the highlands created by this rift. In point of fact, the modestly wet Mediterranean climate that commonly characterizes the Levant is barely perceptible east of these highlands. This rift system alone prevents the eastern deserts from sweeping up the edge of the Mediterranean, and it makes agriculture and/or pastoralism possible for something on the order of 30,000 square miles of landscape. At the same time, being the scene of major tectonic activity and its complex erosive aftermath, the Levant exhibits an extremely wide diversity of physiographic and topographic features, resulting in a jumble of hills, valleys, and ravines that make travel and communication difficult from one region to another. The homogeneity of the Nile River Valley or the uniformity of the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia is wholly lacking in the Levant. In many respects, it could be argued that this “geographical brokenness” has played a key role in the way that history has unfolded in the Levant, which has commonly been characterized by geopolitical fragmentation.

The Geographical Regions of the Levant Geographically speaking, the Levant actually consists of a double alignment of mountain belts enclosing the Great Rift Valley, located over the fault line. Laterally segmented by three “depressions,” these belts comprise a series of four sets of parallel ranges. (1) Beginning in the north, near the Antioch basin, and stretching as far south as the so-called Tripoli-Homs-Palmyra depression—a valley through which courses the Kabir (Eleutherus) River and which demarcates the modern border between Syria and Lebanon—the Nusariya Mountain chain, which technically includes Mt. Casius, dominates the western horizon, while the Zawiya Mountains and their northern outliers rise in the east. (2) In the territory south of this lateral gap, as far as the deep gorge created by the Litani River (immediately north of Tyre) and extending east past the site of Dan and on to the flat steppe that separates the hills of Damascus and the basaltic plateau of Jebel Druze, stand the mighty Lebanon Mountains in the western field of view. Opposite this terrain on the east rises the Anti-Lebanon chain, which achieves its greatest height in the southern sector at Mt. Hermon. (3) Next, spanning the area between the Litani-Dan-steppeland depression and the Beersheva-Zered depression stand the highlands of Galilee, Samaria, and Judah on the west, while the Golan Heights, the Gilead Plateau, and the Moabite highlands figure prominently on the eastern front. (4) Finally, between the Beersheva-Zered depression and the Red Sea, the western vista features the wild and forbidding slopes of the Zin Wilderness and the Paran Wilderness, while the eastern horizon is dominated by the towering sandstone highlands of Edom and the spectacular granite mountains of Midian.

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Separating the parallel mountainous ranges is the Great Rift Valley. In the north, the Nusariya and Zawiya Mountains fall precipitously—more than 3,000 feet—into this chasm, known there as the Ghab (“thicket, depression”). The Ghab is drained by the meandering Orontes River. To the south, the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains, which rise to heights in excess of 9,000–10,000 feet, fall off abruptly into the trough, known in that region as the Beqºa (“a place of stagnant water”). The Beqºa is drained by the Litani and Abana Rivers. Farther south, the highlands of modern Israel and Jordan drop off into the narrow chasm, there referred to as the Arabah (“wasteland, desert-plain”), although the depression north of the Dead Sea is more precisely denoted as the Jordan Rift Valley, named for the river that drains it. Finally, the dramatic and almost unscalable eastern heights of Edom and Midian drop off precipitously into the furrow of the Arabah, which also lies below the high, western deserts of Zin and Paran. In many other senses, however, the Arabah is unlike the Ghab, Beqºa, and the Jordan rift. The Arabah is not drained by a river; aside from a few spots in the Edomite highlands near Petra and immediately north, the Arabah is flanked by territory that receives insufficient precipitation to sustain a substantial population. For practical purposes, the Beersheva-Zered depression should be seen as the southern terminus of arable land. Accordingly, the Arabah and its adjoining mountains do not figure prominently in the remainder of this essay. It is instructive to analyze the Levant from the perspective of a longitudinal cross-section. From such a view, the Levant itself as a whole bears a mountain-like shape, highest in the center (with several peaks of the Lebanon range exceeding 10,000 feet in altitude), with certain topographic and physiographic features appearing to be mirrored on the two sloping sides. The key to the geography of the Levant is also its lofty apex: the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains. In addition to its raised elevation, which far exceeds the Nusariya and Zawiya ranges in the north or the heights of Galilee, Samaria, and Judah or the highlands of Golan, Gilead, and Moab in the south, there exists in the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains an unusual feature of geographic structure that is not present in either of its adjoining regions. This is the substantial stratum of impermeable nonporous rocks within its upfold. Because of this layer, water is forced to the surface in vast quantities, producing hundreds of large and prolific springs at the unusually high level of 4,000–5,000 feet above sea level. Some of these torrents have a flow of several thousand cubic feet per second and emerge from the side of the mountains as small rivers or cascading rivulets. They form not only the headwaters of the two rivers that take shape near the watershed at Baºalbek in the central Beqºa and drain the Beqºa (that is, the Litani and Abana), but also the springs of this stratum form the source of the Orontes and Jordan Rivers. In a number of fundamental ways a certain symmetry to these two outlying river valleys can be observed (prior to the modern period, when dams have been erected) and to their surrounding topography. Both the Orontes and Jordan Rivers had such steep gradients, particularly near their headwaters, and were thus

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so fast-moving, that they were erosive instead of depository in nature. In their descent, both rivers had to cut through a basaltic dam, thereby creating an intermediate lake in antiquity; the Orontes has created the Lake of Homs; and the Jordan created Lake Hula (just north of the Sea of Galilee), which was all but drained during the 1950s. Both rivers have been mainly unnavigable throughout history; and both have seasonal flows that are unfavorable to the agricultural cycle, and thus they were of little value for irrigation purposes. The soils around the Orontes and Jordan are of similar types: alluvial soils along the banks, saline at certain places (especially along the Jordan). The sets of flanking mountains are likewise symmetrical in certain respects. Both sets of mountains are mostly limestone and manifest an internal transverse valley, the Ugarit Valley, and the Jezreel (or Esdraelon) Valley. Both mountains have an approximate longitudinal shape and comparative elevation (average of 2,500–3,500 feet), with peaks approaching 4,500–5,000 feet. They both receive similar rainfall amounts (20–40 inches annually) and in similar patterns. Precipitation increases toward the north and on the western flanks of both mountains, precisely on terrain where farming is least productive; rainfall commences in both regions in late September and continues until early April. The soils of both ranges of mountains produce similar growth: Mediterranean scrubs, tamarisk, and brushwood cover many slopes; seasonal grasses suitable only for grazing survive on plateaus; and reed grass grows in swamps; anemones, poppies, and wildflower abound. Food crops include grains (wheat barley, maize), and a wide range of vegetables can be grown on the coastal plains. Citrus trees as well as many fig, carob, olive, and date trees can be found; but the few hardwood forests that were not pillaged in earlier history are exceedingly small. Stratification in these lands provides comparatively meager mineral resources, mainly asphalt deposits and mineral springs. Both of these mountain blocks are flanked on the west by a narrow, flat coastline, consisting mainly of sand and sand dunes, although there are a few lateral promontories found along the Nusariya range. The Levant possesses a slender coastal plain stretching along the entire length of the eastern Mediterranean shoreline and into Egypt that can be divided into four geographical units. (1) The area from the mouth of the Orontes to the vicinity of Tel Sukas is commonly denominated as the Ugarit coastal plain, named for the prominent site that served as the capital of a kingdom of the same name, which flourished in the second millennium b.c.e. (2) The Phoenician coastal plain extended from Tel Sukas to Mt. Carmel, although it was broken in a few places between Tripoli and Beruit by mountains stretching west and meeting the sea. The cities of Arvad, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre were the most important Phoenician cities, although the Phoenicians also colonized Tell Sukas, Tripoli, Beirut, and many more coastal places. (3) The Dor and Sharon coastal plains lay between Mt. Carmel and the Yarkon River. The shore of the Dor and Sharon plains forms a smooth, almost straight line running parallel to the mountain ridges—what professionals call a “concordant shore”—and so this area is poor in promontories and deep sheltered bays. What is more, the situation is aggravated by the counter-

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clockwise currents on the Mediterranean that carry vast amounts of sand from North Africa, Egypt, or the northern Sinai and deposit them along Israel’s already shallow waterfront. Not until the time of Herod the Great, therefore, when a small coastal hamlet was transformed into a worthy seat for official Roman rule and renamed Caesarea, did the Dor or Sharon plains include a large harbor. (4) The Philistine coastal plain spanned the area between the Yarkon River and Gaza, although the semidesert and sand dunes around Gaza continue along the coast southward in what is designated the Sinai coastal plain, which extended into the Delta region of the Nile River in Egypt.

Bibliography Abd el-Al, I. 1948 Le Litani: Étude hydrologique. Beirut: Service hydraulique. Abou el-Enin, H. S. 1973 Essays on the Geomorphology of the Lebanon. Beirut: Arab University Press. Atlas of Israel 1970 Jerusalem: Survey of Israel, Ministry of Labour. Baly, D., and Tushingham, A. D. 1971 Atlas of the Biblical World. New York: World. Ben-Menahem, A. 1979 Earthquake Catalogue for the Middle East (92 b.c.–1980 a.d.). Bollettino di Geofisica 21/84: 245–310. 1981 Variation of Slip and Creep along the Levant Rift over the Past 4500 Years. Tectonophysics 80: 183–91. Brice, W. C. (ed.) 1978 The Environmental History of the Near and Middle East since the Last Ice Age. New York: Academic Press. Brown, J. P. 1969 The Lebanon and Phoenicia: Ancient Texts Illustrating Their Physical Geography and Native Industries. Beirut: The American University of Beirut. Collelo, T. (ed.) 1989 Lebanon: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army. Dussaud, R. 1927 Topographic historique de la Syrie antique et medievale. Paris: Geuthner. Garfunkel, Z. 1981 Internal Structure of the Dead Sea Leaky Transform (Rift) in Relation to Plate Kinematics. Tectonophysics 80: 81–108. Henry, D. O. 1989 From Foraging to Agriculture: The Levant at the End of the Ice Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hitti, P. I. 1951 History of Syria, Including Lebanon and Palestine. New York: Macmillan. Marfoe, L. 1978 Between Qadesh and Kumidi: A History of Frontier Settlement and Land Use in the Biqaº, Lebanon. 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Chicago. Metz, H. C. (ed.) 1991 Jordan: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army.

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Nyrop, R. F. (ed.) 1979a Israel: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: American University. 1979b Syria: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: American University. Quennell, A. M. (ed.) 1982 Rift Valleys: Afro-Arabian. Stroudsburg, Pa.: Hutchison Ross. Por, F. D. 1989. The Legacy of Tethys: An Aquatic Biogeography of the Levant. Boston: Kluwer. Republic Libanaise 1977 Atlas climatique du Liban. 2 vols. Beirut: Ministere des Travaux Publics et des Transports, Service Meteorologique. Semple, E. C. 1971 The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History. New York: AMS. Shapira, A. 1979 Redetermined Magnitudes of Earthquakes in the Afro-Eurasian Junction. Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 28: 107–9. Small, R. J. 1989 Geomorphology and Hydrology. London: Longman. Vaumas, E. de 1954 Le Liban: étude de geographie physique. 2 vols. Paris: Didot. Vita-Finzi, C. 1984 The Prehistory and History of the Jordanian Landscape. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 1: 23–27. Wendorf, F., and Marks, A. E. (eds.) 1975 Problems in Prehistory: North Africa and the Levant. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. Wolfart, R. 1967 Geologie von Syrien und dem Libanon. Berlin: Bornträger.

Barry J. Beitzel

Paleoenvironments of the Levant Throughout the long human occupation of the Levant there have been numerous climatic and environmental changes that have influenced settlement and demanded adaptational adjustments in both prehistoric and historic periods. The reconstruction of Levantine environmental history relies on a combination of different lines of evidence, including palynology, geomorphology, paleolimnology, isotope analyses, and archaeozoology. These sources of information are dated by both absolute and relative dating methods. The absolute methods include Radiocarbon (C14), Uranium-Thorium (U/Th), Thermoluminescence (TL), and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR). Relative dating determines an age based on associated artifacts or lithological similarities between two geological units. The various lines of evidence are then correlated in order to reconstruct the pattern of climatic and environmental events. These correlations are often problematic due to lack of reliable dates and local, small-scale environmental changes. However, as more data are assembled from these varied sources, more detailed pictures of environmental change are emerging. During the Pleistocene period (beginning roughly 2.5 million years ago and ending approximately 10,000 b.p. uncalibrated C14), paleoenvironments in the Levant were profoundly influenced by the advance and retreat of glacial ice in the northern hemisphere. The periods of glacial advance were punctuated by short phases of glacial withdrawal known as interstadials, as well as longer intervals of major glacial retreat referred to as interglacial periods. Recently, oxygen isotope determinations from ice and sea cores have given us a more accurate pattern of glacial advance and retreat. The oxygen isotope curve from sea cores represents a series of stages whereby high 18O values, indicating cold climatic conditions, vary with low 18 O values indicative of warmer climates. The oxygen isotope curve is divided into a number of stages in which even-numbered segments correspond to glacial episodes and odd-numbered phases indicate interglacial or interstadial episodes. During the glacial episodes, there were worldwide drops in sea level. In the Levant, sea levels fell tens of meters, resulting in a large expansion of the coastal plain and the development of a geologically distinct red paleosol, locally called Hamra. It interfingers with cemented fossil dune sand, Kurkar, which formed during interstadial and interglacial episodes of high sea levels.

Pleistocene Lower Paleolithic (ca. 1.5 Million–250,000 Years b.p.) Much of the information on the environment during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods comes from sediments in prehistoric cave sites, shoreline Kurkar/Hamra sequences, and ancient stream terraces. To date,

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there is no coherent picture of paleoenvironments for these early time periods, due to the length of time involved and the lack of archaeological remains. Furthermore, the sites for which we do have data have recently been re-dated by new dating techniques and are therefore difficult to correlate with other lines of evidence. The Lower Paleolithic site of Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley revealed the remains of some of the earliest hominids to occupy this region. The site dates to approximately 1.3 million years b.p. and probably corresponds to an early interglacial episode. Sediments from Ubeidiya indicate shore deposits from a fresh-water lake. Pollen from Ubeidiya and other contemporary Jordan Valley lakes is dominated by high percentages of oak, indicating dense forests and a climate significantly wetter than that of the present. The fauna from Ubeidiya suggests warm climatic conditions and includes species found in forests (deer and pig), open savannas (mammoth, equids, and cattle), mixed forest/grasslands (rhinoceros, camel, and giraffe), and aquatic environments (hippopotamus and otter). This period can be roughly correlated with an episode of substantial alluviation in the Syrian Orontes and Euphrates Rivers that left a major stream terrace system referred to by van Liere as the “Middle Pleistocene Valley Fill.” The site of Latamne, situated on a high river terrace along the Orontes, and Evron Quarry located on the coast of northern Israel appear to be somewhat later in this phase. The Late Acheulean period in Syria coincided with a phase of channel alluviation along the Orontes and Middle Euphrates systems that deposited the “Main Gravel Terrace.” This northern alluvial phase has been interpreted as the result of a moist period. The Late Acheulean (Level E) at Tabun Cave on the northern coast of Israel was once correlated with a marine transgression related to the Stage 5 interglacial episode. Recent re-dating of this level placed it into a much earlier time frame (from 160,000 to 300,000 b.p.), thus making it more difficult to attribute it to an Oxygen Isotope stage. However, it appears to represent a moister episode than earlier Acheulean Levels F and G. The increased silt content in Level E can be correlated with the beginning of loess deposition in the Negev Desert of southern Israel. Pollen from the lowest levels of Tabun, Lake Hula, and the Dead Sea point to a poorly developed maquis of oak, pistachio, olive, and cypress, suggesting a general trend of dry environmental conditions.

Middle Paleolithic Mousterian (ca. 250,000–45,000 b.p.) The Mousterian period covers both glacial and interglacial episodes from approximately Oxygen Isotope Stage 7 until Stage 3. Colder glacial episodes were accompanied by major drops in sea level from about 60 to 90 meters below the present level. During the moist phases there was increased alluvial activity in stream systems from Lebanon and Syria (Euphrates “Lower Terrace”) down to Transjordan (Hasa Fm), the southern Negev, and Sinai. The resulting deposits are often characterized by thick gravel layers demonstrating the presence of high

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capacity streams. Paleosols from this period occur throughout the region and indicate climatic stability under a moister rainfall regime. Spring activity increased, as is evident from travertine deposits in the central Negev, dated by U/Th to about 80,000 b.p. Pollen from Tabun Cave, the Hula Valley (Israel), Birqat Ram (Golan Heights), Lake Ghab (Syria), Lisan sediments of the Dead Sea area, and loess deposits from the Negev indicate a well-forested landscape in the north and maquis vegetation cover in the south. Much of the environmental evidence points to substantially higher rainfall, evenly distributed throughout the winter months as well as periods of summer precipitation. In contrast, the later Mousterian period is characterized geomorphologically by a phase of intensive wadi incision in which most of the major Levantine channels deeply incised their former beds. This converted the previous Mousterian alluvium into a system of abandoned high terraces.

Upper Paleolithic (45,000–20,000 b.p.) The Upper Paleolithic period is marked by renewed stream alluviation forming a system of Upper Paleolithic terraces in the southern Levant and Sinai. These terraces are characterized by finer-grained sediments than those of the previous Mousterian terraces. They suggest slow, well-sustained stream flows resulting from a rainfall regime with greater and more evenly distributed precipitation than in the present. The landscape stabilization allowed several phases of soil development in the Negev loess and on alluvial terraces. There was a general increase in tree pollen, as seen from Lakes Hula and Birqat Ram, as well as some tree and maquis pollen appearing at some Upper Paleolithic sites in the central Negev Desert.

Epipaleolithic Period At the beginning of this period, which extended from approximately 20,000 to 10,300 b.p. (uncalibrated), there was another strong erosional regime that further incised the beds of stream systems throughout the region, indicating the lowering of water tables due to drier environmental conditions. The isotope curves from the Soreq Caves in Israel record a cold dry climatic peak at around 19,000 b.p. The oak pollen curve from Lake Hula declined dramatically around 18,000 b.p., as did the oak curve from Birqat Ram. Arboreal pollen from Ghab in Syria began with a high percentage (50%) of arboreal pollen at 25,000 b.p. and fluctuated down to 20% from 20,000 to 14,000 b.p. Soil formation ceased, giving way to a regime of slope erosion. The climate became cold and dry during this phase, which corresponds to the glacial maximum of the northern hemisphere and Oxygen Isotope Stage 2. Amelioration of these harsh conditions occurred in the middle of the Epipaleolithic period, around 15,000 b.p. The streams and wadis renewed a depositional regime, depositing fine-grained sediments in channels that were more restricted in size than the channels of the previous alluvial period. Lake deposits formed in northern Sinai, and soil formation began again under a more stabilized

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rainfall regime, although the degree of soil development was weaker than that of the Upper Paleolithic period. Soils from the coastal plain of Israel and the northern Negev date from around 15,000 to 11,000 b.p. Pollen information from separate cores at Lake Hula indicate a slow but steady increase in arboreal pollen beginning about 15,000 b.p., and peaking sharply around 11,500 b.p. This reflects the spread of the oak forest, accelerating in 13,000 b.p. and peaking at 11,500 b.p. Pollen from the central Negev includes an abundance of tree pollen in this period as well. At the end of the Epipaleolithic period, converging lines of evidence point to a short-lived but intense cold-dry spell in the southern Levant that lasted about 1,000–1,500 years and marked the end of the Pleistocene. This arid interval can be roughly assigned to 11,000–10,000 b.p. (uncalibrated) and corresponds to the “Younger Dryas” period in Europe. At Lake Hula the tree pollen percentages began to drop sharply after 11,500 b.p. Pollen from the Natufian sites of Fazael VIII and Salibiya IX in the Jordan Valley and Hayonim Terrace in the Carmel Mountains also indicates arid conditions that coincided with late Natufian occupations. Soil formation ceased in the Negev and Israeli coastal plain, and the previous Epipaleolithic alluvium became an abandoned terrace system as streams began to incise their beds. Sand dunes increased in area in the northern Negev Desert, and the Lisan Lake in the Jordan Valley dropped to its lowest level, becoming the modern Dead Sea. The fauna from Natufian sites show a steady decrease in fallow deer, with a corresponding increase in gazelle, suggesting that the forest retreated and grassland vegetation increased.

Holocene Throughout the Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene there were periods of fluctuating moisture regimes and related environmental changes. These fluctuations did not affect the general suite of Mediterranean vegetation, but they were quite significant in the expansion and contraction of grassland areas and marginal farming districts, which therefore had a vital impact on incipient farmers in the early Holocene and farming strategies of Middle and Late Holocene societies. These wet and dry episodes, however, are sometimes difficult to reconcile with the archaeological record, since dating of archaeological phases in the Holocene is more closely controlled than dating of the environmental record. Furthermore, from Middle Holocene times onward humans have had a distinct impact on the environment, which has obscured some of the evidence of climatic change. The data for environmental reconstruction comes to us from isotope analyses of cave deposits, sea cores and land snails, lake sediments, pollen, and geomorphology. The most complete record of Holocene environmental change is from isotopic analysis of speleothems in the Soreq Caves, Israel. These show a great deal of small climatic fluctuations from warm to cool, and wet to dry conditions. Two peaks of warm-moist episodes occur in the mid–ninth and mid–eighth millennia b.p. There is a sharp and short-lived cooling event at the end of the 9th millennium, around 8,000 b.p. This Early Holocene moist episode corresponds with the

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well-known Neolithic Wet Phase recorded from a series of North African lakes. There are many fewer climatic fluctuations from 6,500 to 5,500 b.p., and the climate was generally significantly wetter than that of today. Major fluctuations from wet to dry dominated the climate from around 4,000 to 5,500 b.p. with a generally wetter climate at that time than at present. A strong peak of dry conditions occurs around 5,000 b.p. and a very wet episode precedes a major shift to drier conditions at the end of the fifth millennium b.p. (third millennium b.c.e.), which generally lasted until the present time with slightly wetter intervals around 2,000 b.p. and 500 b.p. Similar results come from carbon isotope data analyzed from the shells of land snails. These data attest to the presence of more mesic C3 plant communities throughout the northern Negev from the Early Holocene until the middle of the eighth millennium b.p. From the end of the eighth millennium until approximately the middle of the fourth millennium b.p., there was a northward shift of the more xeric C4 plants, although their range was still south of their present-day distribution. Paleolimnological studies of Dead Sea sediments indicate moist phases of deep lake clay deposition interspersed with salt deposits from a dry period shallow lake. The first episode of clay deposition dates to the Early Holocene. A second phase of lake deposits can be roughly placed in the Middle Holocene, around the sixth to fifth millennium b.p. After this, a period of lake evaporation suggests an extended dry episode. Further information on Holocene environments comes from the pollen diagrams of Lake Ghab, Hula, and Kinneret. For the first three thousand years of the Holocene, Lakes Ghab and Hula present seemingly contradictory evidence. At Ghab, the oak forest expands, and at Hula it contracts. This has been variously interpreted as opposing climatic trends or, more likely, a function of faulty dates. The diagrams from Lake Hula show an increase in arboreal pollen after around 8,000 b.p. and a sharp decline around 4,000 b.p. After this time period it is difficult to determine if the pollen curve is influenced by changing climatic conditions or the impact of humans on the land. The geomorphological record is also informative and gives a direct picture of landscape changes throughout the Holocene. Although there is little information for the Neolithic period, the wadis of the southern Levant began to systematically aggrade during the Chalcolithic period and Early Bronze Age. Wadis began to fill their channels with alluvial deposits, creating active flood plains, usually within the confines of channels defined by the previously eroded Epipaleolithic terraces. These flood plains were then available for floodwater farming. This alluvial phase is interpreted as a result of the Middle Holocene wet phase. It is unclear if this represents one phase of continuous deposition or, as is more likely, a series of alluvial and erosional episodes spanning the Chalcolithic period through the Early Bronze Age, caused by periods of increased rainfall interspersed with periods of drier conditions. After the end of the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age moist period, the evidence for further clear climatic trends becomes patchy at best. Much of the proxy

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record is influenced by the effects of steadily intensifying human land-use practices. For example, phases of stream alluviation and slope wash have been recorded in central Israel. These appear to be very localized events and may be more connected to the intensive use of terrace agriculture than to natural changes in channel hydrology. Evidence of lake-level fluctuations from caves in the Dead Sea, isotopes from speleothems in caves from the Galilee, and Soreq, and pollen from Lake Hula suggest roughly three or more Late Holocene moist episodes. The precise dating of these phases with respect to historic periods in the Levant is still an issue that needs to be resolved. Some confusion has resulted from attempts to compare uncalibrated C14 dates of climatic proxy information with calendardated archaeological periods or, worse, to use archaeological settlement data from historic periods as a climatic proxy in its own right. Clearly there is a need for more precise resolution of environmental data for these periods. A prominent late phase of alluvial stream deposition is roughly contemporary with the Byzantine Period. The resulting terrace occurs throughout much of the circum-Mediterranean zone. Its origin is the center of a debate between some scholars who attribute its cause to the environmental impact of the broad agricultural base of the Byzantine Empire and those who assign a climatic cause. The history of Levantine paleoenvironments can as yet only be presented in the form of a broad outline. However, as an ever-increasing number of excavators realize the importance of collecting and analyzing paleoecological data, our information on past environments and their relationship to their human inhabitants will steadily increase.

Bibliography Bar-Matthews, M.; Ayalon, A.; et al. 1999 The Eastern Mediterranean Paleoclimate as a Reflection of Regional Events: Soreq Cave, Israel. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 166/1–2: 85–95. Bar-Yosef, O., and Kra, R. S. 1994 Late Quaternary Chronology and Paleoclimates of the Eastern Mediterranean. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Bintliff, J. L., and van Zeist, W. (ed.) 1982 Palaeoclimates, Palaeoenvironments, and Human Communities in the Eastern Mediterranean Region in Later Prehistory. Oxford: BAR International. Bottema, S., and van Zeist, W. 1981 Palynological Evidence for the Climatic History of the Near East, 50,000– 6,000 b.p. Pp. 111–32 in Prehistoire du Levant, ed. J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Colloques Internationaux du C.N.R.S. 598. Paris: C.N.R.S. Farrand, W. R. 1979 Chronology and Palaeoenvironment of Levantine Prehistoric Sites as Seen from Sediment Studies. Journal of Archaeological Science 6: 369–92. Goldberg, P. 1986 Later Quaternary Environmental History of the Southern Levant. Geoarchaeology 1: 225– 44.

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Goldberg, P., and Rosen, A. M. 1987 Early Holocene Paleoenvironments of Israel. Pp. 23–33 in Shiqmim I, ed. T. E. Levy. Oxford: BAR International. Goodfriend, G. A. 1991 Holocene Trends in 18O in Land Snail Shells from the Negev Desert and Their Implications for Changes in Rainfall Source Areas. Quaternary Research 35: 417–26. Goodfriend, G. A., and Magaritz, M. 1988 Palaeosols and Late Pleistocene Rainfall Fluctuations in the Negev Desert. Nature 332: 144– 46. Horowitz, A. 1979 The Quaternary of Israel. New York: Academic Press. Magaritz, M., and Goodfriend, G. A. 1987 Movement of the Desert Boundary in the Levant from Latest Pleistocene to Early Holocene. Pp. 173–83 in Abrupt Climatic Change, ed. W. H. Berger and L. D. Labeyrie. Dordrecht: Reidel. Rosen, A. M. 1989 Environmental Change at the End of the Early Bronze Age in Palestine. Pp. 247–55 in L’urbanisation de la Palestine à l’âge du Bronze ancien, ed. P. de Miroschedji. Oxford: BAR International. 1995 The Social Response to Environmental Change in Early Bronze Age Canaan. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14: 26–44.

Arlene Miller Rosen

Archaeozoology Scope of the Field Archaeozoology (or zooarchaeology) is the study of animal remains recovered from archaeological sites. The field serves two masters, one zoological and one archaeological. Zoology demands the careful identification and description of bones, teeth, and shells within a taxonomic structure provided by biology. It also targets the impact of human activity on animal morphology and behavior, as well as the potential information about past climate history and ecology provided by particular zoogeographic distributions and histories. Several examples are illustrative (see the classic summary in Zeuner 1963). As husbandry replaced hunting, the altered selective pressures eventually produced domestic stock that was generally smaller than its wild ancestors. In both sheep and goats, domestication was further marked by altered horn morphologies. In pigs and dogs, facial shortening followed the advent of human management. Many of these changed features represent the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood and are likely inadvertent by-products of husbandry rather than cultural choices (Tchernov and Horwitz 1991). Some animals are particularly sensitive to habitat changes and have been used to estimate past vegetational conditions. One of the earliest applications of zooarchaeological evidence in the Levant was the use of the ratio between gazelles (Gazella sp.) and deer (Dama sp.) by Dorothea Bate and Dorothy Garrod to reconstruct Pleistocene conditions in the Carmel region (Bate 1937; see also Garrard 1982). More recently, the content of snail shells has been used to estimate past climatic conditions. Among the domesticates, pig bone abundances have been used to estimate the amount of rainfall a region received (Grigson 1995). The second “master,” archaeology, emphasizes the culture-based conceptions of the ancients’ faunal world and the political, economic, and ideological purposes that animals served. Its theoretical roots lie in the social sciences rather than in biology, and it is dependent on ethnographic descriptions of animal exploitation for the construction of explanatory models. This interpretive strategy is referred to as a “food-systems” model by some authorities, while others prefer to label it a “cuisine-based” approach. For example, animal resources were produced at several distinct nodes in ancient Levantine economies—the herds raised by nomadic pastoralists, the flocks raised by village agriculturalists, and the animals managed by the residents of towns and cities. The makeup of the herds at each of these locations was influenced by the herds at the other production centers, as complex webs of exchange expanded or collapsed with shifts in the degree of political centralization achieved by state and imperial regimes. Thus, at points of low integration, herds were configured to service households and contained relatively more goats and

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pigs. As agricultural systems intensified and market engagement or taxation/ tributary demands increased, cattle and sheep became more important components of a husbandry system now more focused on export. Shifts in the production emphasis for domestic stock (dairy, meat, fiber, labor, or export) also affected the slaughter ages chosen by herdsmen for their domestic stock. Examples of these forces can be seen in the records of both Tell Jemmeh and Tell Miqne/ Ekron where during the 7th century b.c.e., the opportunities and demands of imperial systems redirected animals to external markets (Wapnish 1993; 1996). Cultural archaeozoology has recently begun to consider animal consumption of food and culinary systems as well as animal production. It is clear that as urban systems emerged the distribution of carcass parts within ancient communities depended on the degree of access to high-quality resources and indirectly on the development of ways to supply animal products (Zeder 1991). Finally, the disposition of bone fragments was shaped by the culinary processes of meal preparation, consumption, and garbage disposal.

Methods of Analysis In order to tackle both biological and cultural questions, archaeozoological analysis is performed on four levels (Hesse and Wapnish 1985): the level of the single find; the level of a subsample of the finds assigned to a particular taxonomic category; the level of a whole faunal sample from an individual site; and finally, on the level of regional comparisons. Analytic and taxonomic categories are not solely derived from biology. Folk categories and arrangements are often important alternatives, correctives, and additions to modern biological classifications and can be found by ethnography or the study of ancient texts (Berlin 1992; Brown 1984; Wapnish 1995). In addition, many relevant categories of analysis derive from human processes and patterns of animal exploitation. Such things as butchering technique, food preparation, and garbage disposal constitute components of culturally distinct “cuisines,” and they may circumscribe animal categories that are critical to a fuller understanding of the way that animals were used. Archaeozoology is highly quantitative. This is particularly true in Levantine settings, where the diversity of the fauna exploited by the ancient economies was limited. The relative abundances of different categories, not just their presence or absence, must be estimated. This need requires the development of taphonomic models. Taphonomy is the study of the effect of deposition and burial conditions on the preservation of different kinds of remains (Lyman 1994). Because bones are organic materials, they are subject to a wider range of attritional processes than pottery or stone tools. Much experimental work has been devoted to estimating the effects of such destructive processes as exposure to the sun, transport and abrasion by currents of water, hostile soil conditions and damage by root growth, as well as the depredations wrought by rodent and carnivore activity. One critical conclusion of this research is that many cultural processes are mimicked by natural ones and that considerable additional research will be necessary

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to develop models to distinguish them. Further, archaeozoologists are only now beginning to model the interaction of these two forces successfully. The quantitative nature of archaeozoology also requires that particular attention be paid to collection and curatorial techniques, which may bias what and how much is actually recovered and recognized. Since analytical categories may be of radically different size (such as the number of sheep compared with the number of camels), it is essential that the critical size (the minimum size and shape that a bone must be to be reliably collected) of bone elements recovered be determined for each excavation collection strategy used (for example, trench collection, sifting, water sieving). A particularly thorny problem besets the assigning of dates to archaeozoological material recovered from tell sites. Only infrequently is the species to which a bone belongs or a particular morphological feature on a specimen a guide to its age. Archaeozoology is thus nearly entirely dependent on the stratigraphic context of recovered and associated artifacts for chronological information. Since previously discarded bone fragments could easily have been redeposited in later strata, and it is unlikely that the bone will bear evidence of that experience, it is crucial to examine the artifact content of any particular layer, locus, or feature, as well as its stratigraphic position in order to recognize mixing of materials from different periods and assign temporal probabilities to the associated bones. The most important analytical principle that results from this situation is that, while the onset of a new zooarchaeological variable is likely to be distinctive, its disappearance will be blurred (Hesse and Rosen 1988). For instance, while the onset of Philistine occupation is marked at some sites by a sharp increase in the abundance of pig bones, the subsequent disappearance of pigs from the culinary economy appears less sharp than it probably was. Each bone element (for example, a distal humerus, a portion of the upper forelimb that forms part of the elbow) is examined for aspects of morphology. This can establish the basis of taxonomic identification or can note the ravages of disease or unusual bone remodeling—features that can be implicated in the animal’s death or indicate how it was used. Cut marks, indicative of the way an animal was skinned and/or butchered, may reveal culture-specific cuisines and ways that animals were procured and distributed at a site. For example, when cattle are used for traction, the particular surfaces of their foot bones will sometimes develop extra bony growth in response to the unusual loads they must bear. Bone is also a raw material used for the manufacture of utilitarian and decorative items. Both finished products and by-products of manufacturing are found in archaeological remains. Each bone or tooth is also examined for information about the age at which the animal died. When summarized for a taxon, these collective data are useful for determining hunting strategies, herding management, marketing practice, or consumption patterns. For example, a large proportion of very young individuals in a sample of sheep or goat bones may be evidence of an emphasis on dairy production, while a large number of older animals may indicate a specialization in fiber. Alternatively, depending on the culture-historical context of the sample,

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the same mortality pattern may be evidence for different consumption patterns. For instance, older animals may have been fattened specifically for delivery to an affluent market. The relative abundance of different parts of the carcass (head versus shoulder versus hips, and so on is calculated, because these statistics are sensitive to the mode of organization in the redistribution of animals and their products and to cuisine-based patterns of cultural preference for one or another part of the animal. The macroperspective on an animal economy at a particular time and place is provided by the relative abundance of the different taxonomic, age, and carcass part categories. A wide range of methods has been developed to estimate these values (Grayson 1984). These include Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI), Total Number of Fragments (TNF or NISP), Relative Frequency (rf ), and bone weight. Each of these estimators has built-in advantages and biases, so zooarchaeologists must justify their choice of technique based on the sample profile and the questions they are asking.

The Archaeozoological Record of the Levant Despite important changes in the abundance and distribution of various species after the Pleistocene period (Uerpmann 1987), the faunal composition of the region was not radically altered until the advent of the modern period, which brought with it the introduction of guns and human modification of the environment on a massive scale. During the Holocene period, relatively few of the numerous animals available for human exploitation were routinely and systematically used. For example, deer (red and fallow) and gazelles were mainstays of Pleistocene hunting economies in southwestern Asia, although they were supplemented or occasionally replaced by sheep, goats, cattle, and equids. Much of the faunal variability in the Pleistocene record can be linked to habitat preferences of the prey species. The exploitation of the gazelle is a particularly controversial issue. The intensity in the pattern of gazelle exploitation at a few Levantine sites has led some authorities to suggest that the animal was in the first stages of domestication at the very end of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene (ca. 10,000 b.c.e.). Even if this were true (the evidence is not conclusive), by the middle of the seventh millennium b.c.e., domestic sheep and goats had replaced the gazelle as the dominant species in Neolithic economies. Both sheep and goats appear to have been domesticated in regions to the north and east of the Levant, perhaps as early as the ninth or beginning of the eighth millennium b.c.e., and were only introduced as minor components of the animal economy in the Levant somewhat later. While it is often assumed that the impetus for domesticating these animals was the demand for meat, various practical objections to this model can be raised based on the ethno-

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graphic record. It seems possible that the desire for secondary products (milk and fiber) played an earlier role in the process than is often assumed (Russell 1988). What is clear, however, is that the exploitation of milk and fiber expanded greatly with the onset of complex society in the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age and that sheep and goats were the most numerous of the animals raised (Grigson 1995). In general, goats were emphasized in economies organized at the domestic level, sheep in economies focused on the marketplace. Cattle were not common at sites in the Levant during the initial phases of the aceramic Neolithic, and their small numbers make it difficult to identify the first phases of domestication. The earliest managed cattle in the region appear to be from the site of Mureybit on the Euphrates, where “predomestication” is inferred from the mortality profile of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) sample. More certain evidence of domestic cattle, based on the sex ratio of the cull, is found at various sites with samples from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). In addition, size diminution of cattle bones has been observed on material dated earlier than 5000 b.c.e., a probable indication of later domestic status. The proportion of cattle relative to other species increases markedly in Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (PPNC) samples from the north and south of Israel. High cattle ratios are typical of northern sites in this period. Recently obtained evidence from PPNC Ashkelon on the southern coastal plain may indicate that the phenomenon is due less to paleoecological conditions and more to a transformation of the pastoral economy on a regional basis in the latter part of the period. Humped zebu cattle joined the unhumped taurine kine in the animal economy of the region by the early second millennium b.c.e. In historic period sites, the abundance of cattle is linked to the intensity of plow-based agriculture. Domestication of indigenous wild asses occurred both in Southwest Asia and Egypt by the fourth millennium b.c.e. (Clutton-Brock 1992; Meadow and Uerpmann 1986). Wild horses were present in the Levant during the Pleistocene, but they disappear from the archaeological record during the early Holocene. The earliest attestation of their renewed presence in the region comes from fourthmillennium sites in the northern Negev. Three size ranges were observed in these samples (Grigson 1993). The largest are consistent with measurements for true horses while the smallest correspond to domestic donkeys. Specimens from the intermediate group may derive from mule or horse-donkey crosses or may indicate that Chalcolithic horses were smaller in stature than their later descendants. The historical linkage between the finds in the Levant and the main center of horse domestication in central Asia in the Late Neolithic is not clear. In historic periods, donkeys and horses were used almost exclusively for draft purposes, although occasional cut marks on donkey bones may point to its use as food. In prehistoric and early historic periods, a third species of indigenous equid, the onager, was hunted extensively as a food source, especially in Iraq. From textual and modern behavioral studies it appears unlikely that the onager was ever domesticated. Donkeys were always much more widespread than horses, the latter being associated mostly with military elites.

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Wild pigs were a component of a Pleistocene fauna of the Levant. The first appearance of a domestic pig is in tenth to ninth-millennium deposits from southeastern Turkey. The domestic form was present in the Levant by approximately 6000 b.c.e., and since they also habited the region as a wild species there is little reason to believe that they were not domesticated locally. Pigs were a mainstay of the diet in the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, particularly in wellwatered coastal regions (Hesse 1990). Their significance in the animal economies of the region plummets at the end of the third/beginning of the second millennium and does not rebound until nearly 2,000 years later—in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. The faunal evidence shows that a complex suite of factors determined whether or not pigs were eaten (Hesse and Wapnish 1985). Pigs require a moister climate than other domestic stock; they are easier to raise in a sedentary lifestyle; they can provide a valuable sanitation service for processing human or agricultural waste, as long as they don’t become destructive accessing it; they can be a boon to immigrant communities establishing themselves in new locales because of high productive rates and because less capital input is required than for other stock; and they are associated with husbandries supplying markets where meat is highly prized. In the Middle Bronze Age, pigs tend to be associated with more rural settlements and nonritual contexts. Later, with the exception of the use of the animal by the Philistines during the earliest phases of their occupation of the southern Levant, pigs were not commonly eaten until the Hellenistic period. Famous and often-cited examples of pig use at Megiddo and Taºanach resulted from the misidentification of the bones. Camels were a relatively late introduction to the domestic stock of the Levant. Wild camels were documented for the area during the Pleistocene, but early Holocene occurrences are very rare. While it is usually assumed that the animal was domesticated on the Arabian Peninsula during the third millennium b.c.e., the osteological evidence to support this claim is sparse. A scattering of camel bones from third-millennium contexts in the Levant (Arad and Jericho) indicates the presence of the animal, although not its wild or domestic status. After the beginning of the first millennium, camel bones begin to appear at a number of different sites, although in sheer numbers they were still exceedingly rare. These camels were likely domestic, one-humped dromedaries of the Arabian Peninsula. Not until the 8th/7th century b.c.e. is there credible evidence for camel use on an economically significant scale. This comes from Tell Jemmeh (four miles southeast of Gaza) and is tied to Assyrian military activities at the site. Camels continued to increase in numbers there during the Persian period, resulting from military and caravan activity linked to the Arabian incense trade. It was during the Persian period that camel use really began to flourish in a number of places in the Levant. One of the earliest records of a close relationship between canids and humans comes from ºAin Mallaha (northern Israel), where a Natufian burial of a woman also contained the skeleton of a wolf or dog puppy. While domestic dogs were present by the Chalcolithic period, they were not common until the Persian

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period, and then only at one site, Ashkelon, where hundreds were ritually buried for an as-yet-undetermined reason. Not until the Hellenistic period was the dog widespread and (probably) closely associated with domestic households. Evidence for the exploitation of birds is uneven at best. While ostrich shell has been recovered from numerous sites, bones of this large ratite bird are very uncommon. Interestingly, the few bones from Tell Jemmeh are related to the African subspecies rather than the Syrian form. This evidence, together with the archaeological distribution of the hartebeest, a large antelope, and the hippopotamus point to the persistence of a relict African fauna in the southern Levant well into the Iron Age. While geese and ducks were important tamed or domesticated species in the Nile Valley, based on the pictorial record, they are extremely rare finds in the Levant. Chickens only appear in economically significant numbers in the Levant in the late Persian or early Hellenistic periods. At this time the animal economy of the entire region underwent major reorganization. Pigs and chickens became mainstays of the urban diet in the few documented samples we have, and the sheep, goat, and cattle sectors of the pastoral economy became highly centralized and market focused. The study of fish remains from archaeological sites in the Levant is in its infancy. One important early result has been to show the significance of the Nile perch in many Bronze and Iron Age samples. This discovery raises a difficult question: was this resource imported from an African habitat, or were the rivers of the Levant big enough to support these very large fish? Until fish remains are routinely collected from all sites with intensive recovery techniques, we will not know how much they contributed to the diet of ancient communities. There is no evidence that shellfish were extensively used for food. Clearly they were valuable as ornaments (cowrie shells, for example), as raw material (motherof-pearl), and in the manufacture of the highly prized red/purple dyes obtained from various Mediterranean murices. Mollusks, particularly in prehistoric contexts, have proved important indicators of climate. In later periods they can provide valuable information about the direction of trade. In the ancient Levant, animals were ideologically, socially, and economically significant. The tie between the first two and the abundance of remains is weak. Lions are ubiquitous in the art and literature of the region, yet no more than a handful of lion remains (such as the skull in the Late Bronze Age temple at Jaffa, and the cut toe bone from the High Place at Tel Dan) have been recovered. Animal remains are found associated with tombs from the Neolithic period onward. Besides the canid at Neolithic ºAin Mallaha and the interment of hundreds of dogs at a small number of Persian period sites mentioned above, one can note the burial of a gazelle in a tomb at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠and the animal remains in Middle Bronze Age tombs at Sasa in the Galilee. More widely known is the burial of equids at a range of Middle Bronze Age sites ( Jericho, Jemmeh, Tell el-ºAjjûl, for example). Often linked to the Hyksos, this animal-related behavior appears now to be less the product of a single culture than a syncretistic practice with multiple and widespread roots (Wapnish 1997).

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The economic use and ideological significance of animals were not completely separate. Ritual institutions managed animal production and distribution to a significant degree. Some evidence suggests that this activity is archaeologically visible as well as textually explicit. Analysis of the remains found at the ritual center at Tel Dan showed that model of animal processing based on both biblical and extrabiblical sources explained important attributes of the distribution of carcass parts, age of the slaughtered animals, and proportions of different species recovered (Wapnish and Hesse 1991).

Prospects Although the field of archaeozoology has its intellectual roots in the 19th century, it has only recently become a regular part of archaeological research planning, particularly in projects focused on the historic periods. The significance of materialist models in modern historical interpretation and the recognition that animal remains are linked to aspects of political economy as well as environmental variables promises to enhance the relevance of the discipline and its results in future years.

Bibliography Bar-Yosef, O., and Khazanov, A. (eds.) 1992 Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives. Monographs in World Archaeology 10. Madison: Prehistory Press. Bate, D. M. A. 1937 Paleontology: The Fossil Fauna of the Wady el-Mughara Caves. Pp. 137–240 in The Stone Age of Mount Carmel. Part 2, ed. D. A. E. Garrod and D. M. A. Bate. Oxford: Clarendon. Berlin, B. 1992 Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brown, H. 1984 Language and Living Things: Uniformities in Folk Classification and Naming. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Clutton-Brock, J. 1989 The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation. London: Unwin Hyman. 1992 Horse Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Garrard, A. N. 1982 The Environmental Implications of a Re-Analysis of the Large Mammal Fauna from the Wadi el-Mughara Caves, Palestine. Pp. 165–87 in Palaeoclimates, Palaeoenvironments and Human Communities in the Eastern Mediterranean Region in Later Prehistory, ed. J. N. Bintliff and W. Van Zeist. British Archaeological Reports International Series 133. Oxford: BAR International. Gautier, A. 1990 La Domestication: Et l’homme créa ses animaux. Paris: Editions Errance. Grayson, D. K. 1984 Quantitative Zooarchaeology: Topics in the Analysis of Archaeological Faunas. New York: Academic Press.

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Grigson, C. 1989 Size and Sex: Evidence for the Domestication of Cattle in the Near East. Pp. 77– 109 in The Beginnings of Agriculture, ed. A. Milles, D. Williams, and N. Gardner. British Archaeological Reports International Series 496. Oxford: BAR International. 1993 The Earliest Domestic Horses in the Levant? New Finds from the Fourth Millennium of the Negev. Journal of Archaeological Science 20: 645–55. 1995 Plough and Pasture in the Early Economy of the Southern Levant. Pp. 245–68 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. Leicester: University of Leicester. Hesse, B 1990 Pig Lovers and Pig Haters: Patterns of Palestinian Pork Production. Journal of Ethnobiology 10/2: 195–225. Hesse, B., and Rosen, A. 1998 The Detection of Chronological Mixing in Samples from Stratified Archaeological Sites. Pp. 117–29 in Recent Developments in Environmental Analysis in Old and New World Archaeology, ed. R. E. Webb. British Archaeological Reports International Series 416. Oxford: BAR International. Hesse, B. C., and Wapnish, P. 1985 Animal Bone Archaeology. New York: Taraxarum. Horwitz, L. K., and Smith, P. 1991 A Study of Diachronic Change in Bone Mass of Sheep and Goats at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan). Archeozoologia 4/1: 29–38. LaBianca, Ø. S. 1990 Hesban 1: Sedentarization and Nomadization. Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press. Lyman, R. L. 1994 Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meadow, R., and Uerpmann, H.-P. 1986 Equids in the Ancient World. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Reihe A, 19/1. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Russell, K. 1988 After Eden. British Archaeological Reports International Series 391. Oxford: BAR International. Tchernov, E., and Horwitz, L. K. 1991 Body Size Diminution Under Domestication: Unconscious Selection in Primeval Domesticates. Journal of Archaeological Science 10: 54–75. Uerpmann, H.-P. 1987 The Ancient Distribution of Ungulate Mammals in the Middle East: Fauna and Archaeological Sites in Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa. Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients Reihe A, 27. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Wapnish, P. 1993 Archaeozoology: The Integration of Faunal Data with Biblical Archaeology. Pp. 426– 42 in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990, ed. A. Biran and J. Aviram. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1995 Toward Establishing a Conceptual Basis for Animal Categories in Archaeology. Pp. 233–73 in Methods in the Mediterranean, ed. D. B. Small. Leiden: Brill. 1996 Is ßeni ana la mani an Accurate Description or a Royal Boast? Pp. 285–96 in Retrieving the Past: Essays in Archaeological Research and Methodology in Honor of Gus W. Van Beek, ed. J. Seger. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.

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1997

Middle Bronze Equid Burials at Tell Jemmeh and Preexamination of a Purportedly “Hyksos” Practice. Pp. 335–67 in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. E. D. Oren. University Museum Monograph 96, University Museum Symposium Series 8. Philadelphia: The University Museum. Wapnish, P., and Hesse, B. 1991 Faunal Remains from Tel Dan: Perspectives on Animal Production at a Village Urban and Ritual Center. Archaeozoologia 4/2: 9–86. Zeder, M. 1991 Feeding Cities. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution. Zeuner, F. E. 1963 A History of Domesticated Animals. London: Hutchinson.

Paula Wapnish and B. Hesse

Paleoethnobotany A Definition of Paleoethnobotany The analysis of botanical remains from archaeological sites is an important part of interpreting the past. Several terms may be used to describe these analyses: archaeobotany, paleobotany, and paleoethnobotany. The term paleoethnobotany was first coined in 1959 by a Danish botanist, Hans Helbaek, who said paleoethnobotany was established by joining archaeology and botany together. Some scholars separate archaeobotany and paleoethnobotany, with archaeobotany referring to the recovery and identification of plants from archaeological contexts by specialists, regardless of their discipline, and the botanical remains being unrelated to human activity; and paleoethnobotany referring to the analysis and interpretation of botanical remains from archaeological contexts with the intent to provide information on human/plant interactions and the relationship between humans and their botanical environment. This broader paleoethnobotanical definition includes ecological and anthropological approaches not included in the archaeobotany definition.

The Description of Remains Paleoethnobotanical remains include both macroremains—materials that are discernible with the naked eye or the use of low-powered dissecting microscopes—and microremains, those not visible to the naked eye, which require much higher magnifications. Botanical remains run a wide gamut of materials. Every part of a plant is subject to analysis, including seeds; vegetative parts such as the glumes, awns, and rachis of seeds, nuts, roots, and tubers; fibers; starches; oils; juices and residues; wood; pollen; and phytoliths. Analysis of remains includes not only end-products, such as harvested grain, but also the by-products of processing methods and contaminants such as weeds. Botanical remains are predominantly organic. Exceptions to this include phytoliths (silica bodies) and casts or impressions of decayed remains (such as those of grains and vegetative parts preserved in pottery and mudbrick). Most macroremain studies have concentrated on seeds and the debris (glumes, awns, and so on) from food plants (especially grains and legumes) and food plant processing. Wood remains have been understudied and often only get a brief mention, due in part to the emphasis on food plants and the topic of domestication. The use of microremains—that is, pollen and phytoliths—in Near Eastern paleoethnobotany is a more recent addition to the corpus of botanical remains studied at archaeological sites. As a result there has been limited use of these remains,

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although this is slowly changing. Archaeological palynology began with von Post in Denmark and has been used since the 1920s, primarily for environmental reconstruction. A few studies, mainly by Americans, have begun to investigate cultural topics. Phytoliths research mirrors the history of palynological research in many respects, although it was not until the middle of the 20th century that phytolith research began to evolve as a discipline. Preservation of organic remains occurs through desiccation, waterlogging, and carbonization or charring. Desiccation refers to the removal of water from the organic material. This may occur in hot dry or very cold dry regions. Waterlogging occurs when samples are immersed in conditions that inhibit decay-causing organisms and limit decomposition. Such conditions include temperature and depth (deep, cold water) and anaerobic settings (bogs). By far the most common form of preservation occurring at Near Eastern sites is carbonization or charring. Carbonization of remains may occur intentionally or unintentionally. Cooking fuels (wood, dung, agricultural wastes) are representative of intentionally burned remains, while seeds from cooking that spilled into the fire or from a burned building are examples of unintentional burning.

The Recovery of Remains Depending on the material and mode of preservation, samples may be collected in situ or collected as part of a larger sample. Samples that may be collected in situ are as varied as large wood fragments, such as beams from a house or a ship’s timbers; charred grain from within a vessel or granary; a fiber floor mat; or cloth, tools, and other artifacts from a burial. Samples usually collected in this manner are individual or significantly isolated and visibly discernible. Most botanical remains are collected and recovered from part of a larger matrix, usually through flotation from soil. The single most important technological innovation in paleoethnobotany in the Near East or anywhere else has been flotation. Flotation did to the collection and analysis of plant remains what C14 dating did to archaeological dating research. In general, flotation refers to any system through which the agitation of a soil sample immersed in water results in the release of botanical material from its soil matrix, allowing the botanical material to float to the surface, where it can be collected. Some systems manually agitate the samples; others use mechanical means such as water pressure or frothing agents. The goal of flotation is to collect and concentrate charred botanical remains dispersed throughout archaeological deposits. Prior to flotation recovery was limited to clearly visible concentrations of botanical remains.

The Analysis of Remains Field collection and flotation of botanical remains are just the beginning. The samples need to be properly identified (provenience, location, and site data), quantified, and qualified. Quantification includes measuring the sample size, either by weight or volume or both, determining the amount of sample analyzed,

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and applying other statistical tests. Qualifying includes sorting and identification of the remains within the sample. The size and variation within a sample greatly affects the time spent analyzing that sample. For instance, a large homogeneous sample may actually take less time to analyze than a small sample with a great variety of remains requiring sorting and identification. In general, for every hour spent in the field ten hours may be needed in the lab. Of vital importance for any analysis is a good comparative collection. A comparative collection is a collection of identified materials; seeds, flowers, plants, or wood. Archaeological remains are compared with the collection’s samples in order to identify and verify the archaeological materials. Identification keys and computerized identification programs also aid in analysis.

What Paleoethnobotany Can Tell Us Botanical remains from archaeological sites provide input on many issues, including environment, diet and disease, cultural practices, plant evolution and domestication, and trade. The information available from a site depends greatly on the remains recovered from the site, excavation methods and technology, and the researcher’s goals for excavating the samples and site. Wood from a building might reveal information about trade (whether the wood was imported or local), the environment of the wood’s area of origin, or construction practices at the time the wood was used. Seeds, pollen, and phytoliths from a site could provide insight on agriculture and domestication (what was being grown and its evolutionary state), diet (what was being eaten), cultural practices (such as processing methods), medicinal and ritual (what it was used for: analgesic, hallucinogen, or other purposes), trade (where it is from), or environment.

Approaches The development of paleoethnobotany in the Near East evolves out of two traditions: one European and one American, of which the European is the older. These two traditions have developed further into three main approaches. The background of researchers, their traditions, and the approaches they practice greatly affect their techniques, methodology, viewpoint, and questions being asked. The earliest Near Eastern paleoethnobotanists were predominantly Europeans and botanists. The major distinguishing factor of the European tradition is that the research primarily centers on taxonomy, morphological characteristics, and precise botanical descriptions of remains, especially of cultivated materials, and focuses mainly on the topic of domestication. Israeli paleoethnobotanists, who contribute a significant amount of the paleoethnobotany done in the Near East, mainly follow the European model. The British, while still part of the European tradition, have diverged from the main European body. Led by Hillman and Higgs, in the late 1960s British scholars began looking at processes and the interpretation of remains. Higgs’s Cambridge economic prehistory group looked at hypothesis testing with a strong interest in spread slightly long

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theory and application. Meanwhile, Hillman began doing ethnobotanical and experimental projects aimed at interpretation. The use of ethnographic studies and interpretation are preeminent in Britain, although a number of American scholars have also become interested in ethnographic comparisons, experimentation, and interpretation. American paleoethnobotanists tend to view archaeological plant remains more as cultural objects. This is due to American paleoethnobotanists’ training as anthropologists, in comparison with the European botanical training and interest in taxonomy and morphology. American paleoethnobotany grew out of ethnobotany, the study of direct human/plant interactions. Ethnobotany is interested in cultural practices, human plant usage, or the way that humans relate to their botanical environment. American paleoethnobotany evolved at the University of Michigan in the 1930s when Melvin Gilmore and Volney Jones began the full-time identification of archaeological plant remains. Their intent was to identify the cultural influence of plant remains from a site—that is, to explain the use or presence of the plants, instead of the taxonomic and morphological treatment of the plants found. In the 1960s, American anthropology moved from a cultural history perspective (the what, when, and where) toward a cultural reconstruction perspective (the how) with a strong ecological focus. This transition in turn affected American paleoethnobotany, which has strongly maintained an ecological focus. By the 1970s, there was a move away from Old World style morphological crop plant studies and a movement toward approaches that look at entire plant assemblages and the cultural changes, including ecological, that are associated with cultivation. As paleoethnobotany evolved, scholars from other academic disciplines became involved in it. This was a result of Near Eastern archaeological research’s becoming more multidisciplinary and international in nature. Complicating the situation in Near Eastern archaeology, however, is the fact that many excavators, mainly American, are from disciplines outside of archaeology and anthropology, such as classics, art history, history, and religion. This diversity in disciplines leads to a diversity in excavation methodology and archaeological perspectives, which may not include an understanding of paleoethnobotanical research. There is also a problem of provincialism. Both sides, European and American, appear to ignore or discount similar research done by the other camp, even when these ideas precede their own research. Communication between the different approaches is improving, although it remains a problem.

A Short History of Paleoethnobotany Alphonse de Candole first used palaeoethnobotanical evidence to study the origins of crop plants in the 1880s. He was followed by Nicolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist, who later used paleoethnobotanical evidence in identifying centers of plant domestication in the 1920s. In the beginning, interest was in the evolution and domestication of the major food plants of the Near East and their introduction to Europe.

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One of the scholars interested in the causes of domestication was V. Gordon Childe. Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute was influenced by Childe’s theories on the causes for domestication. Braidwood decided specifically to seek archaeological evidence of the “Neolithic revolution,” or the origins of agriculture. Braidwood followed successful interdisciplinary approaches previously used on European Mesolithic sites, recruiting natural scientists to undertake much of the research in reconstructing the environmental history, with Hans Helbaek as paleoethnobotanist. The site Braidwood chose to excavate was Jarmo, in the hilly flanks of the Zagros Mountains in Iraq. This was the first project where plant remains were explicitly analyzed in order to answer an archaeological question. The Jarmo project from 1948 to 1955 was a model of interdisciplinary research, and it laid the foundation for all subsequent paleoethnobotanical research on agricultural origins in the Near East. From this point on, other archaeologists studying the topic of domestication and agriculture origins used paleoethnobotanists on their projects. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Helbaek worked with Hole, Flannery, and Neely at Tepe Ali Kosh in southwest Iran, examining early agricultural societies in terms of human ecology rather than culture history. Around the same time, another major researcher, Willem von Zeist, worked at sites when research was stressing the origins of village life, such as Mureybit in Syria; and he went with Braidwood when Braidwood moved to Çayönü in Turkey. By the middle of the 1960s, major breakthroughs were occurring in the understanding of agricultural origins in the Near East. By 1966, major excavations had taken place at Tepe Ali Kosh, Tepe Sabz, and Tepe Sarab in Iran; Jarmo and Jawi Chemi Shanidar in Iraq; Çatal Hüyük, Hacilar, and Çayönü in Turkey; Ramad and Mureybit in Syria; Jericho in Israel; and Beidha in Jordan, with most of the site’s botanical remains analyzed by either Helbaek or van Zeist. Other researchers in the field included Hillman, Hopf, Kislev, and Renfrew, all still with a predominantly taxonomic and morphological focus. While most of the paleoethnobotanists were Europeans, many of the excavators, such as Braidwood, Flannery, and Hole, were Americans influenced by American-style anthropological archaeology. Two late major developments in the 1960s were the Cambridge economic prehistory group and the establishment of the International Work Group for Paleoethnobotany, which held its first symposium in 1968. The International Work Group for Paleoethnobotany was set up to bring together researchers working in comparative isolation In the 1970s and 1980s, the origins of agriculture and domestication remained the primary topic; however, an influx of American anthropologically trained specialists brought about studies that looked at human-plant interactions. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a greater exchange of ideas and information between the different traditions, yet there remain three very distinctive approaches to paleoethnobotany in the Near East.

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Paleoethnobotany in the Near East has come a long way since its inception. Although early paleoethnobotany was dominated by European botanists interested in taxonomy and morphology, the application of anthropological questions and theories brought in by American and British scholars led to more interest in experimental and interpretive paleoethnobotany. Despite limited interaction initially, cooperation and idea exchange between the three traditions has increased in recent years, and there is great promise for the future. Since the main focus has been on the period of agricultural origins, other topics and periods have received limited attention. The Chalcolithic and later periods, including the historical periods, have not been studied as systematically as the earlier periods. Other areas for improvement are sampling and quantification strategies. More consistent and unified sampling and quantification strategies are needed. Because of inconsistent sampling and quantification, direct comparison between sites is often difficult. Uniform sampling and quantification strategies become more critical when one is doing statistical and comparative studies or interpretation. Finally, as in many other aspects of archaeology, publication is a problem. Often studies do not see final publication until 10 or 15 years after excavation. Part of the reason for this is the limited number of paleoethnobotanists working in the Near East, and the training of more people is dependent on complex factors, such as jobs and funding. Convincing dig directors to include money for paleoethnobotanical research in grant proposals, a standard practice in North America, could alleviate some of the problem. Finally, peer pressure and more forums for information dissemination are also needed.

Bibliography Dimbleby, G. 1985 The Palynology of Archaeological Sites: New York: Academic Press. Pearsall, D. 1989 Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures. New York: Academic Press. Piperno, D. 1988 Phytolith Analysis: An Archaeological and Geological Perspective. New York: Academic Press. Renfrew, J. M. 1973 Palaeoethnobotany: The Prehistoric Food Plants of the Near East and Europe. New York: Columbia University Press. Warnock, P. 1988 From Plant Domestication to Phytolith Interpretation: The History of Paleoethnobotany in the Near East. Near Eastern Archaeologist 61/4: 220–31. Zohary, D., and Hopf, M. 1988 Domestication of Plants in the Old World. Oxford: Clarendon.

Peter Warnock

Method and Theory in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology Introduction Modern archaeology is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach. Although the field archaeologist is of necessity a jack-of-all-trades, the depth of available specialization in any number of fields makes a team approach imperative, not just to the analysis, but to the fieldwork itself. In what follows I will investigate first the broader “archaeological” method and then typical contributions of a few collaborating specialists. Syro-Palestinian archaeology is a specialized, regionally oriented subdiscipline of archaeology in general (see Renfrew and Bahn 1991). Seen in its working modes of excavation techniques and publication, Syro-Palestinian archaeology derives from at least four interrelated sources: (1) at its most basic, it derives from the sorts of questions being asked of the materials, coupled with the necessity of coping with particular sets of archaeological conditions; (2) it derives from the excavator’s training, modified over time by experience, reflection, and input from colleagues; (3) it derives from deliberate theoretical reflection and research design seeking to improve accuracy of results, speed of excavation, more responsible reporting, or some other objective (usually a mixture of these); (4) it derives from the political, social, and intellectual climate(s) in which the excavator participates. Every significant excavation has its own particular emphases, generally evident from the structure and emphases of the preliminary reports and the final report volumes. It is an inescapable truism that, except for anecdotal information, only published reports are of use to other archaeologists or the interested community at large. Results lacking the evidence necessary to sustain new interpretations cannot usefully be employed in ongoing archaeological synthesis and analysis, and they often prove, given more data, to have been misguided or inaccurate. Publication of the results of years of fieldwork at a particular site is a major sustained effort, and it involves immense prior care in recording materials while the excavations are in progress and in analyzing these materials either at the conclusion of the work or, more often, years later. As a rule of thumb, workup for serious publication characteristically takes upwards of two years for each season in the field, and quite apart from publication expenses probably costs as much as or more than the excavations themselves. This constitutes a severe problem for excavators, since funding can usually be found for excavation but may be hard to maintain for laboratory work. Regardless, excavations that do not publish must be regarded as failures, no matter how famous their excavators or sensational their finds. It is a dismal fact of Syro-Palestinian archaeology that by far the greatest

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number of excavations eventuate in no substantive publication or are only carried through to the stage of preliminary reports, many of which are small journal articles of no lasting worth.

Stratification and the Nature of Archaeological Sites in Syria–Palestine Throughout the ancient Near East, successive occupations of favored settlement locations (often defined by lines of communication, defensive capability, and access to desirable natural resources including good water supplies) produced multilayered mounds locally termed tells or tepe/depes. The height of buildup is largely determined by the building materials employed, as well as the length and intensity of occupation. Typically, ancient Near Eastern buildings were made of mudbrick on stone foundations. Chaff and mud plaster protected the walls from erosion and had to be renewed annually. These materials, wasted from every wall by rain, wind, and casual impact together with windblown dust and garbage, coupled with broken pottery and small stones laid down in the streets for passability during the rains, resulted in a slow, steady rise in surface levels, with major buildup occurring when structures were knocked down and rebuilt. Street levels typically rose more quickly than house floors and domestic courtyards. Fifty years seem to have been the average life-span for an individual building, with perhaps twice that for public buildings. Thus, on average, buildup seems to have averaged from one-half to one meter over the course of a century, although, as with all averages, the range of individual variability is great. In stony regions, particularly in Transjordan, more (or even all) of the vertical aspect of the structure is due to the construction with stone. In most periods and in most areas (vaulted structures in Mesopotamia and Egypt being the major exceptions), roofs and upper floors were made of mud plaster over brush or reeds supported by transverse timbers. Long spans were constructed using imported conifers, typically Cedar of Lebanon, usually only in palaces or prestigious temples. Destruction of entire sites occurred at shorter or longer intervals due to enemy forces or earthquake. Desertion of sites produced much the same effect, with buildings collapsing over time. Most goods from these abandoned sites, however, including valuable roofing timbers, doors, and doorposts, and so on, were transported elsewhere. Subsequent casual pilfering and scavenging of what remained often left little to discover. From the archaeological perspective, destructions are typically characterized by masses of smashed pottery and small objects lying on floors and, for upper stories and materials stored on roofs, sealed in the structural collapse. Strong evidence of fire is common but, given the essentially fireproof nature of the buildings, not invariable. Where severe burning occurred, the resulting burned bricky detritus could not be recycled into new mudbricks. Reoccupation generally involved a leveling of the local area (many hill-country cities and towns probably were terraced), with rebuilding on the newly leveled surface, sealing in what remained of the destruction. Characteristically, few bod-

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ies are encountered, although there are exceptions. Ethnographic analogy, the most powerful source of models for interpreting ancient remains, suggests that, when possible, groups dug to bury their dead, seeking also to recover any treasure that had previously been buried in anticipation of disaster. Remains of rich palaces often were dug into again and again by later treasure seekers. Foundation stones and worked stones regularly were mined out for reuse, and new mudbricks and mud plaster characteristically were made of tell soil tempered with chaff. Various pits (typically for storage or rubbish) and, starting in the Hellenistic Period, deep foundations, regularly penetrated earlier layers. For these and other reasons, the widely held view of “intact destruction levels” seldom applies in any wholesale fashion, and one of the “treasure-hunting” aspects of current archaeology is the search for intact or largely intact deposits, often to the point of neglecting less spectacular materials.

Stratigraphy Following a geological model, destruction or desertion episodes have been called strata, with reports and analyses typically concentrating on the architecture and deposits of the terminal moment. Stratigraphy is the technique of distinguishing and separating these materials and assigning their contents to appropriate “stratified assemblages.” Until recently (and still in many investigators’ views), the terms city, stratum, and phase/subphase were considered either equivalent to or constituted of a graded series evidencing both the formative processes and the archaeological analyses of Middle Eastern tells, more analytically classified as “multicomponent stratified occupation sites.” Even then, the typical Palestinian archaeologist would read component to mean “stratum” in normal conversation. These archaeologically recovered strata form the chronological framework of Palestinian archaeology. Admittedly, confusion sometimes arose when changes in elevation or excavation mistakes caused excavators to attribute wrong materials to a particular stratum on the basis of work in other areas or in different parts of the excavation site. These sorts of mistakes are sorted out in the professional and popular literature but often have lives of their own, to the detriment of the discipline. Within this overall scheme, phases and subphases typically are established on the basis of multiple floor levels, blocked doorways, stratigraphically succeeding installations or features, and the like. Typically, however, little is done in the way of historical reconstruction or seriation of associated materials. Similarly, artifacts in successive streets or living surfaces or in major earth layers produced by random peaceful replacement or renewal of buildings (for example, repaired or replaced roofing timbers or weakened wall sections) seldom see publication. This understanding of the archaeological record, sometimes characterized as the “architecture to stratum” approach, is still the dominant one in SyroPalestinian Archaeology. The weakness of the approach is its inability adequately to identify and control the smaller stratigraphic units. The strengths of the approach arise from the nature of artifactual remains from destruction layers: sealed contemporaneous groups of reconstructible pottery and other small

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objects and increasingly including osteological and botanical remains, together with well-preserved building remains capable of being accurately planned and exhibited as a series of succeeding cultural units. Thus monographic final publication generally consists of many volumes, containing architectural groundplans, object drawings, and photographs, explicated by an analytic text detailing the terminal phase of each of these “strata,” together with exceptional materials uncovered from other layers than the final destruction. Preliminary reports vary widely, from short sketches to substantial monographs, but all share in being considered less than adequate presentations of the evidence at hand. Ideally, simultaneously destroyed remains constitute a “snapshot in time” of the durable material complements of the local manifestation of a particular culture. The patient piecing together of a whole series of these “snapshots” from sites throughout a particular cultural region (for example, Philistia, Judah, the Golan) allows for a fair degree of historical interpretation along the lines pioneered by the French annales school. Starting with Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations in Jericho in the 1950s, increasing attention has been paid to the actual stratification of sites (that is, to the individual laminated earth layers and archaeological features observable in balks). These are standing banks of earth, often the gridded banks of undug material separating individual five- or ten-meter excavation areas. Specialized control balks and the sides of probe trenches also contribute detailed stratigraphic information. In “Wheeler-Kenyon” or “balk-debris layer” excavations, the vertical faces of these balks are carefully dressed to enable the tracing and meticulous drawing of the layers, pits, wall and floor sections, and so forth. The resulting section drawings are to the vertical/time dimension what plans are to the horizontal/ spatial dimension, and the degree of commitment to “debris-layer” techniques on the part of a particular excavator may be gauged by the relative emphasis placed on plans and sections in the final report volumes or preliminary reports. Since each of these stratigraphic elements may, with care, be separately excavated and their contents separately recorded, the potential emerges for developing exponentially improved stratigraphic successions. Interpreters familiar with these field techniques are increasingly striving to develop ways of dealing with each individual layer or feature, generally isolated as an individual locus, in relation to all of the other layers. It has been pointed out that, under conventional analysis, the nominal “strata,” of which these loci are only minor components, merely present “snapshots” of brief episodes often hundreds of years apart (hence the label “horizons”), whereas each of the minor layers and features should be capable of being dated to much shorter chronological periods spanning the huge gaps extant in the conventional stratigraphies. That is to say that each of these layers, pits, and so forth should be capable of being dated relative to the absolutely dated destruction layers and desertions, with more certain individual dates being established eventually, as the network of cross-dating information becomes more developed. Among other considerations, the necessity of dealing with sherd materials rather than reconstructible vessels, the gen-

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eral lack of interesting small finds, and the difficulty in phasing (or even keeping track of ) a multitude of small loci pose substantial obstacles to comprehensive analysis. In part, the introduction of the “Harris matrix” (Harris 1989; Paice 1991) and the personal computer have combined to take some of the difficulty out of this challenge, and new experimental ways of analyzing and reporting ceramic assemblages in terms other than just the explicit representation of the vessels’ shapes may go much of the distance toward enabling the necessary phasing of nondestructional materials. For example, it has recently been demonstrated that the potsherds recovered from successive stratigraphic groups of loci have quite different relative proportions of (intentionally produced) surface colors. Since potsherds, as opposed to reconstructible pottery vessels, typically occur in the dozens and hundreds in these loci, differing statistical profiles may be developed for each of the successive stratified groups, enabling the definition of a much finer-grained pottery chronology than could ever be developed on the basis of shapes alone (Holladay 1990; 1993). Clearly, useful results attained using the most frequently encountered artifacts are superior to results calling for special conditions of preservation and accidents of discovery. Similar results may be obtained by the statistical analysis of the changing proportions of various “wares,” as these are employed in pottery studies in Egypt (Holladay and Paice 1992) and on Cyprus. At present, we do not know the geographic spread of this kind of dating series, but it seems probable that it will tend to be regional and markedly different on the opposing sides of political boundaries. If so, this would be a decided plus, since one of the more obvious goals of archaeology is the mapping of ancient culture areas. Other traits, such as specialized slipping and burnishing techniques, seem to be spread over a much wider area. Balks (although not used enough) also serve to connect major architectural features (fortifications, buildings, store facilities, and so on) and thus to demonstrate their contemporaneity or noncontemporaneity, often over quite long distances. A present problem with this method—how to analyze the strata when the balks are interrupted by large pits, walls, or major foundation trenches—can easily be dealt with by improved techniques of pottery analysis. A subset of the above is the use of a cut section running up against a wall to date that wall, whether it is the wall of a building or of a fortification. In most cases, the construction of the wall is preceded by the cutting of a foundation trench, which will show up clearly in the section. If there is no foundation trench, then the wall must be assumed to have been built upon the surface on which it rests, which may be slightly depressed by the weight of the wall. The construction may then be dated by the date of the pottery lying on the surface on which the wall was built, or from which the foundation trench was cut, with earlier layers cut by the trench providing termini post quem and succeeding layers running up against the wall providing further control as termini ante quem. Yet another use of these sections is their ability to exhibit materials for analysis, in much the same fashion as a biological section, for example, the separate building operations and materials involved in

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the creation of an embankment, rampart, or glaçis. Finally, note that, although each of these more specific applications of debris-layer analysis has been emphasized as a useful technique by at least one archaeologist in recent years, none of them is really any different from the generic purpose of an analyzed balk discussed above.

Dating Dating generally proceeds, in the first instance and in periods in which a region’s history is known by reference to more literate neighbors, with the attribution of destruction levels to various known armed incursions: for example, the Asiatic campaign of Thutmose III, the onslaught of the “Sea Peoples,” the 701 b.c.e. campaign of Sennacherib, or rebellions and revolutions: for example, the destructions marking the end of the Amarna period. This method of dating has been criticized by armchair specialists and others, but a study of the ancient texts and inscriptions supports the practice, since the wholesale destruction of rebellious or enemy cities was a normal practice of ancient Near Eastern realpolitik. If nothing else, destruction ensured that the enemy had to restore its own ruined dwellings and local economy before it could engage in more aggression or rebellion, and it impressed the seriousness of resistance upon other would-be rebels or resisters. From this it follows that most of the remains sealed in the destruction layers are characteristic of their respective periods. Of course, not all attributions have been (or will be) accurate, and one of the ongoing demands upon the discipline is the continual testing of these dating hypotheses against either the known body of data or the newer discoveries. Science knows few “assured results.” For earlier sites, one generally has recourse to cross-dating with better-understood remains of historically documented cultures, with better studied cultural sequences (for example, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, or the Aegean regions), or with materials dated by various physical methods, especially Carbon 14. Dating by means of scarabs is an excellent example of cross-dating, as long as one is sufficiently warned regarding its dangers when there is a lack of corroborating data (scarabs have been reused and/or copied right up to the present day). Given sufficient publication of materials from excavated sites, and increasing sophistication in the analysis, it becomes possible to correlate stratification levels throughout one culture area (comparative stratigraphy) and even between culture areas (for example, between Philistia and Judah or Israel) through cross-dating of material remains. Correlation tables given in various handbooks and other publications, however, are seldom documented in any detail and inevitably reflect an author’s personal ways of viewing and organizing the data. As such, they should be regarded as useful summations and/or points for discussion and not as “assured results.” In the ancient Mediterranean, cross-dating between such widely separated culture areas as the Aegean and the Levant is routinely accomplished through examining the stratigraphic distributions of vessels and objects, the dates of which are well established in their homeland or elsewhere (for example,

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Virginia Grace’s work on the Rhodian stamped jar handles, which are now as useful as coins). As already noted, an archaeologist generally has recourse to Carbon 14 dating for earlier periods. For later periods, cross-dating sequences are generally believed to be more accurate than the use of Carbon 14, which in any case encounters severe problems of multiple possible calendar dates in various periods, including the last half of the Iron II period. Since the most common durable remains are pottery, the term “pottery chronology” has been coined to cover the relatively and absolutely dated pottery series, and pottery is used to cross-date archaeological sites throughout all of inscriptionpoor Western Asia as routinely as coins are used in the dating of sites from Hellenistic and later periods. Hence, in this region pottery drawings are accurate but tend to be heavily schematized and are published in quantity, to encourage easy comparison. On the other hand, in inscription-rich areas (for example, Greater Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and Egypt, with their clay tablets, building inscriptions, papyri, and ostraca) pottery typology typically has languished, pottery often being treated as one of the minor arts, with loving attention often being lavished on each drawn shape.

Sourcing Interconnections in the ancient Near East are generally established by the presence of foreign materials of known origin (obsidian, lapis, turquoise, various metals, and so on) and date—for example, goods exhibiting culturally specific and datable modes of form, decoration, or inscription (pottery, glass, weapon or tool types, metal or stone vessels, figurines, stamped jar-handles). Increasingly researchers are turning to analysis of the chemical or geological composition (neutron-activation analysis and petrography) of trade pottery, clay tablets, and so forth and to isotopic analysis of metals, especially lead. Most materials are considered contemporaneous with analogues from their places of origin, although increasing attention has recently been paid to ancient trade in reusable materials and old—often ancient—bric-a-brac (for example, greenstone celts, scarabs, and lapidary materials). For recent studies atttempting to document the presence of “foreign” long-distance trading colonies, see Holladay (2001).

Intrasite Settlement Patterns Given the great depth of occupation of many tells (excavations often go below 10 meters), broad horizontal exposure is hard to achieve for all but the topmost strata. In addition, it is increasingly considered essential to preserve walls and features of buildings on important sites as public monuments, so that archaeological sites may be visited and understood by tourists and the public in general. In these cases, earlier strata can only be reached by increasingly narrow probes, in which exposure is minimal and control is problematic. In other cases (for example, Jericho), deep narrow trenches have reached extremely early levels of occupation but at the expense of generally failing to expose even whole structures, let alone neighborhoods or quarters. In still other cases, large fields have been taken down

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several strata, with (where employed) regular removal and reestablishing of balks. For reasons of time and money, however, these excavations have generally been possible in only one or two sectors of a site. Early excavations (Megiddo, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell Beit Mirsim) achieved wide exposure (and Megiddo attained considerable depth in some sectors). But this gain was at the expense of control and close recording. Increasingly, serious attention is being paid to sites with termination at early levels of occupation or with discontinuous occupation. Thus one- or two-period Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze, Age, Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period sites of various types have been or are being excavated, some with quite broad exposure, yielding potential spatial templates or frameworks against which more limited exposures can be evaluated. Given proper publication, each of these excavation strategies can yield important information on the architecture and typical spatial patterning of the settlements from the various periods.

Regional Settlement Patterns and the Role of Archaeological Survey Since the earliest days of modern interest in the antiquities of the Middle East, surveys have been conducted to locate place-names known from the Bible and ancient literature (for example, the Onomasticon of Eusebius). With the further development of pottery chronology, it has been possible to date most occupation periods at a particular site on the basis of pottery picked up on the surface of the mound and its slopes and from available cuttings. In the past half-century, numerous regional surveys have been conducted in the entire region of the West Bank and in a good portion of Transjordan. Increasingly, these surveys have concentrated on detailed coverage of particular areas of the territory—for example, the recent surveys of Ephraim (Finkelstein), Manasseh (Zertal), Judah (Kochavi, Ofer), and Moab (MacDonald, Miller, Harrison)—paying as much attention to small sites as to large. Although not all of these archaeologists have issued final reports, extremely useful interpretations of ancient settlement patterns have already emerged, demonstrating the power of the approach. In the final analysis, however, it is almost impossible to document all settlements and activity sites in such large regions with such limited forces. A variety of sampling strategies have been developed elsewhere to enable application of statistical probabilities extrapolated from detailed foot-surveys of selected randomly chosen sectors (generally quadrats or transects) to the region as a whole. At present, these strategies have only been applied in the southern Levant in the Transjordan (Banning, MacDonald), and their strengths and weaknesses are still being assessed. As a technique for developing comprehensive socioeconomic data over whole regions, surveys have the advantage of being both rapid and relatively inexpensive. In addition, they provide data for whole regions and subregions that can be gathered in no other way, although their future effectiveness is increasingly being compromised by deep plowing and the wholesale remaking of landforms by bulldozing and massive landfills, to say nothing of the denuding of tell surfaces by generations of casual visitors.

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Geology and Geomorphology Many “site-formation processes” are geological or geomorphological in nature and are best understood through the involvement of a geologist in the project. Many odd features ultimately prove to have arisen through quite simple natural processes, having nothing to do with human activity. In addition, some geologists were already doing what is now termed “microstratigraphy” long before the term was coined. Unquestionably, microstratigraphy—the forensics of archaeological sediments—will increasingly become one of the key data-collection and interpretive aspects of future archaeological projects, with a resulting quantum leap in our abilities to infer patterned activities (work, eating, recreational activities, and so on, regularly performed in the same location, time after time) right across the full range of surfaces within an excavation area. As with paleobotany, however, the work is time consuming, the learning curve is long, and ultimately this new approach will prove to be expensive on anything but an exploratory scale. It can be argued, however, that this is probably the only way that we will ever learn much about what people actually did in most of the activity areas we excavate, which may make it cheap at any price. On a more basic note, strong geological capabilities are essential for the identification and sourcing of exotic materials, some of which (for example, obsidian, lapis lazuli) were traded over long distances. At the local scale, knowledge of the sources of building stones or of basalt or quartzite grinders and chert/flint for tools (chert sickle blades being in active use in Palestine at least through the Iron I period) often proves invaluable for historical and socioeconomic reconstruction. Knowledge of the soil types, sources, and stratigraphy within the “site catchment” (the area reasonably inferred as being of immediate economic usefulness to the site’s occupants) often can be determinative for inferring cropping and/or herding potentials, sources of clay for potters, or even for inferring environmental degradation.

Paleobotany Carbonized remains of plants, especially seeds, withstand most of the destructive processes that affect the long-term preservation of materials. They are, however, easily crushed, and in areas with high salt concentrations are subject to disintegration as a result of crystallization of infiltrated salt solutions. Carbonization occurs principally in the ashes of cooking fires, with occasional charring in mass-destruction situations of quantities of stored seeds, principally grains and legumes, but also fruits and nuts. Paleobotanical sampling is generally done by taking a standardized sample of ashy material from each likely location and putting it through one form or another of flotation or wet sieving. A valuable byproduct of the sieving operation is the recovery of tiny bones (fish, rodents, birds), snail shells, beads, and so on in the heavy fraction. Charcoal samples may be collected along with the pottery and bones as a normal part of the excavation process, although the taking of samples for Carbon 14 determinations requires special knowledge and handling.

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Aside from the usual sorts of “laundry list” publication, in-depth statistical study of domesticated plants against their accompanying weed cohort generally yields information—for example, about soil conditions and cropping practices— obtainable in no other way. Many kinds of plants and weeds prefer specific growing conditions; consequently, it is often possible for the paleobotanist to be equally specific about the various components of the local food production system and its impact on the local ecology. Sometimes quite surprising conclusions emerge solely from paleobotanical analysis. For example, during the Hyksos occupation of Tell el-Maskhuta, the complete absence of summer fruiting species from the cooking-fire ashes was the determining fact leading to the inference that the site operated on a seasonal basis. Even the presence or absence of irrigation can often be inferred from the evidence. In the alternately wet and dry alkaline soils of the Levant, pollen preservation is generally minimal but should be checked. The collection of modern weeds and other specimens from the local surroundings adds an important dimension to the study of the site in its natural setting, and remnant species often can give significant clues to the site’s ancestral ecology.

Paleozoology Long neglected, the study of the tens of thousands of animal bones typically associated with a major excavation has opened new doors to understanding the site’s setting in its natural surroundings through time, as well as an understanding of the inhabitants’ changing subsistence strategies, food preferences, herd management practices, use of draft animals, and participation in overland trading enterprises. From the gender and age of the individuals, it can be determined (both theoretically and on the basis of ethnographic parallels) whether domestic animals were primarily kept for traction or secondary products (milk, wool, hair, etc.) or for meat, and in what proportions. Hunted species typify local environments, and even small commensal species help to describe local activities and environmental conditions. For example, a localized abundance of rat bones may signal grain storage, and the presence or absence of fallow deer may say a great deal about the woodland succession, density of settlement, and agricultural intensification in succeeding periods. Snail shells constitute a specialized sub-area of research and can often yield surprisingly specific insights. Cultic areas, perhaps priests’ houses, have been identified on the basis of an overwhelming preponderance of right forelimbs of young sheep and goats in a restricted location. Linked to the identification of species and portions of the animal characteristically present in the archaeological sample are the study of discard patterns and the study of taphonomy (the study of agents and processes operating on bones between the time they were first dismembered and the time of their discovery). How can one tell, for example, if a bone was splintered by a person extracting marrow or by another process? What are the marks left by dogs chewing on bones? Since dogs and cats, if present, regularly dispose of bird bones, one cannot easily determine the relative importance of birds in the ancient economy based on their rarity in the archaeological record.

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Palestinian Archaeology and the Social Sciences From its earliest days, Palestinian archaeology has been closely associated with historical reconstruction—initially from the vantage point of biblical explication, illustration, and interpretation; more recently from the viewpoint of the ancient literary sources. Syrian archaeology has, in contrast, been heavily involved with Mesopotamian archaeology and literary sources, and Jordanian archaeology is only now finding its own increasingly anthropological bent. Increasingly, however, except for illumination regarding the various “snapshots” discussed above, historians tend to ignore archaeological data. In part, this is because archaeology is increasingly becoming a separate discipline with its own jargon and operative assumptions, increasingly alien to mainline historians. In part, however, it is because archaeologists themselves seem always to be in disagreement about virtually the whole range of interpretation of their data. Furthermore, archaeologists have not done the work of translating the data into testable social constructs. The failure also derives from the heavily cultivated popular interest in unique and spectacular finds and off-the-wall controversy instead of solid reconstruction, hypothesis formulation, and testing. Finally, historians lost interest because fragmentary results from such widely separated intervals as 925 b.c.e., 701 b.c.e., and 587–582 b.c.e. for the Judaean Iron II sequence yielded little actual historical material, and this material was more readily accessed from more secure literary sources. The prize was not worth the struggle. A more serious point is that archaeologists themselves have neglected the most basic aspect of their craft, the careful analysis of the distribution of artifacts in time and in space. Objects and pottery are published essentially as entities, rather than as elements in the surviving debris of a complex societal organization. Common objects are regularly ignored, even in supposedly final publications, in favor of rarer, more attractive items. Quantified studies are exceedingly rare and quantified comparisons even rarer, in part because of the prior difficulty of obtaining comparative quantified materials. Syro-Palestinian prehistorians, however, operate in a completely different sphere from their historical-archaeologist colleagues, and it has seldom occurred to the latter that this schism was symptomatic of a difficulty with historical archaeology. In essence, archaeology should be concerned with the study, systematization, and interpretation of the sorts of material it characteristically encounters. That is, we should be studying the commonest materials in relation to hypothesized recurring patterns of human activity and social relations on a scale ranging from the local activity area to the neighborhood, the site, the region, the culture area, and with respect to and in contrast to adjacent culture areas. As has been noted by New Archaeologists on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1960s, this inevitably entails quantification and the use of statistical forms of analysis, comparison, and, where appropriate, inference validation. Yet these areas are only now being explored by Palestinian specialists working in the historical periods. Identification

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of these patterns, formulation of these hypotheses, and interpretation of the social and economic patterns implied by the evidence characteristically must be based on viable models witnessed in actual living situations, then tested by the broader implication of those models for other aspects of the material culture complement. Here we find ourselves in the territory of anthropology and on the level of socioeconomic reconstruction in the territory jointly occupied by anthropologists (who characteristically, but far from exclusively, study simple societies) and social historians, various types of economists, and sociologists (who characteristically study complex societies). As one prehistorian put it: “archaeology is incurably ‘materialist’ with respect to its data base”; yet important cultural struggles have often prevented archaeologists from evaluating the work of their “materialist” colleagues, too often characterized as “Marxist.” Illustrations of the greater utility of this general approach would have to take us into the archaeology of other areas (for Jordan, however, see now LaBianca 1990, reviewed by Dever 1993). A partial illustration, however, lies near at hand: the recent explosion of insight into long-distance trade brought about through the involvement of anthropologists, economists, and social historians in a common pursuit (e.g., Rowlands et al. 1987). New studies are only now emerging (Levy, ed., 1995), and much can be expected in the near future.

Interpretive Strategies Interpretive strategies have been sketched above. Here it is only important to note that, for the results of Palestinian archaeology to be accepted in the international market-place of ideas, much more will have to be done on the basis of quantified data obtained from finer-grained archaeological techniques and through the use of appropriate models, including not only the above, but also the historical analogy long ago championed by W. F. Albright, the comparative religions approach of G. E. Wright, and the area-studies approach pioneered by Yohanan Aharoni.

Prospects Some of the most important prospects have been outlined above. From another perspective, it is obvious that future developments will be driven by technology. Global Positioning Systems now allow for more exact map locations of even very small sites, making surveys more efficient and insuring ease of relocating small sites. The increased use of magnetometers, instruments measuring the effect of electro-magnetically induced currents such as the Geonics EM-31; sidescanning radar; and improved seismic techniques are materially enhancing our abilities to study subsurface structures without excavation, as well as allowing “ground-truthing” excavations to be precisely located. Satellite imaging, particularly multiband imaging, should eventually play a major role in developing evermore-sophisticated models for geographic information systems modeling. A wide variety of digital calipers, scales, colorimeters, and so forth should make field

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recording procedures more exact and less time consuming, allowing for direct input into database structures, although many of these instruments are prohibitively expensive at present. More pervasively, the current and future evolution of personal computer technology will quickly become the major force enabling increasingly sophisticated—and, hopefully, speedy—archaeological research and publication. For example, computer databases can “run rings” around any file-card system, although the two tend to be used in tandem. The main effects of the computer revolution on fieldwork are: (a) the increasing use of the computer-based recording laser theodolite, which, coupled with computer assisted drawing (CAD) programs significantly increases the speed, accuracy, and utility of site-mapping and architectural reconstruction; (b) the increasing use of computers for in-field data entry and ongoing preliminary analysis (example: where, in our beginning-ofexcavation site survey, did we find bits of copper slag?). The latter should have the desirable effect of markedly increasing the number of items recorded, thereby enhancing the prospects for meaningful statistical analysis and bringing about greater consistency in the recording process. It is already clear that much of the factual content of future publication will consist of edited databases, probably on CD or DVD-ROMs, of the excavation itself, permitting anyone to work with virtually the same range of data (actual handling and testing of materials aside) as the publication team. Images are more expediently delivered and referenced in print form, and final report series can now consist of a set of plate volumes accompanying a slim monograph (with a couple of CD-ROMs in the back) outlining the research objectives and strategies, together with the main results and principle inferences of the project. Other formats undoubtedly will emerge, some of more questionable utility than others. High-quality video disks, with built-in indexing to allow instantaneous searches, could eventually complement or even replace the publication of voluminous plate volumes. A system of specialized “place markers,” already widely used, could substitute for the more instinctive three or four fingers in the volume. Whether or not researchers can easily use these materials for serious work is worthy of consideration. On the other hand, well-produced CD-ROMs present the opportunity for including many color slides in a publication at relatively low cost. For the near term, field photography will best be done on film, with conversion to digital images that could be easily imported into documents and stored on DVDs. Geographic Information Systems (GIS), complex interrelated database programs dealing with locational, temporal, and environmental data have already proved useful for making sense out of ancient settlement patterns (and for predicting where other sites of the same period should be). In Jordan these already have become the primary tools for ongoing research into ancient environments at all levels of analysis, from intrasite to regional to interregional (Harrison, Savage, and Graham forthcoming). In all probability, developing and improving data sets like these—or developing materials to complement and flesh out existing databases—will become a major form of publication, allowing other researchers and the interested public to explore new topics and expand the

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boundaries into directions not envisaged by the original and subsequent creators of the database. What this means for analysis and reconstruction (for the doing of archaeology) is that the entire database of many projects presently underway, or still in publication phase, should soon be available for continuing analysis and comparison with other databased materials. Older publications will undoubtedly be databased, with usefulness dependent on the adequacy and accuracy of the database format. Ultimately, this should have a major and salutary impact upon field recording, presently one of the weak links in the investigative chain, as new and improved methods of field recording produce ever-more-useful databases, driving up research standards. All too often conclusions are or have been based upon a small subset of the original archaeological record, simply because it was all that the excavator could economically access (or remember). Given full access to a large, standardized sample—preferably all—of the entire excavated population of sherds and other material culture items, entirely new aspects of the material culture record can be explored: for example, the identification of activity areas or more secure, detailed methods of pottery chronology. All of this having been said, books and journals should continue to be a key element in the interpreting and delivery of information, for intellectual and social reasons if none other. Printed on the right paper, books and journals have better archival lives than any other medium, and libraries are wonderful repositories for knowledge and places to conduct research. Browsing the library shelves is still one of the quickest ways to enter an unfamiliar area of study. While materials stored in electronic form can instantaneously be transmitted to readers in any part of the free world, can be “searched” more expediently, and are much cheaper to “publish,” they are curiously cold and not very “user-friendly” in their present incarnation. The sorts of interaction between reader and author capable of yielding humanistic insights (as opposed to various sorts of statistical insights or nearly instantaneous communication) seem curiously lacking in the all-electronic medium; and well-illustrated, carefully written and rewritten books and articles are still a world apart from anything this writer has yet seen on-line. Thus, if production and distribution costs can be kept down, books, magazines, and journals should hold their own for at least another generation and perhaps longer, with the more thoughtful, complex, and accessible popular materials (two or three distinct categories) probably hanging on the longest. As a result, it may well be that archaeologists will still find themselves writing books and serious articles for publication, popular summaries of their excavations and technical studies for the more popular press, while increasingly working with ever-evolving electronic resources. Specialized interactive instructional programs increasingly will be on CD-ROMs. If they are not to become unworkable, Internet discussion groups must be limited in membership, size, and scope. C. P. Snow’s “two worlds” will probably spread into multiple professional networks (quite literally, in the computer sense), all quite “data”-driven, with many other people, including popular pundits and working reporters, “watching” but not “participating.” For a very large group, competitive journals and magazines

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(including those produced by the “watchers”) will probably remain the main way to understand and learn about present research trends.

Bibliography Dever, W. G. 1971 Two Approaches to Archaeological Method: The Architectural and the Stratigraphic. Eretz-Israel 11 (Dunayevsky Volume): 1*–8*. 1992 Archaeology, Syro-Palestinian and Biblical. Pp. 354–67 in vol. 1 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman. New York: Doubleday. 1993 Syro-Palestinian Archaeology “Comes of Age”—The Inaugural Volume of the Hesban Series: A Review Article. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 290–91: 127–30. Harris, E. C. 1989 Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, 2d ed. London: Academic Press. Harrison, T. P.; Savage, S.; and Graham, A. Forthcoming GIS and Remote Sensing on the Madaba Plain, Jordan. Analyzing Space in Time: New Directions for GIS in Archaeology. Holladay, J. S. Jr. 1990 Red Slip, Burnish, and the Solomonic Gateway at Gezer. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 277–78: 23–70. 1993 The Use of Pottery and Other Diagnostic Criteria, from the Solomonic Era to the Divided Kingdom. Pp. 86–101 in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, June– July 1990. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 2001 Toward a New Paradigmatic Understanding of Long-Distance Trade in the Ancient Near East: From the Middle Bronze II to Early Iron II—A Sketch. Pp. 136–98 in The World of the Aramaeans II: Studies in History and Archaeology in Honour of Paul-Eugène Dion, ed. P. M. M. Daviau, J. W. Wevers, and M. Weigl. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Holladay, J. S. Jr., and Paice, P. 1992 Stratigraphic Correlation across Discontinuous Excavation Areas: A New Approach. Paper read at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, San Francisco, 22 Nov. LaBianca, Ø. S. 1990 Hesban I. Sedentarization and Nomadization: Food System Cycles at Hesban and Vicinity in Transjordan. Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press. Paice, P. 1991 Extensions to the Harris Matrix System to Illustrate Stratigraphic Discussion of an Archaeological Site. Journal of Field Archaeology 18: 17–28. Levy, T. E. (ed.) 1995 The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Renfrew, C., and Bahn, P. 1991 Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice. New York: Thames and Hudson. Rowlands, M.; Larsen, M.; and Kristiansen, K. (eds.) 1987 Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World. New Directions in Archaeology Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

John S. Holladay, Jr.

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Bible and Archaeology Recent discussions about the relation between the Bible and Palestinian archaeology have focused on differences in methodology between these two fields. The debates have led to a consensus on one point, that biblical texts and archaeology are discrete areas of investigation, and that scholars in one or the other need to respect the methodological lines. But, while the emerging consensus may be said to be a gain, it may also prove to be unrealistic, since biblical scholars and Palestinian archaeologists share natural overlaps. Not only do the historical problems with which each is engaged put the one into relation to the other, but the two fields are as often as not represented in the scholarly life of a single person. Even if an academic department is large enough to divide responsibilities, in most cases the scholarship of biblical studies and archaeology is carried on in tandem in the research and courses offered by that department. This seems also to be true in some cases where Palestinian archaeology has found a home in anthropology or history departments. A radical effort to isolate the disciplines thus not only brings confusion but raises the danger that one or the other or both disciplines will lose ground as curriculums are constricted in hard-pressed educational institutions. Courses in Palestinian archaeology currently are located in a university department of religious studies or theology, still the largest home for the subject, or in Near Eastern studies—although there are fewer possibilities for the latter—and occasionally and perhaps in a slightly increasing way in anthropology departments. Palestinian archaeology also continues to maintain a tenuous link with one of its traditional home bases, the seminary; but in the case of the latter, the recent debates, often recriminating, have had a dampening effect on introducing the subject into seminary curricula. Meanwhile, biblical scholarship has advanced its programs in contexts of general religious and literary studies in public and private universities, in religion and theology in church-related institutions, and in programs of pastoral training in seminaries. A continuing challenge for archaeology is whether and how it can establish its relevance to these programs and developments. One fallout of the movement toward disengagement of these two fields is that the issue of how they intersect has scarcely been taken up with the kind of enthusiasm that characterized the discussions a few decades ago. Archaeologists now have differing opinions about the relationship. They may occasionally express themselves on the subject, but diffidence often dominates. The chief spokesman for separation in the earlier debates, William G. Dever, has recently advocated a new type of relationship that he contends is indispensable for progress in biblical studies, especially the branch dealing with the history of ancient Israel. Such work indicates that a new sense of need to revitalize the integration of archaeol-

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ogy with biblical studies is emerging. And if past experience is any indicator, the theological discussion of implications in cross-disciplinary study from textual and archaeological perspectives will no doubt arise again in the future. If this renewed interest occurs, religious studies, theology departments, and seminaries will all have a stake. On the technical side of archaeology, scholars involved in pure research proceed according to objectives set by the discipline itself. Practically speaking, little difference exists between the way Palestinian archaeologists conduct their projects and the way their colleagues in archaeological research elsewhere proceed in their work. The ideal that they strive for is to be professionally effective. If the Bible is consulted in the course of a project, it is usually seen as offering supplementary information but playing little or no role in the overall research design of an expedition. Biblical scholarship, on the other hand, has in recent years grown more insulated from the contributions of archaeology. The paradigm dominating contemporary biblical study is “story” rather than history. In its more extreme form, story has the effect of eradicating the linkages traditionally assumed between the Bible and archaeology. The state of literary study and biblical historiography at present stands in sharp contrast to the situation a few decades ago when history was the preeminent paradigm. For Palestinian archaeologists, the current approaches in biblical study have had a suppressive effect on efforts to explore biblical linkages. On the other hand, biblical scholars have found that extremely specialized work in archaeology has made its results seem arcane for text interpretation. Given the advances in both disciplines in recent years, and recognizing the distancing that has taken place, I find it helpful to look at ways in which previous scholarship sought to build bridges of cooperative understanding. Earlier scholars had their debates over the relation between Bible and archaeology, and these could often reach high levels of intensity. The difference is that the scholarship of this period had not yet yielded to a sharp separation between the fields, and the dialogue between them continued, if at times with disagreement. Several approaches in bringing archaeological results to bear on the understanding of the Bible were employed by earlier scholars, who usually had one foot in biblical study and the other in archaeology. An obvious approach was to use the wealth of data from archaeology to provide visual details that would fill out what the biblical texts had put only in words. In this sense archaeological evidence was considered primarily illustrative. The most popular work in the United States that used archaeology for this kind of potential was George A. Barton’s book, published in 1933. Barton’s publication had considerable impact on educational programs in churches. It was written in a style accessible to nonprofessionals, and it contained a wealth of photographic reproductions that could easily excite the interest of lay students of the Bible. Scholars like Barton who employed the illustrative approach described their aim as “throwing light on the Bible” or “illuminating the biblical texts,” and they shared the view that the primary value of archaeology in the lands of the Bible was that it helped Bible students to “see” the text.

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The idea of an illustrative approach to archaeological results and the Bible was popularized in books that used photos and drawings to illustrate scenes from the Bible. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Germany especially witnessed the appearance of a number of successful Bilderbücher of this type. Archaeologists from Germany were some of the earliest explorers of the lands of the Middle East, and their travels and expeditions produced a vast library in all aspects of study in this region. It was natural that some scholars would put these results at the disposal of the public by means of their publications, lavishly produced for the time. Included in their publications was a wealth of glyptic and representative art, as well as artifacts depicting the daily life of people in biblical times. The major collection of archaeological artifacts and art relevant to the Old Testament published by James Pritchard in the United States (1954) continues to be a primary source book, based on the same model of accumulated illustrative material. This type of cultural material from the world of ancient Palestine made the Bible more understandable, since it facilitated contact between the modern Bible student and the “real world” in which the biblical people lived. Although those who worked with this approach rarely made the effort to explain how the information would assist in the comprehension of the ancient texts, the illustrative model was effective and reached large audiences. It still retains its popularity, and it has taken on a new dimension with modern advances in photography. For another group of scholars, the relationship between the Bible and archaeology had a more profound relevance than simply illustrating the world of the Bible, despite the fact that visualizing the world of the Bible had significance for this group as well. George Ernest Wright’s Biblical Archaeology (1962) is the classic expression of an approach that would relate archaeology directly to exegetical and theological questions. For scholars like Wright, the main contribution of archaeology was undergirding the Bible’s historical perspective. This way of viewing the relation of the Bible and archaeology functioned as a corroborative paradigm, although the idea of corroboration was not employed simplistically. The basic thrust of this approach was that archaeology with its ever-increasing data from the biblical lands could make an essential contribution to supporting and even at times substantiating the Bible’s historical picture. Operating often with an apologetic intent, which its best practitioners made no attempts to disguise, this approach was the most theological of all efforts to relate the Bible and archaeology. Those who employed it found an ally in the discussions about history that dominated theology after World War II. Whether in its European or American form, the debates about history, with roots in 19thcentury historiography, drew theology and biblical study, along with philosophy, into provocative discourse. By relating to this intellectual ferment, Palestinian archaeologists dealing with issues of facticity were able to fix Palestinian archaeology into the current biblical and theological task, and their contributions experienced an unusually successful reception at the time. If the representatives of the corroboration model were concerned with seeking verification for the Bible’s basic historical view, their efforts were not religiously

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fundamentalist. The majority of those who followed the “God who acts in history” approach to the archaeology of ancient Palestine made clear that they accepted the demonstrable reality that many parts of the Bible were not historical, that different literary forms in addition to history as we know it today were present in the biblical writings. At the same time, the assumption was made that the events recorded in the Bible had more or less occurred, temporally and geographically, in the way they were recorded and that archaeology served the purpose of showing how this was so. For theology this provided significant input for the discussions about the relation between fact and faith that were a dominant theme in theological discussions of the time. As far as the corroboration paradigm is concerned, therefore, it was clearly scholars with links to the theological developments following the war that held the field on the issue of the relation between the Bible and archaeology. For scholars such as Wright, who pursued work simultaneously in both archaeology and biblical study, this model was effective as long as the biblical theology on which it was grounded was able to hold up. When this version of biblical theology no longer commanded broad support, the ability of the corroboration model also lost its power (Childs 1970). And as this occurred a further impetus was set loose for dividing Palestinian archaeology from its contacts with biblical study. Yet a third approach to the issue of the Bible and archaeology made use of comparative data to determine congruences, borrowing, and similarities between the cultures of the ancient Near East. Not tied at all to biblical theological issues, this approach was closely identified with the newly popular field of the history of religions that had emerged in Europe. In the broadest way, as archaeology in the various countries of the Near East began to turn up comparative data, the results were set side by side with the religion of the people of Israel to determine what cross-fertilizations may have occurred. The comparative approach had a very different result for biblical interpretation from either the illustrative or the corroborative paradigm. By means of the comparative approach, represented in the book by Graham and May published in 1936, biblical religion was seen as one among several other forms of religious experience attested by the new data from the ancient Near East. The cultic realia, whether artifactual or mythic, were exploited for the light they could shed on the development of Israel’s religion. Out of this field of the comparative investigation of ancient Near Eastern religion came an abundance of archaeologically based studies of temples, sacrifices, priestly orders, and myths, all of which have been related to texts of the Bible. In its most confrontational form, this model played an important role in what came to be known as the “Babel-Bibel” controversy in Germany, a heated debate that took place over the question of whether anything in the Bible was unique and whether biblical belief had not as a whole been assimilated from earlier cultures in Mesopotamia. None of the approaches of earlier scholars can easily be revived in the current situation, although one can argue that the problems of history in relation to biblical faith have not been exhausted, even if scholars seem to have given up

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the discussion for the time being. It seems that archaeologists who are still interested in and trained in respect to biblical questions could reinitiate discussions around the questions of history, seeking ways to pursue what could be a new and fruitful dialogue between scholars involved in textual study and scholars recovering new data from fieldwork. The recent redirection toward social histories of Israel also presents the possibility of a new phase of discussion, in which the focus on history in relation to biblical faith might arise in a new form. At the very least, many archaeologists working in the Middle East have taken on methodological approaches of social archaeology, which opens a door for social historians and social archaeologists to collaborate in the study of the social world of ancient Israel, as well as later Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Central to the problems and challenges, however, are the old questions of hermeneutics. The pursuit of these problems demands that a person be well schooled in the history of biblical interpretation, including the theological, philosophical, and philological issues that are implicit in this discussion. The matter might be stated as a fundamental question: What is it that shapes the perception of a scholar as she or he attempts to unfold meaning in biblical texts? Is it true, as some have argued, that the effort to incorporate “extraneous” material such as findings from archaeology into the study of texts (specifically biblical texts) presents the danger of subverting the meaning of texts? Or does the exclusion of this material from the investigation of texts that were produced in the milieu of a particular material culture not instead result in the danger of an anachronistic reading of the texts? For people who wish to concentrate on this problem, it seems that a world of new possibilities is available in modern cognitive psychology—focusing on how one’s thought processes move from perceptions (to which the visual aspects of archaeology certainly contribute) to conceptualization, the point at which the highest level of interpretation occurs. A hermeneutic addressing this issue might take into account what has become a new element in the discussion recently, namely, the recognition that the Bible does not stand by itself, disengaged from the material cultural world in which it was produced, but is itself a product of Iron Age Palestine. The Bible’s history of survival is different from the history of the artifacts that have endured in the soils of ancient Near Eastern sites and that are being unearthed by fieldwork. But it is no less a remnant from those times and that culture. In this sense, any wall that might have been built between Palestinian archaeology and biblical studies would have to begin to tumble. It is to questions such as these that the dialogue has begun to return, even if only in a provisional manner. Although the gains obtained through a sharper delineation of the unique contributions of each field mean that much study will continue to be compartmentalized, the common ground between archaeology and biblical studies seems ready for replowing, with a potential for harvesting new results.

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Bibliography Barton, G. W. 1933 Archaeology and the Bible. 6th ed. Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union. Childs, B. S. 1970 Biblical Theology in Crisis. Philadelphia: Westminster. Dever, W. G. 1985 Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology. Pp. 31–74 in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. G. M. Tucker. Philadelphia: Fortress. 1990 Archaeology and the Bible: Understanding Their Special Relationship. Biblical Archaeology Review 16/3: 52–58. 1994 Archaeology, Texts, and History-Writing: Toward an Epistemology. Pp. 105–17 in Uncovering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson, ed. Lewis M. Hopfe. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. 2002 What Did the Biblical Writers Know and How Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Glock, A. E. 1986 Biblical Archaeology: An Emerging Discipline. Pp. 85–102 in The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies: Presented to Siegfried H. Horn, ed. L. T. Geraty and L. G. Herr. Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press. Graham, W. C., and May, G. H. 1936 Culture and Conscience: An Archaeological Study of the New Religious Past in Ancient Palestine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meyers, C. 1992 The Contributions of Archaeology. Pp. 51–56 in The Oxford Study Bible, ed. M. J. Suggs, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, and J. R. Mueller. New York: Oxford University Press. Meyers, C., and Meyers, E. 1989 Expanding the Frontiers of Biblical Archaeology. Eretz-Israel 20 (Yadin Volume): 140– 47. Pritchard, J. B. 1969 The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament. 2d ed. with Supplement. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wright, G. E. 1962 Biblical Archaeology. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Walter E. Rast

Levantine Archaeology The Levant has perhaps the most intensely examined archaeological record in the world. The unique phenomenon of the “tell” site has led to a plethora of competing theoretical and methodological approaches. The archaeology of Syria and Palestine has simultaneously acted as both a laboratory for new methods and a museum for discarded ones.

Pre–World War I Before World War I, all of the Levant was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. This decaying state attracted the covetous interest of the Western Powers. One of the expressions of this interest was archaeology. Inspired by the linguistic achievements of Champollion and Rawlinson, the mid–19th century witnessed an explosion in interest in Levantine archaeology among both scholars and the general public. Numerous national and religious societies such as the Palestine Exploration Fund (1865–) were dedicated to the recovery of the ancient Levant. The first excavations carried out in Syria and Palestine were focused on large known sites such as Byblos and Jerusalem. These were more in the nature of treasure hunts than scientific forays. By World War I, numerous foreign institutes interested in archaeological research had been established in the Levant. It was recognized early that a thorough survey of the country was a necessary prelude to archaeological investigation. The pioneering archaeological survey in the Levant was by an American biblical scholar, Edward Robinson in 1838. Robinson’s theoretical goal was to ground the Bible in science through the preparation of a scientific geography. His methodology was based on the belief that ancient place-names were preserved in local Arabic usage. He was extremely successful. He did make some errors, usually because he did not grasp the artificial nature of tell sites. The Palestine Exploration Fund built on his work with a monumental survey of Palestine in the late 19th century. This was carried out by British army officers with an obvious interest in strategic issues. Military interest in overtly archaeological surveys continues into the present day in the Levant. In 1890, the Levant became a methodological laboratory for William Flinders Petrie, a British excavator experienced in Egypt. Petrie conceived of a major advancement in archaeology: the principle of ceramic sequence dating. At Tell elHesi in southern Palestine, Petrie combined the principle of sequence dating with an awareness of the stratigraphic context to establish the first ceramic calendar for the Levant. Trained as a surveyor, Petrie envisioned a tell as a series of datable architectural phases, the product of a succession of destructions and reconstructions. The recovery of town plans was the goal; pottery was only a tool for dating, so categorizing “types” was the goal of ceramic research.

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Methodological experimentation continued in Palestine under R. A. S. Macalister at Gezer in 1902–09. Confronted by a 30-acre mound, Macalister excavated two-thirds of the tell by digging a 40-foot-wide trench to bedrock, then backfilling the trench with the spoil from a new trench. At the end, he was unable to link up the strata exposed in the various trenches. Although the field method was a vertical one, Macalister approached the tell as a horizontal question. He did not make use of the vertical exposure presented by the successive trenches but tried to use them to recover successive architectural plans; his methodology did not match his goal. German excavators working in the Levant employed methods developed at Olympia in Greece. Excavators in Syria–Palestine such as Sellin and Watzinger would excavate a series of trenches to expose monumental buildings and fortifications and to recover their associated art works and decorative motifs. If a monumental building was encountered, the trench was expanded laterally. Tell sites were chosen for excavation because the tell was understood as the product of activity of the upper class. Pottery held little importance unless it was an art object in its own right. It was an archaeology of the elite. George Andrew Reisner, an American excavator at Samaria, used a stratigraphic approach. In his theoretical framework, a tell was the product of natural and human activity, and the archaeologist’s role was to discern this activity. The key to decoding this activity lay in the thorough analysis of nonarchitectural debris. Reisner was astonishingly prescient in focusing on what we call today formation processes. Although Reisner’s emphasis on stratigraphy was carried on by later archaeologists, the rest of his theory and method package were ignored. The questions Reisner asked regarding human activity and tell formation are just now being re-stated, some seventy years after his publications.

The “Golden Age” The 1920s ushered in a golden age (so christened by G. E. Wright) for archaeology in the Near East. The Western-controlled territories of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Cyprus were wide open territory for archaeology. French, Danish, British, American, German, and Swedish excavators were in the field. It was the time of the “Big Dig.” Levantine archaeology reflected the prevailing idealistic climate of the 1920s. For many expeditions, the announced goal was nothing less than total excavation of a particular site. Financial resources and methodology were deemed adequate to achieve these goals; for example, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago began excavation at Megiddo in the 1920s with a budget of one million dollars. The close nature of the archaeological community and the geographical proximity of the various excavations insured that new methods or interpretations were widely shared. The British Mandate authorities after 1918 assembled a highly professional core of archaeologists in the Department of Antiquities, including Ernest Mackay, C. Leonard Woolley, and P. L. O. Guy. The British worked in the Shephelah, at Jerusalem, Lachish, Samaria, Ashkelon, and Jericho. The Ashkelon excavators

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took advantage of an erosional cut and produced a section drawing illustrating the stratigraphy. The British began to comprehend the complexity of the tell sites, but they still lacked a functional methodology to untangle them. In Syria and Lebanon, controlled by France, French archaeologists were very active. Large French excavations were undertaken at Byblos, Ras Shamra (Ugarit), and at smaller sites in Syria and in Palestine. French Dominicans from the École Biblique in Jerusalem also excavated in Palestine. The complex nature of tell sites and the resulting necessity of careful attention to microstratigraphy clashed with the often avowed aim in the 1920s of total site excavation. The French at Byblos attempted to answer this problem by both a massive commitment and a methodology that dealt with the debris question by introducing an artificial stratigraphy. Pierre Montet and his successor Maurice Dunand employed a field methodology at Byblos that had been pioneered at the classical site of Delos and the Iranian site of Susa. Montet and Dunand hoped to excavate the entire site in 20-cm arbitrary levels; a total of some fifty were excavated. Dunand believed that the find-spot of an artifact could be closely indicated, and the publication would enable the reader to reconstruct the site without any “false linkage” made by the excavator. Excavation by arbitrary levels can be very valuable where no cultural stratigraphy is evident; however, its application to a major tell site reflects an incorrect picture of tell formation. The methodology of American archaeology in Palestine in the 1920s was the product of Clarence Stanley Fisher, the architect at the American excavations at Samaria. He returned to Palestine in 1920 to work for the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in the excavation of Beth-shan. The Fisher method called for the excavation of areas rather than trenches and systematic recording. At Beth-shan, and later at Megiddo, Fisher concentrated on clearing complete building units. He saw a tell as a series of strata formed by the super imposition of architectural remains that could be dated by careful excavation. W. F. Albright, the leading scholar of his generation, became director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem from 1921 until 1929. At Tell Beit Mirsim, Albright took the area orientation of Fisher and the recording system of Reisner and added the intensive study of the ceramic material from the tell to produce a highly successful field methodology. To his credit, Albright appreciated the disturbed nature of a tell and turned to ceramic typology to deal with the problem of tell debris. To understand the phases at Tell Beit Mirsim (1926–32) Albright considered the pottery context, not the stratigraphic one. The Tell Beit Mirsim collection gave Albright the dated material he needed to systematize the ceramics of Palestine. Through those publications he provided archaeologists with a ceramic corpus that could be used as an independent check for other sites. Unlike other published pottery collections, Albright presented the actual pots in question, not “types.” The Albright method prevented stratigraphic experimentation, leading to methodological stagnation in Palestine. There was no need to develop field techniques that could expose and clarify microstratigraphy, since pottery typology

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held the promise of pinpointing intrusive material. A locus was “clean” if its pottery assemblage contained only forms that on comparative grounds did not conflict chronologically. Such a “clean” locus could then be used to test other material. This could become a circular trap, simply reinforcing preconceived ideas about pottery groups. Pottery forms are assumed to be chronological markers, not cultural ones; hence, regional subdivisions and cultural “time-lag” must be rejected on a priori grounds. Despite the limitations of his method, Albright’s success made ceramic study the hallmark of American excavations in Palestine to the present day. The clarification of the ceramic sequence was not an end in itself. Albright needed the ability to date ceramics accurately so that he could ascertain the periods of habitation and date the destruction of Palestinian tells. With this ability, Albright could answer the questions of biblical history that became increasingly more important to him. Albright hoped to ground biblical studies in the realia of archaeology. The resultant construct came to be known as “Biblical Archaeology.”

Post–World War II The emergence of Israel as an independent state accelerated the separation between archaeology in Syria and Palestine begun during the divided Mandate. Direct archaeological cooperation was ended for local scholars and made very difficult for foreign archaeologists. French, British, and American scholars continued to excavate in the new states of Syria and Lebanon. Jordan and the West Bank were dominated by large-scale foreign excavations. In both areas, by 1960, local archaeologists had begun to direct excavations. Within Israel, archaeology enjoyed widespread public support, and soon large-scale, architecturally-oriented excavations directed by Israelis began at prominent biblical sites such as Hazor (1955–59). A new methodology revolutionized Levantine field archaeology in the 1950s. The new prophet in field archaeology was Kathleen Kenyon, a British archaeologist who had first worked in Palestine before the War, at Samaria. In 1952, she began a reexamination of Tell es-Sultan, the biblical site of Jericho. In the Jericho excavations she introduced a new field methodology. Kenyon had gained her initial archaeological experience with Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the late twenties at Verulamium. He had obtained excellent results through a stratigraphicallyoriented method that made extensive use of vertical sections. Kenyon took the Wheeler methodology and applied it to a Near Eastern tell at Jericho. In this system the site is excavated in a series of squares, separated by “balks” that are left standing and thus provide keys to the stratification. The goal is to gain a stratigraphic understanding of the site, not just the recovery of floor plans. G. Ernest Wright, a student of Albright, began working at Shechem in 1956. His excavation pioneered the combination of Kenyon’s methodology with the traditional American interest in ceramic typology. Most American excavators working in Jordan quickly combined the new methodology with a strong ceramic

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orientation. This basic methodology is still the foundation for much work undertaken today in Jordan and Israel. The years following the 1967 war were characterized by a burgeoning of largescale excavations, area surveys, and small-scale problem-oriented archaeology throughout the Levant. Sites dating from the Palaeolithic into the Ottoman period have been examined. With the West Bank under Israeli occupation, the war gave a strong impetus to archaeology on Cyprus, linking its archaeology more firmly with the cultural world of the Levant. A theoretical and methodological revolution has occurred, bringing Levantine archaeology into a more coherent role in the overall discipline of archaeology. The historical/biblical orientation of most excavations before 1960 has been relegated to a more minor role, particularly among American archaeologists. Lead by William G. Dever, who was trained in a traditional biblical archaeology approach by G. E. Wright, American archaeologists in the late 1960s turned to American anthropology for a new paradigm to replace the limited historical/ biblical model. Today, most American archaeologists in the Levant are anthropologically trained, with a processual or postprocessual theoretical background. Theoretical questions focus on the entire ancient cultural system, including social, economic, and environmental data. The stratigraphic/ceramic field methodology continues but with innovations such as botanical and faunal analysis, radiocarbon dating, ground-penetrating radar, and geographical information systems. Ceramic studies now include chemical provenience studies to determine the origin of suspected local and/or imported wares. A data revolution has occurred with widespread use of computers in the field. Not surprisingly, the last thirty years have been a golden age for prehistory in the Levant. The roots of agriculture have been intensively examined, particularly in Syria at the sites of Mureybat and Abu Hureyra. Early villages and subsistence patterns have been studied in Israel and Jordan. The funding of archaeology in the Levant has drastically changed. Much recent archaeology has been development driven, such as the Tabqa Dam project in Syria or water projects in the Jordan Valley. All of the nations in the Levant realize the value of archaeology in attracting the tourist trade. Jordan has sponsored multinational archaeology projects in Jerash, Pella, and Petra to make these sites more attractive to tourists. Israel has established numerous archaeological parks for both their own citizenry and foreign visitors. This has been one of the factors behind the continued Israeli orientation toward large-scale architectural archaeology. The problem-oriented archaeology on American excavations is due in no small measure to anthropologically oriented granting agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Of course, private individuals or institutions still fund Levantine archaeology, particularly in Israel. Two centuries of Levantine archaeology has produced an extensively published, intensively examined archaeological record. This record provides a generally agreed-upon framework that allows sophisticated research exceeding other regional archaeologies that still must grapple with fundamental questions of

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chronology and cultural sequence. Recent political changes promoting peace in the region may lead to new opportunities for archaeology, as well as new threats from development. The strong national archaeological establishments in the region will only benefit from increased contact if they can overcome the strong influence of nationalism on the interpretation of the archaeological record. Archaeology may help lead the way as the Levant becomes a more integrated region in the new century.

Bibliography Davis, T. W. Forthcoming Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology. London: Oxford University Press. Dever, W. G. 1981 The Impact of the “New Archaeology” on Syro-Palestinian Archaeology. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 242: 15–29. 1985 Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology. Pp. 31–74 in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker. Philadelphia: Fortress. 2002 What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. King, P. J. 1983 American Archaeology in the Mideast: A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Winona Lake, Ind.: American Schools of Oriental Research. Moorey, R. P. S. 1992 A Century of Biblical Archaeology. London: Lutterworth. Silberman, N. A. 1982 Digging for God and Country. New York: Knopf. 1989 Between Past and Present. New York: Holt.

Thomas. W. Davis

Text Sources for Levantine Archaeology: The Bible The books of Jewish and Christian scripture are referred to generally as the Bible. Actually, it is more appropriate to speak of “Bibles,” since Jews and Christians have different canons of scripture, and even Christian canons are not all exactly the same. Common to all, however, is a collection of Hebrew writings (with some small sections in Aramaic) that came to be recognized as authoritative by Jews by the end of the 1st century c.e. This collection is known today as the Tanakh, Tanakh being an acronym derived from the initial letters of its three subdivisions: the Torah (generally translated into English as ‘the Law’ and referred to also as the Pentateuch), the Neviªim (‘the Prophets’), and the Kethuvim (‘the Writings’). Christians know the Tanakh as the Old Testament; many contemporary scholars prefer the more neutral designation “Hebrew Bible.” The Torah (specifically the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) presents a composite account of Israel’s origins that begins with creation and concludes with Moses’ farewell address and death. The Neviªim consists of the so-called Former Prophets (the books of Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, and 1–2 Kings, which continue the narrative from Moses’ death and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem), and the Latter Prophets (the specifically prophetic books, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah). The Kethuvim consist of various miscellaneous books, such as 1–2 Chronicles, Psalms, and Daniel. Apparently the Kethuvim was still a somewhat loose category of writings during the 2d century b.c.e., when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek. Thus the standard Greek translation, the Septuagint, includes books among the Kethuvim that do not appear in the traditional Hebrew canon. Early Christians tended to use the Septuagint, with the result that the Christian Old Testament includes these extra books. These books have come to be known as the Old Testament Apocrypha, and Protestants tend to ascribe to them secondary canonical status or drop them from their canon altogether. In addition to the Tanakh/Old Testament, Christian Bibles include specifically Christian writings known collectively as the New Testament. While the New Testament canon is not entirely uniform among Christians, the basic components are the same, having been established by the 4th century c.e. Specifically, the New Testament consists of letters (including several letters from Paul to fledgling churches in Asia Minor and Greece), the “Gospels” of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (narrative accounts pertaining to the deeds and sayings of Jesus), the Acts of the Apostles (a continuation of the Luke gospel account that describes the beginnings of the Christian movement), and an apocalyptic work known as the Revelation to John. Mention should be made also of various religious writings that

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circulated among Jews and Christians during the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, apparently were regarded as scriptural in at least some worshiping communities, but did not find their way into either the Jewish or Christian Bible. Many of these writings have been collected and published in modern times under the rubrics Pseudepigrapha and New Testament Apocrypha. Few of the biblical books can be dated with absolute certainty, and of course no original autographs survive. Generally speaking, however, the books of the Torah and Neviªim reached essentially their present form during the Persian period, while the books of the Kethuvim are mostly products of the Hellenistic period, and the New Testament books derive from the Roman period (specifically the last half of the 1st century and early 2d century c.e.). Thus, the biblical materials take their place alongside other written materials from Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman times as potential sources of information for historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists working with these periods. As with all ancient documents, they must be evaluated carefully and used with critical judgment. Furthermore, as with the other ancient documents, there is a two-way exchange of information between the Bible and archaeology—that is, while archaeology sheds light on the material culture of the peoples and times from which the Bible emerged, the Bible presents verbal data from these peoples and times that aids in the interpretation of archaeological remains. There are wide differences of opinion about the way this two-way exchange should work out in practice, much of the debate focusing on the Torah and Former Prophets. As indicated above, these books (Genesis through 2 Kings) combine to present a kind of theological history of Israel’s past that begins with creation and concludes with the exile of the Jews following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. The latter event can be dated from Babylonian records to the early 6th century b.c.e., thus providing a post ad quem date for the final composition of the work. This theological history clearly is a composite work, however, and some scholars contend that its compilers used sources that may date back as early as the time of David and Solomon. Accordingly, they regard the biblical account of this early period as a legitimate source of information for interpreting the material remains of Iron I Palestine. Thus, for example, the relatively impressive Iron I fortifications uncovered at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer have been attributed to Solomon on the basis of 1 Kgs 9:15–17, which states that Solomon fortified Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. Other scholars are less convinced that the books of the Torah and Former Prophets are based on such early sources, however, and contend that whatever historical memory survives in these books is irretrievably mixed with legend and thoroughly overshadowed by the theological agenda of their postexilic compilers. In short, they regard the Genesis–2 Kings account as useful only as a source of information about the assumptions, attitudes, and conditions of the Persian period or later. The ongoing debate is further exacerbated by the fact that the Bible is regarded by many as sacred scripture. Some scholars, in other words, are perhaps inclined for personal and theological reasons to attribute more credibility to the

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biblical materials than they might otherwise. Other scholars, reacting against fundamentalistic notions, are perhaps more dismissive than they might be otherwise. Some, in fact, tend to write the Bible off as totally irrelevant for serious historical research. The goal of most biblical scholars and archaeologists, of course, is to work out a balanced approach, one that examines the Bible with the same careful and analytical spirit that a scholar would apply to any other written source from the past.

Bibliography Coogan, M. D.; Exum, J. C.; and Stager, L. E. (eds.) 1994 Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox. Dever, W. G. 1985 Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology. Pp. 31–74 in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker. Philadelphia: Fortress. Drinkard, J. F.; Mattingly, G.; and Miller, J. M. (eds.) 1988 Benchmarks in Time and Culture: An Introduction to Palestine Archaeology Dedicated to Joseph A. Callaway. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Edelman, D. V. (ed.) 1991 The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact and Israel’s Past. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements 127. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Freedman, D. N. (ed.) 1992 The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday. Miller, J. M. 1998 Archaeology and the Bible. The International Bible Commentary, ed. W. R. Farmer. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. Moorey, P. R. S. 1991 A Century of Biblical Archaeology. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox. Perdue, L. G.; Toombs, L. E.; and Johnson, G. L. (eds.) 1987 Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation. Atlanta: John Knox.

J. Maxwell Miller

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Writing and Scripts (with Special Reference to the Levant) Introduction Writing in the Near East developed in the fourth millennium b.c.e., first in southern Mesopotamia and a short while later in Egypt. The two main types were the cuneiform system of the former and the hieroglyphic system of the latter. Eventually, a third major system, the alphabetic system, was developed in the Levant. The invention of the alphabet was a major step in the history of mankind. To fully understand its impact, one first must understand the other writing systems of the Near East, especially as they relate to the peoples of Syria and Canaan.

Mesopotamian Cuneiform The earliest writing in Mesopotamia was pictographic—that is, the individual signs were intended to represent pictorially specific objects or actions. Within a relatively short time, however, two changes evolved: (a) the individual pictures became more and more stylized and thus developed into cuneiform, or wedgeshaped, writing; and (b) the simple pictographs came to stand for more than the object or action originally intended, and thus they emerged as syllabic signs (which means that the vowels were represented) and/or ideograms. The system included several hundred signs. The raw materials used for cuneiform writing were clay and reeds, both omnipresent in southern Mesopotamia. The scribe would use a reed stylus and impress it into a wet clay tablet, which when baked (either in an oven or by the sun) became hard and durable. Our earliest written records in this system are in the Sumerian language, so we assume that it was the Sumerians who first developed cuneiform writing. On the other hand, there are certain peculiarities in the writing system that do not match perfectly the phonology of the Sumerian language. Accordingly, it is possible that cuneiform writing was invented by a still earlier people (part of what scholars call proto-Euphratean culture) and that the Sumerians only adopted the system to record their own language. The cuneiform system eventually came to be used to record many other languages in Mesopotamia and beyond: Akkadian, Eblaite, Hurrian, Urartian, Hittite, Luwian, Elamite, and (in a variant of the system) Old Persian.

Egyptian Hieroglyphic The invention of writing in southern Mesopotamia served as the cultural stimulus for the development of writing in Egypt. Here the hieroglyphic system developed, which also had several hundred signs. The system has affinities to the cuneiform system, but there are important differences. First, the individual signs

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remained always as pictures; they did not become stylized. Second, vowels were not represented in the script. Third, a set of 24 basic signs was used to represent each of the consonantal sounds of the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphic writing was used in a variety of media: for incising stone (for example, pyramid walls, temple walls, public monuments, stelae, and so on), painting tomb walls, and inscribing papyrus with reed pen and ink. By approximately 2000 b.c.e., however, a more cursive style emerged for writing on papyrus, known as hieratic. The original pictures of the hieroglyphic script generally are no longer recognizable. By about 700 b.c.e., an even more rapid and cursive handwriting system developed, known as demotic. With few exceptions, for the three thousand years of ancient Egyptian history the hieroglyphic script (and its derivatives, hieratic and demotic) was used to record only the Egyptian language. Unlike cuneiform, which spread to various neighboring countries of Mesopotamia, the Egyptian writing system remained solely an Egyptian enterprise. Exceptions are: (a) the use of hieratic number symbols in various (especially administrative) texts from Canaan; and (b) a unique papyrus roll from about 400 b.c.e. with an Aramaic text written in demotic script.

The Levant

Fig. 1. An Akkadian letter from Taºanach, known as Taºanach text number 5. The text mentions the nearby city of Megiddo, spelled Ma-gi-id-da in the last line (line 15). Source: E. Sellin, Eine Nachlese auf dem Tell Taºannek in Palästina (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1906), plate 3.

The cuneiform script spread to Syria and Canaan in the third millennium b.c.e. Above I noted the use of cuneiform for the recording of Eblaite, the language of ancient Ebla in northern Syria (and the oldest Semitic language attested). The archives of Ebla, which include about 1,750 complete or virtually complete texts, 4,900 relatively large fragments, and thousands of smaller fragments, reveal a high level of sophistication at a remarkably early date. Especially important is the bilingual dictionary, of which we have several copies, listing hundreds of Eblaite words with their Sumerian equivalents. In the second millennium b.c.e., when Akkadian became the lingua franca of the Near East, the use of cuneiform writing became even more widespread in the region (fig. 1). Texts written in Akkadian have been found at the following Levantine sites: Ugarit, Alalakh, Kadesh, Hamath, Kamid elLoz, Hazor, Taºanach, Megiddo, Beth-

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shan, Gezer, Aphek, and Hebron. Furthermore, the over three hundred letters found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt show that scribes in Tyre, Byblos, Jerusalem, Amurru, and other places were adept at Akkadian cuneiform. The basic picture that emerges from this evidence is one of bilingualism; the scribes of the Levant could read and write both their native West Semitic language and Akkadian cuneiform. In certain instances, we may speak of polyglot scribes. Ugarit has yielded one copy of a trilingual dictionary (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian) and multiple copies of a quadrilingual dictionary (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Ugaritic); and Aphek has yielded a small fragment of a trilingual dictionary (Sumerian, Akkadian, Canaanite). Egyptian hieroglyphic texts (fig. 2) have been found in late-secondmillennium b.c.e. Canaan as well, but most likely they are the products of Egyptian scribes serving in the Egyptian administration of the land during the Empire period of the New Kingdom (18th and 19th Dynasties mainly). On the other hand, if the tale of Sinuhe (20th century b.c.e.) can be trusted, the Egyptian language could be heard (though not necessarily written) in the Levant.

The Alphabet

Fig. 2. An Egyptian hieratic text inscribed on a bowl found at Lachish, dated to approximately 1200 b.c.e. The text lists amounts of wheat, probably for tax purposes. Source: Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) (4 vols.; London: Oxford University Press, 1938–58) 4.133. Courtesy the Wellcome Trust.

We turn now to a discussion of the Levant’s most important contribution to the history of writing and indeed to the history of mankind: the alphabet. As noted above, the hieroglyphic system included something very close to an alphabet, a set of 24 basic signs used to represent each of the consonantal sounds of the language. But the Egyptians never used these signs to the exclusion of the hundreds of other signs (ideograms, biconsonantal signs, triconsonantal signs, and so forth). Nevertheless, we assume that this component of the Egyptian writing system acted as the stimulus for the invention of the alphabet. The exact date and provenance for the invention of the alphabet cannot be determined. Most scholars speak generally of the first half of the second millennium b.c.e., somewhere in Canaan, by speakers of a West Semitic language. In the alphabetic system, the only signs utilized are approximately two dozen letters, each representing a single consonant of the language. In the standard Canaanite alphabet, called the linear alphabet (because the letters are written

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with lines [as opposed to wedges]), the forms themselves are taken from common objects whose words start with that sound. Thus, for example, the word for ‘house’ is bayt or bet, so the picture of a house is used for /b/; the word for ‘hand’ is yad or yod, so the picture of a hand is used for /y/; and so on. Vowels are not represented in this system. So, for example, if you want to write the word for ‘house’, the letters BYT or BT are written; if you want to write the word for ‘hand’, the letters YD are written. In time, as with cuneiform, hieratic, and demotic, many of the individual signs became stylized, so it is not always easy to recognize the original picture.

Fig. 3. An Ugaritic abecedary, known as UT 139/401/1184 = CAT 5.6. Source: Handcopy by E. B. Smick, in C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967) 299. Used by permission.

The other variety of alphabetic script is the cuneiform alphabet (thus called because the signs are formed with wedges, as in the Mesopotamian cuneiform system) used at Ugarit and several other sites. The earliest alphabetic scripts, both linear and cuneiform, generally were written in a left-to-right fashion. Eventually, the right-to-left fashion became the norm. The great contribution of the alphabet is its facilitation of literacy. We will never know what percentage of the general population in the ancient world was literate, but obviously the rate of literacy must have been higher in Canaan than in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The writing systems of the latter regions were cumbersome, as indicated by the fact that they each contained several hundred signs. Certainly, most people could not read and write, so in both Egyptian and Mesopotamian society a professional group of scribes developed. These individuals clearly were the educated elite. By contrast, the alphabet is quite simple, for only about two dozen signs need to be learned. One piece of evidence regularly cited in the debate about literacy is the biblical verse Judg 8:14, in which a lad apparently selected at random was able to write down the names of the 77 elders of his town. Though professional scribes functioned in societies that used the alphabet, it is hard to imagine that they far outdistanced many common folk in their ability to read and write (contra the situation in Egypt and Mesopotamia).

Second-Millennium Alphabetic Writings Our earliest alphabetic writings are not found in the Levant proper. Rather, they are the so-called “Proto-Sinaitic” inscriptions, written in the linear alphabet,

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found at Serabit el-Khadem in southwestern Sinai and dated to about 1500 b.c.e. The inscriptions are graffiti inscribed most likely by laborers (presumably from Canaan) who worked in the nearby turquoise mines. These inscriptions have apparently 25 different signs, so there is no doubt that they are alphabetic. Most scholars accept the fact that they record a West Semitic language. The next oldest attested alphabetic inscriptions are the numerous texts discovered at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and nearby Ras ibn Hani in Syria (14th–13th centuries b.c.e.). The Ugaritic alphabet comprised 30 letters, a relatively large number based on the rather conservative phonology of the Ugaritic language. As noted above, the Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform alphabet. Thus it combines the concept of the alphabet developed in Canaan with the technique of writing imported from Mesopotamia (again, with the use of a reed stylus to impress clay tablets). Among the texts found at Ugarit are several abecedaries, our oldest inscriptions of this kind, presenting for us the order of the thirty letters (fig. 3). The order is essentially that of the later-attested Phoenician-Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. The scribes of Ugarit experimented in using the Ugaritic alphabet for the recording of Hurrian and Akkadian; a handful of texts in each of these languages written in the cuneiform alphabet was found at Ugarit. Conversely, we possess several fragmentary texts in which the Ugaritic language is written in the Mesopotamian cuneiform syllabary. Three texts found at Ugarit contain a shorter variant of the Ugaritic alphabet, reflecting a reduced phonetic inventory. A small number of texts in this script have been found at a variety of sites well to the south of Ugarit: Mount Tabor, Taºanach, Beth-shemesh, Kamid el-Loz, and Sarepta. All of these date to before approximately 1200 b.c.e. Apparently, after this date the cuneiform alphabet fell into disuse and was replaced totally by the linear alphabet. In our discussion of early texts, mention should also be made of occasional discoveries of linear alphabetic inscriptions, all extremely short, some with only a few letters: a dagger blade from Lachish (ca. 1500 b.c.e.); a small prism from Lachish (ca. 1400 b.c.e.); a votive bowl from Lachish (ca. 1250 b.c.e.); and a javelin head from El-Khadr (ca. 1150 b.c.e.).

Other Scripts Our survey would not be complete without reference to still other scripts used in the region. Luwian is a language belonging to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family. It was written either in the cuneiform script imported from Mesopotamia or in a natively produced script known as Hieroglyphic Luwian. Texts in Hieroglyphic Luwian date to the 15th–8th centuries b.c.e. and have been found at both Anatolian sites and north Syrian sites (Carchemish, Hamath, etc.). Byblos Syllabic refers to the nine or ten texts found at Byblos, written in a hieroglyphic-type script comprising about 80 signs (and thus assumed to represent a syllabary), dating to approximately 1500 b.c.e. Deir ºAlla Syllabic refers to

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three texts found at Tell Deir ºAlla, in Transjordan, dated to about 1200 b.c.e. Because these three texts alone attest to more than 50 signs, here too we probably are dealing with a syllabary. Both of these scripts have defied decipherment. Recently scholars have found two fragmentary Minoan Linear A texts in Israel, at Lachish and at Tel Haror (most likely to be identified with Gerar), the former dating to about 1175 b.c.e., the latter to about 1600 b.c.e. Minoan Linear A refers to the syllabary attested on several hundred tablets found at several sites on Crete (most importantly Hagia Triada), dated to the 18th–15th centuries b.c.e. Although not all of the texts can be read with equal facility, the ones that have been read are written in a West Semitic language related to the languages of Syria and Canaan. Most likely derived from the Linear A script is the Cypro-Minoan script, also a syllabary, in use during the 15th to 12th centuries b.c.e. Most texts found in this script were excavated on Cyprus, but a group of Cypro-Minoan texts was found at Ugarit as well.

First-Millennium Developments During the Iron Age, with the rise of the Phoenician city-states and the emergence of national entities such as Israel, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the various Aramean kingdoms, the number and variety of alphabetic epigraphic remains greatly increases (fig. 4). Concomitantly the Egyptian Empire retreats from the region, and direct Mesopotamian influence recedes, so that texts in Egyptian and Akkadian from this period are fewer in number. Important royal inscriptions include those of King ÓDYSºY of Gozan found at Tell Fekheriyeh (Aramaic; 9th century b.c.e.) and King Mesha of Moab found at Dibon (Moabite; 9th century b.c.e.). Important historical texts are the Sefire treaty inscriptions (Aramaic; 8th century b.c.e.) and the Lachish letters (Hebrew; 6th century b.c.e.). Of special in-

Fig. 4. The Hebrew inscription from the Siloam Tunnel dated to the reign of Hezekiah of Judah, approximately 701 b.c.e. (see 2 Kgs 20:20 for reference to the construction of the water system). Source: E. Kautzsch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar (trans. A. E. Cowley; Oxford: Clarendon, 1910) second plate following p. xvi. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

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terest for religious and literary study are the Deir ºAlla texts (classification debated by scholars, but most likely Canaanite and not Aramaic; 8th century b.c.e.) mentioning Balaam. We also should state the obvious, that the Hebrew Bible was written during this period, and although our earliest manuscripts date to centuries later, the corpus of biblical books remains the largest extant set of texts written in the Levant in antiquity. In time, the scripts and languages of the Levant spread beyond the boundaries of this area. For example, to the north, King ªZTWD (8th century b.c.e.) of the Danuna, presumably a Luwian-speaking people, wrote royal inscriptions in both Luwian and Phoenician (found at Karatepe in modern Turkey). The Phoenicians colonized the entire Mediterranean region (as far west as Iberia), and thus Phoenician texts have been found throughout the Mediterranean basin. The later stage of the Phoenician language spoken in the western Mediterranean (for example, Carthage in North Africa) is known as Punic. At times Phoenician-Punic was written in the Greek alphabet or in the Latin alphabet. Aramaic also spread far and wide. Arameans moved in greater numbers into Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, so that eventually the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires became truly bilingual (Akkadian and Aramaic). Through the spread of these empires and the succeeding Persian Empire, Aramaic became the lingua franca of most of western Asia and Egypt. A famous passage in the Bible (2 Kgs 18:26) reveals that both an Assyrian envoy to Judah and the officials of Jerusalem in 701 b.c.e. could speak Aramaic (although it was the native language of neither, unless we assume, as some scholars have proposed, that the envoy was an Aramean in the employ of the Assyrian army). From the Persian period, Aramaic inscriptions have been found as far west as southern Egypt (Elephantine) and as far east as modern Afghanistan. In late antiquity, with the diaspora of the Jews, Hebrew also spread throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean world. The Canaanite linear alphabet developed throughout the Iron Age, and eventually two main types emerged: the Phoenician variety (used by Phoenicians, Hebrews, Moabites, and so on), which was more conservative; and the Aramaic variety (used by the Arameans mainly but also in the Deir ºAlla texts), which was more innovative. From these various forms, either the old Canaanite or the derivative Phoenician and Aramaic, all other alphabets in the area were derived: Old South Arabian, Greek (and thence Latin and Coptic), North Arabian, Syriac, Arabic, and so forth. Because the Levant lay at the crossroads of the ancient Near East, it was a very international and cosmopolitan region. This explains why some Old South Arabian inscriptions have been found at various sites in Israel ( Jerusalem, for example) and why what appears to be a Thamudic (North Arabian) inscription has been found at Hamath in Syria. The date by which the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet is a hotly contested issue, but more and more evidence points to an earlier (rather than a later) date, approximately 1100 b.c.e. or even earlier. The Greeks modified it in

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several ways to make the alphabet more useful for their own purposes and added the important element of individual letters to represent the vowels.

Bibliography Albright, W. F. 1969 The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gelb, I. J. 1963 A Study of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gibson, J. C. L. 1971–82 Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Gordon, C. H. 1967 Ugaritic Textbook. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute. 1982 Forgotten Scripts. New York: Basic Books. Greenfield, J. C. 1991 Of Scribes, Scripts and Languages. Pp. 173–85 in Phoinikeia Grammata, ed. C. Baurain et al. Liège: Société des Études Classiques. Moran, W. L. 1992 The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Naveh, J. 1982 Early History of the Alphabet. Jerusalem: Magnes. Pettinato, G. 1991 Ebla: A New Look at History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Rendsburg, G. A. 1998 On the Potential Significance of the Linear A Inscriptions Recently Excavated in Israel. Aula Orientalis 16: 289–91.

Gary A. Rendsburg

chapter title drops about 2 picas

Semitic Languages (with Special Reference to the Levant) The languages attested in the ancient Levant are primarily Semitic languages. Semitic refers to a large language family comprised of the following main members: Akkadian, Eblaite, Amorite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Aramaic, North Arabian, Arabic, South Arabian, and Ethiopian. The exact manner in which these languages are classified into various branches and groups is debated among Semitists. For example, is Eblaite a dialect of (Old) Akkadian, or is it an independent branch? Similarly, is Ugaritic an early form of (North) Canaanite, or is it an independent branch? Furthermore, are the earlier attested North Arabian and the later attested Arabic essentially the same language not to be subdivided, or do they represent two distinct languages? These and other questions cannot be answered to our full satisfaction, often due to insufficient evidence. In the accompanying chart we attempt a classification of the Semitic languages but readily admit to its provisional nature. Regarding the above sample questions, note that we consider Eblaite to be an independent West Semitic language (not a dialect of Old Akkadian or East Semitic); that we subsume Ugaritic under the Phoenic subgroup of Canaanite (that is, it is not an independent language); and that we demarcate North Arabian and Arabic as distinct languages (albeit closely related). According to this system, the languages of Syria and Canaan belong to the West Semitic branch. This large group may be subdivided into two smaller branches, a Syrian group and a Canaanite group. The Syrian group includes Eblaite, Amorite, and Aramaic. The exact relationship among these languages cannot be worked out, because (a) the first two are so poorly attested; and (b) the three are attested in different eras. Eblaite is attested primarily in the third millennium b.c.e. and, while we possess thousands of texts and fragments, these documents are written with an exceedingly large percentage of Sumerograms. Accordingly, we often lack important lexical and grammatical data. Amorite is even more poorly known. The identification of the language is posited only through personal names appearing in Akkadian texts of the late third and early second millennia b.c.e. These Amorite personal names reflect West Semitic usage and not East Semitic usage, so scholars have created the Amorite category for them. Aramaic is attested much later, in the first millennium b.c.e. and the first millennium c.e. (and is still spoken today by people in pockets of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran). But because all three languages were used in ancient Syria and all three share some important features, it is appropriate to speak of them as a Syrian group of the West Semitic branch.

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Semitic Languages (with Special References to the Levant)

Semitic Languages Proto-Semitic West Canaanite

Central Syrian

North Arabian Arabic

South

East

South Arabian Ethiopian

Akkadian

West Syrian

Canaanite Phoenic Ugaritic Phoenician Moabite

Hebraic Hebrew

Edomite

Aramaic

Amorite

Eblaite

Ammonite Deir ºAlla

The Canaanite group is subdivided into a Phoenic subgroup and a Hebraic subgroup. The evidence suggests that the individual members of these two subgroups were mutually intelligible, and thus it is proper to speak of them as dialects of Canaanite. The Phoenic subgroup includes Ugaritic, attested in the late second millennium b.c.e. at Ugarit and Ras ibn Hani; and Phoenician, attested in the first millennium b.c.e. and the first five centuries c.e. in the Phoenician homeland (Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, and others) and throughout the Mediterranean wherever Phoenicians colonized. The specific variety of Phoenician used in late antiquity in the western Mediterranean (for example, Carthage) is known as Punic. The Hebraic subgroup is so called because one of its component members, Hebrew, provides us with about 95% of the documentation (most of this from the Hebrew Bible). The other members of this subgroup are Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, and Deir ºAlla (the latter referring to the inscriptions found at Tell Deir ºAlla in Transjordan). With the exception of a few biblical pericopes that may date to before about 1000 b.c.e., the dialects of the Hebraic subgroup are attested in the first millennium b.c.e. In the Akkadian letters found at Tell el-Amarna, from the 14th century b.c.e., various Canaanite forms and lexemes appear. These are further evidence for the Canaanite language. The other main branches of Semitic are attested in the general region of the Levant as well. (a) Most importantly, Akkadian spread to the West Semitic world when it became the lingua franca of the ancient Near East in the second millennium b.c.e. Scribes in Syria and Canaan were adept at reading and writing (speaking too?) Akkadian in this period (witness the Akkadian texts from Ugarit, the Amarna letters, and so on). (b) North Arabian was the native language of the

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denizens of the Syrian Desert in antiquity. The dialect used in the area closest to the arable regions of the Levant was Safaitic, attested from the 1st century b.c.e. to the 4th century c.e. One inscription found at Hamath, dated to approximately 800 b.c.e., appears to be written in Thamudic, another of the North Arabian dialects. (c) A few small inscriptions in Old South Arabian have been found at various sites in Israel (including Jerusalem); these reflect trade with South Arabia, though not necessarily competence in South Arabian by speakers of Canaanite. Finally, it should be noted that non-Semitic languages also are attested in the Levant. (a) Scribes at Ebla clearly knew the Sumerian academic tradition well. (b) Texts in Hittite, Luwian, and Hurrian were found at sites along the northern fringes of the region bordering on Anatolia (for example, Ugarit, Carchemish, and Hamath). (c) Texts in Egyptian were found at various sites in Canaan—for example, Beth-shan—but most likely they are the products of Egyptian scribes serving in the Egyptian administration of the land during the Empire period of the New Kingdom and were not produced by native West Semitic speakers. On the other hand, if the Tale of Sinuhe (20th century b.c.e.) can be trusted, the Egyptian language could be heard in the Levant.

Bibliography Garr, W. R. 1985 Dialect Geography of Syria–Palestine, 1000–586 b.c.e. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ginsberg, H. L. 1970 The Northwest Semitic Languages. Pp. 102–24 in Patriarchs, ed. B. Mazar. World History of the Jewish People, Vol. 2. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Huehnergard, J. 1992 Languages. Pp. 155–70 in vol. 4 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman. New York: Doubleday. Lipinski, E. 1997 Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar. Leuven: Peeters.

Gary A. Rendsburg

Writing: The Archaeology of Writing (Writing Materials) The two oldest writing systems, Babylonian and Egyptian, had distinctive writing materials. Babylonian scribes prepared clay to make tablets, then impressed the cuneiform signs with the edge of a reed stylus and left the clay to dry in the sun. The tablets were usually small enough to be held in the hand and so are cushion shaped; larger ones were rested on a wooden board, so the obverse is flat from being pressed onto the board while the reverse was being written. Important tablets were sometimes baked, but few cases of this are known from the Levant. Cuneiform tablets were liable to damage from falling masonry. If they fell from shelves, as seen at Ebla, water could ruin their surfaces. Otherwise, they might last indefinitely in perfect condition once they were buried. The Babylonian system dominated Syria in the third and second millennia b.c.e. reaching into Palestine, where Egyptian was also current. Ebla supplies the only archive from the Early Bronze Age yet found in the region. A single tablet from about 2000 b.c.e. was found at Byblos; then the archive of Alalakh level VII, a few tablets from Ebla, and a few from Hazor are witnesses of the Middle Bronze Age. The el-Amarna letters attest more than 30 Late Bronze Age towns in the Levant whose rulers wrote in cuneiform to the pharaoh, and tablets from the same period can be expected at any site, singly or in groups (examples come from Ashkelon, Tell el-Hesi, Gezer, Jericho, Shechem, Aphek, Taºanach, Megiddo, Beth-shan, Hazor, Pella, Kumidu, Kadesh on the Orontes, Qatna, Ras Ibn Hani, Ugarit, and Alalakh IV; see Millard 1999). The upheavals at the end of the Late Bronze Age ended the influence of Babylonian scribal traditions in the area. During the Iron Age, Assyrian rule reintroduced cuneiform to the Levant, both in monument form, such as the stele fragments from Ashdod and Samaria and the rock inscriptions at Nahr el-Kelb, and in tablet form for administration and business, as demonstrated at Gezer, Samaria, Tell Hadid, Tell Keisan, Carchemish, and Zinjirli. Even fewer are those of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, when Aramaic written on papyrus or leather was preferred; there is a single tablet from Tawilan, one or two others, and a group from Neirab. In addition to clay and stone, cuneiform inscriptions appear occasionally on metal objects and, more commonly, on the cylinder seals found in Middle Bronze Age and later contexts, some engraved by Babylonian craftsmen and some by local lapidaries. In the Late Bronze Age, scribes adopted clay tablets for writing the CyproMinoan syllabic script, present at Ugarit, and for writing another script, discovered only at Tell Deir ºAlla, perhaps belonging to the same family. Soon after its invention, about 3200 b.c.e., the Babylonian script spread to Uruk settlements on the mid-Euphrates (Habuba Kabira, Jebel Aruda), and the

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75

concept reached Egypt, stimulating the development of the hieroglyphs and their cursive form, hieratic. Egyptian scribes usually wrote on sheets of papyrus made by beating horizontal strips from the under-skin of the papyrus reed onto strips laid vertically, the natural juices binding them. Papyri normally carried texts in the hieratic script. Sheets of papyrus were glued together to make rolls, which, after being written on, could be tied with a cord and secured with a small lump of clay stamped with a seal (a bulla). Reed pens, trimmed to a point, were dipped in ink made from lamp-black and vegetable gum. The picture of a tied scroll among the earliest hieroglyphs (Old Kingdom onward) shows the antiquity of this material. Unhappily, papyrus decays in most soils. Only if totally waterlogged, or carbonized or dehydrated, can it survive burial. Consequently, papyrus documents are known principally from arid areas, the most famous from caves near the Dead Sea, and also from ruins in the Judean Desert (Khirbet Mird), in the Negev (Nessana), and at Dura-Europos. When the papyrus scrolls themselves did not survive, their clay bullae often did, with imprints of the papyrus fibers on their backs, proving the former presence of the documents. In Egypt, leather rolls were used for some records from early times, and this is likely to have been the case elsewhere, as reference, in literary texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls show. Papyrus was not always available or cheap, so potsherds or flakes of stone often served as scrap paper for writing exercises and ephemeral notes. With writing scratched or, more often, written in ink, these ostraca remain in sites where papyri perish, subject only to erasure of the ink by water (in modern times perhaps by careless pottery washing). Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved or painted on hard surfaces and engraved on metal. Inscribed objects sent as gifts or in trade are extant throughout the Levant, beginning with pieces of Early Bronze Age (Old Kingdom) date at Byblos and Ebla; continuing through the Middle Bronze Age (Middle Kingdom) at Byblos, where there are local monuments in Egyptian, also at Qatna and Ugarit; into the Late Bronze Age (New Kingdom), when numerous pieces, ranging from inscribed stelae and gateways through statuary and vases to hundreds of scarabs, are found all the way from Gaza to north Syria. In the Iron Age (Late Kingdom) fewer examples are known, from Samaria, Byblos, and a handful of other sites. The inventor of the proto-alphabet in the Middle Bronze Age was probably trained in Egyptian and created the new script for writing his Semitic language with ink on papyrus. Its linear form also fitted it for engraving, scratching, and painting so, despite the loss of most texts written with it, evidence of its development and distribution can be deduced from the cluster of graffiti on stone around the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai and from scattered ostraca and graffiti found at sites in Canaan, most notably in deposits from the Late Bronze Age at Lachish. This Canaanite alphabet stimulated scribes trained in the Babylonian tradition further north to create an imitation alphabet of cuneiform characters for use on clay tablets. Known principally at Ugarit but found as far south as Beth-shemesh (in a variant form), the script was applied to every kind of text: literary, diplomatic, religious, epistolary, legal, and administrative. It was

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also engraved on metal, ivory, and stone (including seals) and painted on pottery. This category of texts, not on clay tablets, is comparable with the surviving examples of the alphabet in Late Bronze Age Canaan, and analogy suggests that texts written on clay tablets in Syria once had their counterparts on papyrus or leather farther south. By the end of the second millennium b.c.e., the linear alphabet had taken a standard basic form, as seen on the sarcophagus of Ahirom at Byblos, and was adopted by the new tribal states of Ammon, Edom, Israel, Moab, and the Aramaeans. Examples from the beginning of the Iron Age are few. Most peculiar are over 30 arrow or javelin heads bearing personal names chiseled into their midribs. Five were found near Bethlehem, one at Ruweiseh in Lebanon; the remainder have no provenance. They may have been votive gifts, or the name may mark ownership, perhaps by leaders of squads of archers (two bear the name of Zakar-baºal, king of Amurru). In the Iron Age II, the alphabets took on local characteristics (Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician, and others), visible on stelae, statues, and funerary monuments; in building inscriptions, in graffiti in tombs; on pots and wall plaster, ostraca, weights, and seals. Hundreds of stamp seals carry their owners’ names and patronyms or professions. Although mostly found by accident, the majority of the seals are likely to come from tombs, a few have been recovered during scientific excavations in town sites. Parallel with the seals are the clay bullae bearing imprints of such seals, testifying to the extensive use of papyrus. Seals were also impressed on jars, usually on the handles, as some sort of control mark. The great increase in inscribed material in the 9th to 7th centuries b.c.e. all over the Levant can be attributed both to the consolidation of local states, with concomitant growth in administration partly due to Assyrian demands for regular tribute, and to the ending of occupation at many sites shortly before and after 600 b.c.e., leaving these texts in the destruction levels. Babylonian and Egyptian scribes also wrote on wooden boards covered with wax in Mesopotamia, sometimes with white paint in Egypt. From references at Late Bronze Age Ugarit, it is clear they were in use there, and specimens of that date, with two leaves originally hinged together, are preserved from the 13thcentury b.c.e. Uluburun shipwreck (regrettably without the wax). Wooden and ivory examples from about 700 b.c.e. survive from Assyria and are shown in the hands of scribes on Assyrian sculptures. The scribe of Bar-Rakkab, king of Samªal, holds one, carved on a stele inscribed in Aramaic (excavated at Zinjirli). All of these writing materials, except clay tablets, continued to be used throughout the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods and on into the Middle Ages.

Bibliography André-Leicknam, B., and Ziegler, C. (eds.) 1982 Naissance de l’écriture cunéiformes et hiéroglyphes. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux.

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Bordreuil, P. 1992 Sceaux inscrits des pays du Levant. Pp. 86–211 in Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible 12. Paris: Letouzey et Ané. Millard, A. 1999 The Knowledge of Writing in Late Bronze Age Palestine. Pp. 317–26 in Languages and Cultures in Contact: At the Cross-Roads of Civilization in the SyroMesopotamian Realm—Proceedings of the Forty-Second Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, ed. K. van Lerberghe and G. Voet. Orientalia Louvaniensia Analecta 96. Leuven: Peeters. Sass, B. 1988 The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium b.c. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Alan Millard

Northwest Semitic Epigraphic Sources The Canaanite alphabet was invented in the Middle Bronze Age for a West Semitic language. Although Babylonian and Egyptian scripts already current in the Levant could have been adopted, neither represented adequately the range of West Semitic phonemes. Somewhat later scribes at Ugarit, on the coast of Syria, trained in the Babylonian tradition, created a cuneiform imitation of the Canaanite alphabet to write their Northwest Semitic speech, Ugaritic, on clay tablets. Apart from the texts from Ugarit, all that remain from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages are short dedications (Serabit el-Khadem) and ownership notes on pots and other objects (see pp. 74–77 above).

Iron Age The alphabet dominated writing in the Levant, and numerous alphabetic documents survive from the Iron Age. Accidents of preservation and recovery and the intensity of excavation (licit and illicit) have resulted, however, in an uneven distribution map of extant texts. While Syria affords major stone monuments, Palestine has yielded very few; but the scores of ostraca and bullae found there have hardly any counterparts in Syria (see Millard 1991). Few monumental inscriptions have established archaeological provenances. One in Phoenician and some in Aramaic were set up by rulers of Zinjirli in their city (ancient Samªal in Turkey) and nearby in the 8th century b.c.e. ( KAI nos. 24, 214–21; SSI 3.13; 2.13–17), and slabs carved with parallel texts in Hittite and Phoenician lined gateways at Karatepe ( KAI no. 26; SSI 3.15). These give historical details about rules and their families, reporting their piety and their building works, with blessings and curses on those who preserve or destroy the records. Stone slabs from Byblos, of the 10th century b.c.e. ( KAI nos. 4, 7; SSI 3.6, 9), fragments of a Moabite statue from Kerak (SSI 1.V.2), of a stone slab from Amman, and two slabs from Jerusalem probably all belong to the category of royal building inscriptions. The Moabite Stone from Dhiban (ancient Dibon) celebrates a victory and buildings erected in the town late in the 9th century b.c.e. ( KAI no. 181; SSI 1.V.1; La Voie, 120–21), as does the fragmentary Aramaic Tell Dan stele of the same date (see Biran and Naveh 1995). Similar is the Aramaic stele that Zakkur of Hamath erected at Afis to celebrate his divine deliverance from a league of his neighbors and the temples he built in thanksgiving, about 780 b.c.e. ( KAI no. 202; SSI 2.5). Pious kings and other men dedicated votive gifts and memorials in their names, such as the stele of Bar-Hadad from Breij, near Aleppo (Aramaic, ca. 825 b.c.e.; KAI no. 201; SSI 2.1), the statue of King Yarah-ezer from Amman (Ammonite, ca. 700 b.c.e.; La Voie, 105–6), and the Egyptian statues inscribed for Abi-baal and Eli-baal in a temple at Byblos (Phoenician, ca. 900 b.c.e.; KAI nos. 5–6; SSI 3.7, 8). Funerary inscriptions appear on

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79

the coffin of Ahirom of Byblos from approximately 1000 b.c.e. (Phoenician; KAI no. 1; SSI 3.4) and on gravestones from Neirab from around 700 b.c.e. (Aramaic; KAI nos. 225, 226; SSI 2.18, 19). Unique are three stelae from Sefire bearing terms of treaties imposed by a king of KTK (unidentified) on Mati-el of Arpad, about 750 b.c.e. (Aramaic; KAI nos. 222–24; SSI 2.7–9). Brief inscriptions were carefully incised on metal and ivory, such as ivory furniture veneers naming Hazael (of Damascus, about 800 b.c.e.; KAI no. 232; SSI 2.4–5) and the unique bronze bottle from Tell Siran, engraved with an Ammonite text telling of a 7thcentury b.c.e. king’s agricultural works (La Voie, 118–19). The most numerous documents are ostraca, which are potsherds inscribed with ink or, occasionally, scratched writing. There are many in Hebrew. The oldest are from Samaria, recording deliveries of oil and wine, apparently from royal estates in the area, dated by years of unnamed kings, generally agreed to be from early in the 8th century b.c.e. (KAI nos. 183–88; SSI II.1; Lemaire 1977). From the decades around 600 b.c.e. come collections from Lachish II and Arad VI. They include letters on military and administrative topics, accounts, and lists of names (KAI nos. 192–99; SSI 1.III.6–7; Lemaire 1977). Ostraca from other sites, some small military posts, attest a ready use of writing and illumine various aspects of social life. The Mezad Hashavyahu or Yavneh Yam ostracon carries the complaint of a harvester at the wrongful seizure of his garment (KAI no. 200; SSI I.III.4; Lemaire 1977: chap. 5). A few ostraca are known from the Transjordanian kingdoms, but hardly any have yet been recovered from Phoenicia and Syria. People wrote their names, the contents or other notes, sometimes dedications, on whole pots, with ink or by scratching. These kinds of graffiti occur throughout the region. They appear too on tomb walls (Hebrew: Khirbet Beit Lei, SSI 1.III.9; Khirbet el-Qôm) and building blocks and wall plaster (Kuntillet ºAjrûd). At Tell Deir ºAlla an extraordinary example from the 9th century b.c.e. was discovered. A story about visions given to Balaam son of Beor had been carefully written with black and red ink on the plaster wall of a room, imitating a column of a scroll (La Voie, 122–24). Hundreds of stone seals and their imprints on clay bullae and on jar handles give valuable information about personal names and status (see Avigad and Sass 1997; Deutsch 1999). Hundreds of jar handles are stamped with a winged scarab or another winged symbol, the word ‘royal’ in Hebrew (lmlk), and the name of a town, apparently products of the administration of Judah about 700 b.c.e.

Persian and Later Times Under Achaemenid rule, Aramaic became the universal language for administration, appearing on seals, coins, ostraca, and monuments; texts in other Northwest Semitic languages, except Phoenician, are rare. Ostraca from Arad, Tel Beersheva and other Palestinian sites illumine us regarding local supply and taxation systems. In some ways they are comparable with ostraca from Elephantine in Egypt. There, papyrus documents survive alongside them, showing that

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ostraca bore only minor texts, while legal deeds, marriage and divorce settlements, wills, letters, longer accounts, and literature were consigned to papyrus. The situation in the Levant was undoubtedly analogous at this time and earlier, the Elephantine archives demonstrating what once existed but has perished. Coins began to circulate, some stamped in Aramaic with the names of cities or, in Judah (yhwd ) and Samaria (smryn), the province and the names of rulers and responsible officers. Phoenician cities (Arvad, Byblos, Sidon, Tyre) struck coins with legends, and there are some seals from this time. Seven ostraca come from the temple of Eshmun near Sidon, and there are various graffiti. The region has produced dedicatory and funerary monuments, including the stele of Yehawmilk, giving details of his additions to a temple at Byblos, and the mummiform sarcophagi of Tabnit and Eshmunazar, kings of Sidon (KAI nos. 10, 13, 14; SSI 3.25, 27, 28). In Hellenistic and Roman times, local languages and scripts reasserted themselves alongside the Greek that came with Alexander. At Tel Dan a dedication in Greek has a translation in smaller Aramaic letters (3d century b.c.e.), while small Jewish coins from the 1st century b.c.e. have legends in Aramaic or Hebrew and in Greek. Jews in Palestine continued to use all three languages, as funerary inscriptions, ostraca, graffiti, and the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal. Although Greek took deeper root in Syria, Aramaic continued there, more strongly east of the Euphrates than near the coast (well exemplified at Palmyra), and developing as Syriac, which is found in tombs, mosaic pavements, and graffiti. In the Hauran and Transjordan, Arab tribes adopted the Aramaic script for their dialects. Nabataean is the most extensively known, with almost every sort of document represented, including papyri from caves near the Dead Sea. Herdsmen scratched graffiti in Nabatean on rocks and stones to mark their passage, the death of a friend, or other events. Other tribesmen who did the same, using the South Arabic Thamudic and Safaitic scripts, have left no other written records. The number of Northwest Semitic speakers who wrote during the first millennium b.c.e. was never large, but the evidence from ostraca and graffiti suggests that there were few places of size without someone who could write, and not all these writers were professional scribes. There were more who could read, but the texts available today give only a faint picture of the variety of written documents that once circulated. The Hebrew Bible contains precious relics of a much larger body of literature available to one particular people.

Bibliography Association française d’action artistique 1986 La Voie royale: 9000 ans d ’art au royaume de Jordanie. Paris: Association française d’action artistique. Avigad, N., and Sass, B. 1997 Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences. Biran, A., and Naveh, J. 1995 The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment. Israel Exploration Journal 45: 1–18.

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Deutsch, R. 1999 Messages from the Past: Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Isaiah through the Destruction of the First Temple. Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications. KAI 1966–69 H. Donner and W. Röllig. Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. 2d ed. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Lemaire, A. 1977 Inscriptions hébraïques, I: Les Ostraca. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Millard, A. R. 1991 The Uses of the Early Alphabets. Pp. 101–14 in Phoinikeia Grammata: Lire et écrire en Méditerranée, ed. C. Baurain, C. Bonnet, and V. Krings. Namur: Société des Études Classiques. Naveh, J. 1987 The Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography. 2d ed. Jerusalem: Magnes. SSI 1 1971 Gibson, J. C. L. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 1: Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon. SSI 2 1975 Gibson, J. C. L. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 2: Aramaic Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon. SSI 3 1982 Gibson, J. C. L. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 3: Phoenician Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon.

Alan Millard

Chronology of the Southern Levant Introduction This essay summarizes the chronology of ancient Syria–Palestine from the Neolithic through the Iron Ages. The study of chronology has two aspects. (1) Relative chronology is based largely on comparative stratigraphy of the major sites and on the dating of their assemblages of material culture (such as pottery). (2) Absolute chronology is then an attempt by an archaeologist to “anchor” floating synchronisms by reference to external fixed points (or calendrical dates). In the case of Syria–Palestine, two external fixed points are always Egypt and Mesopotamia, which have written records of major historical events that can be correlated with datable ancient astronomical observations. More recently, several scientifically-based systems of dating have been introduced, such as C14, potassium argon, and others. Some of these, however, are restricted to certain kinds of materials; some are relatively untested or have inherent limitations in sampling or analysis; and all have a considerable margin of error. Practically speaking, these methods are useful chiefly for the prehistoric period, before written records, or the Neolithic and earlier, where they are indeed our only available means of dating. To simplify the following discussion, I will present comparisons in the chart opposite.

The Neolithic Era The long Levantine Neolithic (“New Stone Age”), a widespread and relatively homogeneous culture, is conventionally divided into four phases, broken in the middle by the major innovation, the introduction of pottery (that is, Kenyon’s “Pre-Pottery Neolithic A–B” and “Pottery Neolithic A–B”). Hundreds of sites are known, and several dozen have long stratigraphic sequences that have been reasonably well dug and published. This long period evidences the domestication of plants and animals and the earliest farming villages. All dates for the Neolithic are derived from scientific means, notably C14 analysis. For this reason, estimates are general and may vary by 500 years or so among various authorities. The only major disagreements are whether there is an occupational gap between pottery Neolithic A and B and how best to characterize the transitional period between Neolithic B and Early Chalcolithic (“Pottery Neolithic C”?).

The Chalcolithic Horizon The subsequent phase, designated the “Copper-Stone” age, is much briefer and less formative than the Neolithic, but it saw the beginning of many permanently settled villages and the development of distinctly regional cultures. The Chalcolithic of Syria and Jordan is poorly known to date, but there are dozens of

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83

Chronology of the Southern Levant Comparative Terminology and Approximate Chronology for Palestine and Neighboring Areas Period

Palestine

Egyptian Dynasties

Mesopotamia

Neolithic

9000–4500 b.c.e.

Chalcolithic

4500–3500 b.c.e.

Early Pre-Dynastic

Hussuna, Samarra, Halaf

EB I

3500–3100 b.c.e.

Late Pre-Dynastic

Proto-Literature A, B

EB II

3100–2650 b.c.e.

1, 2

Proto-Literature C, D; Early Dynastic I

ºUbeid

EB III

2650–2300 b.c.e.

3–5

Early Dynastic II, III

EB IV

2300–2000 b.c.e.

6–11

1st Dynasty of Akkad; Ur III

MB I

2000–1775 b.c.e.

12

Old Babylonian, Old Assyrian

MB II

1775– 1650 b.c.e.

13, 14

Old Babylonian, Old Assyrian

MB III

1650–1550 b.c.e.

15–17

Kassite and Sealand Dynasties

LB I

1500–1400 b.c.e.

18

Kassite and Sealand Dynasties

LB II

1400–1200 b.c.e.

19

Kassite and Sealand Dynasties

Iron I

1200–1000 b.c.e.

20–21

Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian

Iron II

1000–586 b.c.e.

21–25

Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian

Iron III

586–539 b.c.e.

26

Neo-Babylonian

Persian

539–322 b.c.e.

Hellenistic

322–63 b.c.e.

Roman

63 b.c.e.–c.e. 325

Byzantine

c.e. 325–c.e. 636

Persian (Achaemenid) Empire

excavated sites in Israel, with clear regional traits. The Early Chalcolithic, however, is much less illuminated than the Late Chalcolithic, about 3800–3300 b.c.e. Again, all Levantine dates are determined by C14 calculations, although synchronisms with the Egyptian Early Pre-Dynastic (Amratian or Nagada I) provide a rough terminus ante quem.

The Early Bronze Age The Early Bronze Age represents the first urban era, usually divided into a formative “proto-urban” phase in Early Bronze I (Kenyon and others); two impressive florescent phases, Early Bronze II–III; and Early Bronze IV, a post-urban period of collapse, characterized chiefly (in Palestine at least) by a reversion to ruralism and pastoral nomadism. Early Bronze I is a brief period, roughly contemporary with the latest Egyptian Pre-Dynastic phases (that is, Gerzean or Nagada II–III), as shown by numerous trade-goods in both the Levant and Egypt. These synchronisms would place the

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end of Early Bronze I just before the beginning of Dynasty I, formerly dated as low as 2850 b.c.e., but now raised by recalibrated C14 dates as high as 3100 b.c.e. or even 3200 b.c.e. Most of the sites best known in our present state of knowledge are in Israel. Early Bronze II is relatively easy to date, because its beginning is contemporary with Dynasty I in Egypt. This is proved by Palestinian painted pottery well dated in Early Bronze II contexts, which was found in tombs of First Dynasty nobles at Abydos in Upper Egypt (thus “Abydos ware”). There are also other goods, which were traded between Palestine and Egypt, that corroborate the Dynasty I–Early Bronze II synchronism, such as signatures of Pharaoh Narmer found in southern Palestine and Dynasty I sealings found at En-Besor near Gaza. The end of Early Bronze II and the transition to Early Bronze III is conventionally equated with the shift from Egyptian Dynasty II to III, about 2650 b.c.e. Palestinian Early Bronze III, the second urban phase, but already marking a decline, is then roughly coeval with Dynasties III–IV, the Pyramid Age, although direct connections are increasingly rare. However, Palestinian Early Bronze III oil jars of “combed ware” appear in Egyptian Dynasty V contexts, as expected. In Syria, at Byblos and elsewhere, some Dynasty V–VI objects appear in reasonably clear Early Bronze III contexts. The Early Bronze IV phase in Syria would appear to postdate Dynasty VI in Egypt and to be contemporary with the 1st Dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia, to judge from finds at Ebla and elsewhere. In Palestine, there are very few imports and no exports. But a silver cup of Ur III style (about 2050–1950 b.c.e.), imported from Syria and found in a tomb near Jerusalem, fits generally with a date of about 2000 b.c.e., giving a maximum range for the period that seems satisfactory. It ends approximately with the end of the “Dark Age” in Egypt—that is to say, the beginning of Dynasty XII, about 1991 b.c.e.

The Middle Bronze Age With the Middle Bronze Age in Syria–Palestine we reach, at last, the point where we have not only more direct synchronisms with Egypt and Mesopotamia but also the first really useful historical texts. Here we shall follow more recent divisions into Middle Bronze I, II, and III, rather than Albright’s Middle Bronze IIA–C. For the Middle Bronze Age generally “high,” “middle,” and “low” chronologies (as well as even more radical extremes) have been suggested, the alternatives based on different schemes relating Syria–Palestine to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Middle Bronze I is variously dated to about 1950–1750 c.e.; 1850–1700 b.c.e.; and 2000–1800/1775 b.c.e., the latter, or “middle chronology” being preferred here. The general correlation both historically and chronologically with Egyptian Dynasty XII (about 1991–1786 b.c.e.) is accepted by all, but greater precision is difficult. Only one Egyptian Dynasty XII Royal Name scarab has been found in Palestine (at Tell el-ºAjjûl) and only a handful in Syria, all from mixed or uncertain deposits. Synchronisms based on the Royal Tombs at Byblos, the Tod deposit, or

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linkups of painted pottery styles in Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia are all disputed, and at best they would yield only a relative chronology. The connections of Palestinian Middle Bronze I with Tell ed-Dabºa in the Egyptian Delta are the most controversial, due to the differences of Palestinian specialists and the excavator of Dabºa, Manfred Bietak, who prefers an “ultralow” chronology. Middle Bronze II, although roughly coeval with Egyptian Dynasty XIII (about 1758–1645 b.c.e.), is difficult to date largely because its beginning—the end of Middle Bronze I (above)—is hotly contested. Beginning dates thus range from about 1800 b.c.e. to 1700/1675 b.c.e. The end of the period, however, will coincide with the transition from Dynasty XIII to XIV and the beginning of the Second Intermediate period, about 1650 b.c.e. Mesopotamian links are provided by references in the Mari letters to Dan and Hazor in northern Palestine, but inner problems of Mesopotamian chronology preclude fixing absolute dates. The Egyptian connection is similarly lacking precision, due to controversy over Tell edDabºa. There are clear ceramic comparisons with both Syria and Cyprus, but they do not yield fixed dates. Middle Bronze III is regarded by all as contemporary with Dynasties XV– XVII in Egypt, the late Second Intermediate or “Hyksos” period (referring to the period of “Asiatic” introducers who ruled in the Delta). Dates of about 1650–1550/ 1500 are, therefore, readily established, confirmed, for example, by many scarabs. The only problem lies with the end of the period, which is brought about by Egyptian destructions at nearly all Middle Bronze III sites. These destructions, however, extend from about 1530 b.c.e. to at least the accession year of Thutmose III, about 1468 b.c.e. Thus, a transitional “Middle Bronze III/Late Bronze IA” period may be postulated, about 1525–1350 b.c.e.

The Late Bronze Age Late Bronze IA is noted above. The immediate postdestruction horizon in Syria–Palestine would then be represented by a brief Late Bronze IB period, about 1450–1400 b.c.e. Late Bronze II is the major phase, mostly contemporary with Dynasty XIX, the period of Egyptian domination of Syria–Palestine during the New Kingdom. Late Bronze II may be subdivided into IIA and IIB phases. Late Bronze IIA, about 1400–1300 b.c.e., is the well-known “Amarna Age,” illuminated brilliantly by letters from princes of Syro-Palestinian city-states to the court of Akhenaten at el-Amarna and found there. There are also broader connections now with Cyprus and the Aegean, and even Crete, as witnessed by ceramic imports; but chronological sequences in these areas are not fixed and thus yield only relative confirmation of the Syro-Palestinian dates suggested here. Late Bronze IIB, about 1300–1200 b.c.e., represents a period of gradual decline under the late XIXth Dynasty, ending the long Bronze Age in Syria–Palestine. This occurred about 1200 b.c.e., due partly to devastations wrought by the arrival of various “Sea Peoples,” among them the Philistines in Palestine. The earliest appearance of these “Sea Peoples” can be fixed shortly after about 1180 b.c.e., when

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they were defeated by Rameses III and turned back from the Egyptian Delta. The “Proto-Israelites,” settling in the hill country of Palestine, were also a factor. Several Egyptian scarabs found in the known settlements fixed the earliest phase shortly before 1200 b.c.e., as does the well-known “Victory Stela” of Pharaoh Merneptah, about 1210 b.c.e., mentioning a group of people designated as “Israel.”

The Iron Age The Iron Age, beginning about 1200 b.c.e., is conventionally divided into Iron I and II. The break is placed by Israeli archaeologists about 1000 b.c.e. Some American scholars put Iron IA at about 1200–1150 b.c.e.; Iron IB about 1150–1000 b.c.e.; Iron IC about 1000–900 b.c.e. The first phase represents the initial buildup of Philistine and “Proto-Israelite” settlements; the second, the biblical “period of the Judges”; and the third, the Israelite United Monarchy, until the death of Solomon, about 922 b.c.e. As an example of synchronisms, the latter can be calculated approximately from a notice in 1 Kgs 14:25 about a raid by Pharaoh “Shishak” (= Egyptian Sheshonq, Dynasty XXII, about 925 b.c.e.), which occurred in the fifth year after Solomon’s death. For the Iron IIA period, we have good Neo-Assyrian correlations. Thus we can correlate Ahab’s reign with the Battle of Qarqar, 853 b.c.e.; and Jehu’s paying tribute to Shalmaneser III, 841 b.c.e. For Iron IIB, there are additional synchronisms, such as the fall of Samaria in 722 b.c.e., at the time of the transition of rule in Assyria from Sargon II to Shalmaneser V. The best attested archaeological and historical correlation is the destruction of Lachish Stratum III by Sennacherib in 701 b.c.e. Iron IIC is the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Here, for instance, the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar can be dated precisely to 587 or 586 b.c.e. The Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods are very well dated, thanks to numerous texts, inscriptions, coins, and the like.

Bibliography Åstrom, P. (ed.) 1989 High, Middle, or Low? Acts of an International Colloquium on Absolute Chronology Held at the University of Gothenburg, 20th–22nd August, 1987. Parts 1–3. Gothenburg: Åstrom’s. Bietak, M. 1984 Problems of Middle Bronze Age Chronology: New Evidence from Egypt. American Journal of Archaeology 88: 471–85. Dever, W. G. 1991 Tell el-Dabºa and Levantine Middle Bronze Age Chronology: A Rejoinder to Manfred Bietak. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 281: 73–79. 1992 The Chronology of Syria–Palestine in the Second Millennium b.c.: A Review of Current Issues. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 188: 1–25. Enrich, R. W. (ed.) 1992 Relative Chronologies in Old World Chronologies. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Finegan, J. 1964 Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hayes, J. H., and Hooker, J. 1988 A New Chronology for the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implications for Biblical History and Chronology. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Ward, W. A. 1992 The Present Status of Egyptian Chronology. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 288: 53–66. Weinstein, J. M. 1992 The Chronology of Palestine in the Early Second Millennium b.c. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 288: 26– 46.

William G. Dever

Survey of Preclassical Architecture in the Levant The subject matter of this survey is not yet satisfactorily delimited. Current information is very unevenly distributed over the region, most of it coming from the south (Palestine), an area that is naturally defined by sea and desert. North Syria, however, spreads uninterruptedly from the sea to the vast hinterland, so that defining its confines is more or less arbitrary. Here its consideration is restricted to the seaboard. Throughout the region the style of building is obviously distinct from building in Egypt and in Mesopotamia. It is, however, not likewise clearly distinguished from building in parts of Anatolia and in the Aegean. Indeed, it may well be possible that differences between areas within the region are not significantly less than differences between some sites in the region and some Aegean or Anatolian sites. In short, there seems to be an overall “Mediterranean” orientation to the subject, rather than a Near Eastern one. The historical record of building in the region opens with brilliance, the region apparently leading the world in building development in a way never subsequently approached. During the Neolithic period marking the transition to sedentarytype settlement (approximately the tenth to eighth millennia b.c.e.), round houses of varying solidity demonstrate an unbroken evolution into very substantial mudbrick and rubble beehive houses resembling those still known today between Hama and Aleppo in Syria (fig. 5). These houses occasionally composed extensive settlements covering 10 acres or more and surrounded by a very massive rubble wall (for example, Jericho and ºAin Ghazal). Whether these settlements are called towns, villages, or something else is a question of sociopolitical analysis rather than one of architectural planning and construction. It seems that the major concentration of these Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites was in Palestine and Jordan. However, this is probably a factor of discovery. Similar round houses are known to the northwest of the region on the Upper Euphrates in inland Syria (for example, at Tell Mureybit). What is more telling is that the other main center of round house development is in Cyprus, where the mode must have been introduced by way of colonization from the adjacent north Syrian coast approximately 8000 b.c.e. Therefore, it is more likely that the original development of building over the whole area discussed here took this particular form. Round building in the region soon gave place to the rectangular design, which has remained ever since the normal way of building. During the seventh millennium b.c.e., there were sites (for example, Beidha near Petra) where round and rectangular building occurred contemporaneously, and other sites (for example, Ramad, south of Damascus) where transitional building forms were found, that is, more or less quadrilateral buildings with rounded angles.

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89

Fig. 5. Conspectus of Palestinian Buildings. Gates 1. Late Chalcolithic Sanctuary at Engedi; 2. Late Chalcolithic Jawa; 3. Late Chalcolithic Jawa; 4. EB Tell el Farºah (N); 5. EB Tell el Farºah (N); 6. EB–MB Megiddo St XIII; 7. MB–LB Shechem East Gate; 8. MB–LB Shechem North Gate; 9. Solomonic Gate at Lachish; 10. Provincial Period Gate at Megiddo St III. Temples 1. PPNB Megaron at Jericho; 2. Main Shrine Late Neolithic Sanctuary at Engedi; 3. Late Neolithic– EB Temple at Megiddo St XIX; 4. EB–MB Porch Temple at Megiddo; 5. MB–LB Orthostates Temple at Hazor; 6. MB–LB Migdol Temple at Shechem; 7. MB–LB Migdol Temple at Megiddo; 8. Solomonic Temple at Jerusalem. Civil 1. PPNA Round House at Nahal Oren; 2. PPNB Passage House at Beidha; 3. Neolithic House at Beisamun; 4. Chalcolithic Baronial Hall at Tuleilat el Ghassul; 5. EB House at Arad; 6. Late Chalcolithic– EB Apsidal House at Meser; 7. MB Patrician House at Tell Beit Mirsim; 8. Iron Age II Four-Room House at Tell en Nasbeh; 9. Solomonic Palace 1723 at Megiddo St IVa–Vb; 10. Solomonic Administrative Building at Megiddo St IVa–Vb; 11. Persian Period Residence at Lachish.

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Fig. 6. Regional Capital. Lachish Administrative Centre of Southern Judah. If the site of Tell ed Duweir is correctly identified with biblical Lachish, then perhaps more information exists concerning its appearance in antiquity than for any other Palestinian city. This is because of the extensive excavations carried on at the site together with the surviving Assyrian reliefs depicting the siege and capture of the city. Left above: A reconstructed view from the West of the city as a regional centre of the Kingdom of Judah (Qadmoniot XV, 2–3, 1982, p. 42). Left below: A reconstructed view from the SW of the city under siege from the Assyrian army. The viewpoint is indicated by a star in the bottom right figure and is that of the apparent viewpoint of the Assyrian reliefs (after Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish, Tel Aviv 1982). Right below: Topographical situation: the site occupying a natural hill to the West of the Wadi Lachish. The city stands about 260 m above sea level and in this hilly region of the Shepheleh there are three crests in the vicinity of the same altitude (shown stippled); that to the SW of the city was the site of the Assyrian army camp during the siege (indicated by the semi-circle), between it and the city is the apparent viewpoint (indicated by a star) of the Assyrian reliefs and the reconstructed drawing lower left (after Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish, fig. 9). Right above: Main Features of Town Plan. 1. City Gates; 2. Outer MB Walls; 3. Inner Judaean City Walls; 4. Fosse; 5. Fosse Temple; 6. Judean Fortified Palace Complex; 7. LB Temple below Judaean Palace; 8. Persian-Hellenistic Solar Shrine; 9. Water Supply Cistern; 10. Assyrian Siege Mound (after Ussishkin, Qadmoniot XV, 2–3, 1982, p. 42).

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Fig. 7. Smaller Government Centre. Town Plan of Tell Beer Sheba as established in Early Monarchic Times. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Latest City Gate ca. 8th century. Associated Casemate City Wall. Earlier Gate with “Barbican” and Associated Solid Wall ca. 10th century. City Well (The Well of Isaac?). Main Outflow Channel of City Drainage System. Town Square. Main Ring Road. Wall Zone Built up with Three and Four Room Type Houses, Their Rear Chambers Coalescing into City Walls. Royal Store Houses. Water Supply Scheme (apparently shaft to ground water). Possible Governmental Residence. Postulated Earlier Temple Site. Central Zone.

However, in general, by this period rectangular building was standard throughout the region as opposed to the nearby island of Cyprus, where round building remained universal for a further three or four thousand years.

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Henceforth, Neolithic settlements consisted of simple rectangular buildings, all virtually on the same plan—indeed often of only one compartment, although a second minor compartment was at times contrived at one end. The essential character of the design is determined by the location of the entrance, but this is not always clear from the surviving remains. However, roughly speaking, in most of the region (particularly in the southern part) entry is from a long side; thus the building belongs to the “broad room” tradition. Alternatively, it belongs to the “bent axis” tradition, if at one end there is a hearth or an added compartment. According to abstract analysis, the broad room is well adapted to hot, dryer regions, and certainly in the southern part Fig. 8. Comparative Synopsis of Wall of the region (that is, Palestine, Jordan) Traces (sketches not accurately to unithe broad room tradition of building form scale). seems to be manifest. However, perhaps a A. EB continuous trace with salient towers more circumstantial factor is that over both round and rectangular (Ai). most of the region the building assemB. EB–MB (?) emergence of regular broken trace (salients and recesses) maintained blages consist of discrete units, whereas a in two stages of wall building (Megiddo “hive” style of settlement appeared in adXIII–XII). joining regions to the north and northC. MB II flimsy wall with regular internal west. This “agglutinative” style of buildbuttressing standing on earth embankment (Megiddo X). ing never seems to have become endemic D. MB–LB limited stretch of true indented in the region—the only exception pertrace which permits enfilading wall face haps being in the marginal northeastern (also constructionally appropriate when area bordering inner Syria (that is, from wall is stepping up or down slope) Hama to Aleppo). At all events it is pre(Megiddo XI–VIII). E. Iron Age II fully developed salient and cisely this assemblage of simple broad recess, broken trace wall later strengthroom buildings of mud and rubble conened by additional internal facing struction that has constituted the stan(Megiddo III–II). dard form of agricultural village in the F. Iron Age II casemate wall (Gezer). region down to the middle of the present century. The next development takes place only at the beginning of the third millennium b.c.e., with the “urban development” of the region at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age. The expression on the ground of this sociohistorical revolution comprehends a reasonably large settlement site (for example, up to 25 acres or more), walled about for defense, containing a diversity of building types (for

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example, poor and wealthy housing, palaces, temples, stores). In the Syro-Palestinian region, the most notable building types are the towered city walls and the temple complexes. Representative sites illustrating this urban development are, for example, Byblos, Megiddo, ºAi, Arad, and Bâb edh-Dhrâº. However, as opposed to Egypt and Mesopotamia, in the Levant all the projects were carried out in the same materials and methods of construction that were used for the village housing of the preceding millennia. No distinctly monumental-style construction appeared to embody the new larger-scale projects. It was not until somewhere about the middle of the second millennium (that is, approximately the 16th century b.c.e.) that elements of a monumental construction began to appear. At this time, during the Middle Bronze Age, finely dressed stone masonry partly replaced rubble construction in the more significant monumental projects (for example, temples, city gates) at Ras Shamra, Hazor, Megiddo, and other places. This development characterized what was probably the floruit of the city-state regime that had then obtained in the region for over a millennium. The prosperity of the city-state was also demonstrated at some sites by the fact that the confined space available at the summit of the mound was entirely insufficient for the new population, and very extended “new towns” (perhaps of several hundred acres) were laid out on the flat terrain by the foot of the tell (note, for example, Hazor). Then early in the first millennium b.c.e., in the Iron Ages over much of the Levant the body politic became that of the small “nation state” (with capitals at, for example, Jerusalem, Samaria, and Damascus). Consequently, whereas construction was unchanged, a variety of new building projects were required. The city (figs. 6–7), once a standard unit embodying the state, became subservient to the needs of the state, dictated from a central court that may or may not have been a city (in the old sense). Thus, a number of cities came to be essentially administrative centers, so that their residential quarters were curtailed (see Israelite Megiddo). Complementary to this process, other towns that remained outside the networks of government may have become rustic—not as well provided with higher amenities as in the past (see Israelite Tell Beit Mirsim). In any event, cities in general did not become bigger. Nothing has been revealed from this age matching the expansion of a Middle–Late Bronze Age city with its new town (for example, Hazor). However, it is perhaps not so much within the city but outside the city that diversification in building development is principally manifested. It seems that during this age buildings just as significant were erected in the countryside. Even the new nation-state capitals in Jerusalem and Samaria were not exactly a development within the old type of city. Moreover, the forces of the centralized state were required to act at a distance (on frontiers, along caravan trails, by mines or harbors) to produce watch towers, storage depots, industrial establishments, and so forth. Some of these entities provided many of the facilities of towns, but they were central foundations not local developments (compare, for example, Negev fortresses, Tell el Kheliefeh).

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Fig. 9. Megiddo Water Supply System. A. Plan showing (1) rectangular access shaft cut down through Tell layers and bed rock, (2) rock-cut passage way, (3) spring in cave in (4) hillside outside (5) city wall, (6) earlier passage way under city wall towards cave with spring. B. Sections showing recutting of access shaft and passage to convert system into aqueduct, with subsequent filling and reconstruction of stairs. C. Diagram showing engineering error in recutting arising from taking inclined distance as equal to horizontal distance (after Megiddo I, figs. 2, 3, 22).

The small nation-state regime lasted, historically speaking, only a short time in the region. Within two or three centuries it was superseded by foreign domination—in succession, by the great oriental monarchies of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. While the rule of the first two was ephemeral and destructive, that of

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Persia was lasting and stable. Thus, building development from the 6th century onward is of interest as making a revolutionary change after the preceding millennium of essentially autonomous local development. There has been a tendency to read into the archaeology of Palestine during the Persian period a process of deurbanization, that is, colonial exploitation by way of agricultural estates (for example, Tell Mevorakh, ºEn-Gedi) with strong points and citadels to control the countryside, plus a system of frontier defenses against ingress from the desert and the sea. Clearly, the wholesale redevelopment of walled cities was contraindicated. Thus, when Jerusalem was refortified by returning exiles, this was immediately stigmatized as an act of rebellion on the one hand, and on the other defended as “loyalist” action (both claims more or less specious). However, there appears to have been a definite development of harbor towns on the Mediterranean seaboard for reasons of both commerce and defense (for example, Jaffa, Tell Abu Hawam, Tel Megadim). There also may have been a line of coastal fortresses characterized by large rectangular towers (for example, Tell es-Safi, Tell Zakariyeh). Opposed to all this, the Phoenician cities enjoyed a period of augmented prosperity and expansion. Indeed, the Persian period in the region might well be thought of as a “Phoenician age.” Unfortunately, there are few surviving remains to bear witness to the historical records. However, something is to be seen of display projects in the form of impressive religious monuments (for example, at Sidon and Amrith). In this and other connections there is evidence of a raj-type building, using imperial resources in a manner completely different from the local tradition—that is, Persepolitan-style building (for example, at Byblos and Sidon). An attempt is now made to set important elements of design and construction against the foregoing historical sketch. First some general considerations. No specific “style” or “order” was developed to make significant (that is, sacred) buildings, as in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Classical Greece. Equally the scale of building remained always restricted to the human—there were no ziggurats or pyramids. The most grandiose projects were perhaps the utilitarian city walls and gates (figs. 5, 8). The scale of building, however, showed an overall historical progression, taking examples from buildings of a unitary design. The Neolithic round houses (fig. 5) enclosed an area of a few square meters up to a maximum of 30 square meters. In the Chalcolithic era a rectangular house was approximately 60 to 100 square meters in area. Public buildings of the developed city-state during the second millennium b.c.e. were about 500 square meters. The Solomonic state buildings in Jerusalem included the Temple and the House of the Forest of Lebanon, which were approximately 1000 square meters. Finally, in provincial times the residency at Lachish was approximately 2000 square meters in overall area (including a large courtyard). The structural system was always simple. In earlier Neolithic times there are many indications of light framed structures with wooden supporting members. However, from later Neolithic and Chalcolithic times onward the structure was uniformly of load-bearing walls. Structural pillars, piers, and columns (fig. 10)

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Fig. 10. Part plan of Late Bronze Age Palace at Ras Shamra showing distribution of ashlar (hatched) and rubble masonry. N.B. also the fine cut stone slab paving (after Ugaritica III, pl. 7).

played a subsidiary part in building construction. The tradition was a trabeated one (employing rough timber joists) almost exclusively. Nevertheless, the arch was not unknown. The Middle Bronze city gate at Tel Dan has its outer portal

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built as a true arch with mudbrick voussoirs (but to what degree this was common practice in such monuments is unknown). During provincial times, under Mesopotamian influence, there were corbelled silos of conical form and pitched brick barrel-vaulted residences (Tell Jemmeh and Lachish; fig. 14). The region was well supplied with all the main materials of building construction: stone, plastic earth, timber. All these were used from earlier times, both conjointly and side by side. As might be expected, the first materials to be employed were natural ones: field stones, wood, skins, and so on. It is possible that the first use made of plastic earth (mud, clay) was auxiliary, as mud mortar and plaster to rubble or brushwood in Mesolithic times. However, from the very beginning of significant construction, plastic earth became a primary material in itself. The first stage of evolution was by way of puddled mud—that is, building up the wall mass in hand-modeled plastic lumps (tauf, kahgell ), which were at once both masonry units and mortar (compare earlier Neolithic levels at Jericho). However, early (in Pre-Pottery Neolithic Jericho) plastic earth was modeled into units that were predried in the sun to form mudbricks of various shapes (for example, “hogbacked”). The appearance of the bricks suggests that they were conceived originally as ersatz field stones. These hand-modeled mudbricks remained standard in the region for many millennia, long after they had been replaced in adjacent regions by mudbricks molded in regular forms—that is, in standardized size and (parallelopiped) shape. This latter development only became general in the region at the beginning of urban times, approximately 3000 b.c.e. Thereafter, sun-dried molded mudbrick remained a standard building material through all succeeding ages until it was ousted in the present generation by concrete or concrete blocks. As for burnt brick, it remained virtually unknown in the region. Alongside mudbrick, field stones always continued in use for rubble masonry— either random rubble or chinked, coursed rubble. However, during the second millennium b.c.e., finely dressed masonry came into use. At first this was only for special elements (for example, bases). Then during the Late Bronze Age (fig. 10), quarried and finely dressed blocks came to be used for selected passages of monumental construction (for example, the city gate at Megiddo and the Orthostat Temple at Hazor). With the increasing resources of the nation-state, fine stone masonry became a notable feature of building. All this masonry belonged to a distinctive school of stone dressing that differed in practice from Pharaonic Egyptian masonry and also from classical Greek masonry. Its essence was that it presented the appearance of finely jointed ashlar on the face, but all the joints opened to the interior so that it was in fact, ashlar-faced, coursed rubble (fig. 12). Much of the dressing was effected in situ. The style was part of a continuum extending to the west (Cyprus, Crete, etc.) and also to the north (North Syria, Anatolia). It now remains to describe some of the important cases of public building projects, beginning with the form of the city itself. For much of its history, building in the region found its main expression in towns where settlement continued through the ages on the same site. These settlements were defended by massive perimeter walls that maintained the accumulated ruins of former times, so that with

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successive rebuilding, the level of occupation often was up to 20–30 meters above the surrounding terrain. Extreme dimensions were of the nature of approximately 1,400 by 200 meters, giving an average summit area of perhaps 10–15 acres. The city walls were sometimes massive and of ample height to inhibit escalade (for example, 10–15 meters or more); standing “high and lifted up,” they were very impressive (figs. 6, 8). Furthermore, there were differences in design that have some chronological significance. Speaking broadly, there were three different types of urban fortification, which correspond successively to the third millennium b.c.e. (Early Bronze Age), the middle of the second millennium (Middle Bronze Age II through Late Bronze Age), and the earlier part of the first millennium (the Iron Age, or Israelite times in Palestine). The walls of the earlier cities were very massive indeed (for example, up to 10 meters broad) and sometimes enclosed large areas so that the enceinte measures several kilometers in length (fig. 8A, B). The curtain was not broken and generally consisted of long, more-or-less straight runs (of approximately 100 meters), with obtuse angular changes in direction giving an irregular outline. The striking aspect of these fortifications is the number of face towers (but not angle towers), both rectangular (Tell el-Farºah, ºAi) and rounded (Arad, Jericho). Associated with these in some way were a substantial number of posterns and gates. The gates (fig. 5) are of varying design, sometimes incorporating the “bent approach” system to expose the unshielded side of the attackers to defenders’ fire (cf. Megiddo str. XIII, Tell el-Farºah, Tell Dothan, and others). Contrasted in every way with this system were the highly characteristic, standardized urban defenses of the Middle Bronze Age II (fig. 8C, D). In general, sites were smaller and often raised up on an accumulation of prior ruins. Possibly in consideration of this, the curtain was notably slighter (approximately 1–3 meters broad), and often the overall form was a fairly regular curve. Again possibly in connection with this, the trace was not smooth but comprised jogs or indentations of various patterns at regular short intervals. The salient jogs were perhaps each crowned by small turrets, whereas the substantial face towers of the preceding age no longer appeared. The openings in the walls also became very restricted—one or two main gates, and no posterns. These gates (fig. 5) assumed a typical design. They were towers (themselves crowned with two or four angle turrets) with a direct entry passageway flanked by guardrooms, stairs, and so forth. Ingress through the passageway was checked by a front and rear (and sometimes a medial) portal giving a two- or three-entryway plan. These gate houses are without doubt the most significant architectural projects of the region. They outdo most temples, a fact that reflects the important sociopolitical function of the city gate in the Syro-Palestinian region. It was the place of assembly, council, and judgment, corresponding to the classical age forum. Yet a different style of urban defense was evolved during the Israelite kingdom in the first millennium b.c.e.—perhaps not so strong to resist attack but well disposed to control the affairs of the city (for example, these urban defenses approximated the character of a fortress). The walls (fig. 8E, F) were constructed

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casemate-style (for example, with chambers within their thickness), and this was a standard evolution of the gatehouse, provided with four portals, separating three broad transverse chambers, thus involving a corresponding less-massive construction (fig. 5). Within the city so delimited, rational town-planning was minimal. perhaps in the abstract, three zones or areas might be distinguished: the temple area, the ruler’s quarter, and the common domestic quarters (fig. 7). The first two are generally near the walls, and originally they may have been closely associated, but later (by the mid–second millennium) they tend to become separated. Then the ruler’s quarter or palace is hard by the gate. Internal circulation was sketchy, the main Fig. 11. The Pillared Hall 1. Reconstructed Plans of Megiddo St IV Pillared highway being a ring road around the Store House/Stable Buildings (after Megiddo perimeter with minor accessways to I, figs. 34, 49). each region. Only a few examples 2. Schematic Reconstruction of Pillared Store House Unit. Tell Beer Sheba Government exist of something approaching a Stores by Gate (after Herzog, Tell Beer Sheba, regular street network, for example, p. 27, fig. 2). at Megiddo under Assyrian rule. Provision for water supply constituted the only significant public works (fig. 9). The region is not one of permanent rivers, and so the source was either aerial or ground water. Within the city, reservoirs and cisterns collected runoff, and sometimes secret tunnels or covered ways led to near-by springs (for example, at Tell es-Saidiyah). However, certainly by the early first millennium (if not before) spectacular engineering schemes found or brought groundwater into the city. Deep shafts were cut down many meters into the bedrock, and from the bottom of these, where necessary, galleries were driven out beyond the city to capture aquifers, affording either a viaduct to them (for example, at Gibeon, Gezer, Hazor) or an aqueduct from them (for example, Megiddo, Jerusalem). Compared with Egypt and Mesopotamia, the temple architecture of the region was nondescript (fig. 5). Nevertheless, some typological sequence can be recognized. In the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (for example, approximately 3200–2200 b.c.e.), temples were designed on the model of the broad room houses of the age—that is, they were simple broad buildings set at the rear of an

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Fig. 12. Israelite Monumental Masonry—ashlar and ashlar faced. 1. Inner wall of Samaria Acropolis showing ashlar masonry essentially as facing to quarry-faced blocks and rubble (after Shiloh, Qedem 11, p. 127). 2. Coigning of solid ashlar masonry at Megiddo—Schumacher’s Palace. NB. the unit of stretcher backed by two headers is that of 13 1/2" English Bond brick wall—but here it is reversed alternately as in the casemate wall of Tell Mevorakh in Persian times (after Tell el Mutesellim, p. 94, fig. 138). 3. Western Wall of Israelite Palace at Samaria showing floor of crushed limestone debris (d), probable spoil of in situ dressing of ashlar masonry (e)—cf. the bossed blocks (c) below floor level. The doorway (a) was furnished with a sill formed by a (basalt?) stone slab let into the jambs, v. lodgement (b) (after Qedem 11, p. 281).

enclosure. This formed a convenient sanctuary plan, and several examples have been preserved (for example, at Byblos, Megiddo, and ºEn-Gedi). During the succeeding centuries the simple broad room cella (or cellae) evolved more architectural forms, for example, a columnar porch (the Porch Temples of Megiddo str. XVII–XIV); something like a tower entrance (Kamid el-Loz); or a prefixed entry chamber, the ºulam (Baal Temple at Ras Shamra). However, from the middle of the second millennium on, a concern is apparent for a long building of some sort. On occasion this took the form of successive (broad) rooms (for example, the Alalakh IV Temple), but there also appeared a long room, hall-temple type (for example, the temples at Tell Kittan, the Long Temple at Hazor, and above all the Migdol temples at Megiddo and Shechem—the latter, imposing

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Fig. 13. Underground Stone Vaulting. 1. Rude True Dome in MB Built Tomb No 2 at Megiddo. The construction is a rubble dome with a large pierced key stone or cap stone (after Tell el Mutesellim, pl. 21). 2. Corbel vaulted roofing of ashlar masonry in subterranean LB Tombs at Ras Shamra/Ugarit (after Ugaritica I, pl. XVII).

monumental buildings with twin-towered facades, thus showing an overall resemblance in design with the city gates of the period). This long building temple type forms the background to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem (10th century b.c.e.), a pronounced long building, in which even division into successive compartments left the main internal space a long hall. Phoenician craftsmen are reported as assisting in its construction, and that temples of similar type existed in, for example, Sidon is rendered probable by the slightly later temple at Kition in Cyprus, built when the town was colonized by Sidonians. Parallel with this monumental long building type, another type of temple became prominent in the latter part of the second millennium b.c.e. This was of a nonmonumental stamp with an indirect entry of some sort and a sacristy at the rear. The main hall was generally provided with wall benches (compare the Lachish Fosse Temple, the Philistine temples at Tell Qasile, and so on). Temples of this type belonged to a continuum extending over the eastern Mediterranean world (that is, Cyprus and Mycenaean Greece). The effect of the centralized Yahweh cult in Palestine during the first millennium b.c.e. drastically reduced the evidence for later temple-building in

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Palestine. However, remains from peripheral areas (cf. Tell Tayinat) show that in general the temple types of the end of the second millennium survived in use during later times. The biblical record also indicates that worship in a natural setting was prominent in the region both before and during the Israelite regime. However, these rural sanctuaries, the “sacred groves” (Asherah) and “high places” (Bamah) were not built up to any degree, and so little trace of them remains on the ground. Secular public buildings (palaces, etc.) appear for the most part as room complexes articulated by internal courts, with little distinctive overall form (fig. 5). A typical example occurs already in the Fig. 14. Mesopotamian Style Mud Brick middle of the third millennium Construction b.c.e. at Megiddo (3157), where The Assyrian Residence at Tell Gemmeh showing there are two courts. The ultimate pitched vaulting of roof (plan after EE II, p. 548; perspective views after IEJ 22, 1972, p. 155b—upper, and development of the type is in Late Qadmoniot VI, 21, 1971, p. 24—lower). Bronze Age Ras Shamra, where there are six large courts and several minor ones, and the total area is approximately 10,000 square meters (fig. 10). Here a regular planning device is for the courts to give onto a main broad room through a distyle portico. It is possible that during the first millennium b.c.e. such palaces were given a measure of overall design based on foreign models. In Israelite times Solomon’s Palace in Jerusalem (according to biblical descriptions), as also palaces at Megiddo (for example, the South Palace, 1728) may have aped to some degree the Bit-hilani with its characteristic tower-flanked columnar porch. It has also been suggested that in provincial times residences were planned in accordance with the Mesopotamian two-court scheme, whereby an outer public area (Selamlik) around the large court communicated through a principal reception unit (Diwan-i-amm) with a private domestic quarter (Haramlik) set around a smaller court (compare the Assyrian Residence at Tell Jemmeh). For a possible characteristic planning of the principal reception suite, see the Residence at Ayalet ha-Shahar near Hazor. Finally, something like an Achamenid apadana occurs at Byblos during the Persian period. In addition to the traditional type of palace building, the need of the new centralized state demanded various new public building types. On the one hand, the

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fortified Israelite palace (virtually an autonomous unit in itself ) can be seen at Samaria and Ramat Ra˙el. On the other hand, public security and public finance required provision for garrisons and revenue stores in major district centers. An allpurpose design was the long pillared hall, articulated into three aisles (fig. 11). These units were multiplied ad lib side by side (for example, in blocks of five) and for major schemes enclosed within a large rectangular compound (covering approximately 5,000 square meters) to form stables, stores, and barracks (see Megiddo IV). At Lachish such a compound (covering 10,000 square meters) was flanked by a palace and entered by a monumental gatehouse. An individual variant of this functional type was Solomon’s famous House of the Forest of Lebanon. As a matter of course, throughout the ages the city buried its dead outside the walls in simple rock-cut chamber tombs, in which some of the details exactly paralleled tombs in the Mediterranean (for example, Cyprus and Crete). However, occasionally, different and more-elaborate tomb designs are found, both rock-cut and built. At Middle Bronze Age Megiddo there were symmetrically designed complexes of rectangular chambers, suggesting the influence of Egyptian rockcut tombs. Also during this period, within the city one or two vaulted underground tombs were built in rubble, while in the Late Bronze Age at Ras Shamra imposing tombs entered from the courtyards of houses were built in finely dressed masonry (fig. 13). Again, during the middle and late part of the first millennium, some monumental tombs were fashioned under foreign influence: for example, the Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter at Silwan ( Jerusalem), where a freestanding rock-cut chamber was crowned with a built pyramid on the model of small Theban tombs. Then in late Persian times (4th century b.c.e.), the royal necropolis at Ayaa near Sidon included monumental rock-cut tombs containing superb sarcophagi. This brief summary has set out the surviving material evidence. Its distribution within the region and the region’s northern definition raise questions of interpretation, but here the evidence must be allowed to speak for itself. It shows a region that developed a building tradition of its own as early as anywhere in the world, approximately 10,000 years ago. Yet it did not retain this tradition in archaic isolation but participated in newer building manners. From the beginning of urban civilization in the third millennium b.c.e., the region found itself a close neighbor to the great power centers of the ancient Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hatti Land) and indeed formed a corridor and crossroads between them. Yet its essentially Mediterranean environment secured it from any significant annexation to the building styles of its non-Mediterranean neighbors. While continuing to receive specific influences from these neighbors, it preserved its autonomous architectural development for more than 2,000 years. Perhaps it was only when the region was conquered outright and made subject to imperial rule from Mesopotamia in the middle of the first millennium b.c.e. that widespread developments were introduced from outside the tradition (compare broad room design, vaulted mudbrick construction).

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Survey of Preclassical Architecture in the Levant Bibliography

Aurenche, O. 1981 La maison orientals: L’architecture du Proche Orient ancien des origine au milieu de quatriême millenaire. Paris: Boccard. Avi-Yonah, M., and Stern, M. E. (eds.) 1975–78 Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Barrois, A. G. 1939–53 Manual d ’archéologie biblique. 2 vols. Paris: Picard. Busink, T. 1970–80 Der Tempel von Jerusalem. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill. Herzog, Z. 1986 Das Stadttor in Israel und in den Nachbarlandern. Mainz. Naumann, R. 1971 Architektur Kleinasiens von ihrm Anfängen bis zum Ende der hethitischen Zeit. Tübingen: Wasmuth. Shiloh, Y. 1977 The Proto Aeolic Capital and Israelite Ashlar Masonry. QEDEM 11. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Stern, E. 1982 The Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Wagner, P. 1980 Der Ägyptische Einfluss auf die phonizische Architectur. Bonn. Weippert, H. 1988 Palästina in vorhellenisticher Zeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wright, G. R. H. 1985 Ancient Building in South Syria and Palestine. Leiden: Brill.

G. R. H. Wright

Bronze and Iron Age Burials and Funerary Customs in the Southern Levant Burials should be studied as an integral part of a cultural system. The location of burial, form of interment, body treatment, and accompanying assemblage are all “patterned behaviors” that encode cultural practices and beliefs. However, published burials may not be a representative sample of ancient practices, since known burials do not approximate the estimated population for any period, preservation and recovery rates of different burial types vary, and rich or unusual burials are more likely to be published than poor or typical interments. Geographical as well as cultural determinants affected Bronze and Iron Age burial practices in the Levant. The three geographical zones in Palestine are the lowlands (the coast with connecting major river valleys), the highlands, and the semiarid regions (Sinai, Negev, Transjordanian plateau). Traffic and colonization associated with the international shipping route along the coast and the roads linking Egypt to the south with Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia to the north and northeast exposed Levantine settlers to diverse cultural traditions. Egyptian influence was most strongly felt in the south and along the coast as far north as Byblos. Northern influences from Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia pervaded the region as far south as the Jezreel and Beth-shan valleys. Throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, in every burial type, the deceased was interred with objects identical to those used by the living. In large tombs it could be argued that the goods were for the living, who entered the tomb to bury the dead or to visit, but comparable assemblages in pit graves and jar burials prove that the objects were intended for the dead. Mortuary provisions may be viewed as the culturally determined material necessities of life: vessels for food and drink; tools for crafting; blades for chores, hunting, and fighting; and amuletic jewelry for adornment and protection. These provisions suggest that the dead were thought to continue a form of existence facilitated by the objects. The Early Bronze I (ca. 3300–3050 b.c.e.) was a period of distinct regional cultures, as reflected in the diversity of burial forms. Highland settlers living in permanent settlements presumably resided in extended family units and established cave burials for family members. From 5 to 200 “kin” were buried together in a cave (ºAi, Tell Asawir, Tell el-Farºah [N], Gezer, Jericho, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell Taºanach), along with pottery vessels, jewelry, weapons, and other personal items. Skulls were separated (Tell Asawir, Bâb edh-Dhrâº, Gezer, Jericho, Tell Taºanach), recalling a Neolithic practice interpreted as an element in a cult of the ancestors. The cave tombs at Tell el-Farºah (N) accommodated multiple burials with no settlement in the vicinity, challenging the commonly held assumption that multiple burial was practiced by extended families in sedentary agrarian societies. A different form of burial was adopted at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, located on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. In an isolated cemetery of several thousand shaft tombs

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(rock-cut tombs with a vertical shaft leading down into a single chamber) each chamber contained the remains of one to three or less than seven individuals, with skulls separated. Nawamis are above ground, stone-built, circular structures with a corbelled roof, known from the Beersheva region already in the Chalcolithic period. These structures are assumed to be the burials of pastoral nomads because of their distribution in arid regions (Beersheva region, southern Sinai) and the meager assemblage of accompanying mortuary goods. However, similar mudbrick structures containing primary articulated burials were constructed at Early Bronze Ib Bâb edh-Dhr⺠in conjunction with a settlement. Egyptian presence at Nahal Tillah (Tell Lahav) is attested by a stone-built, Egyptian-style tomb with a dromos, entryway, and cave chamber. An approximately 25-year-old female lay in a flexed position, with no mortuary provisions. It is striking that Egyptian flints were recovered from both the pastoralists’ nawamis and the agriculturalists’ highland cave burials (Azor, Tell Taºanach). Early Bronze II–III (3050–2300 b.c.e.) witnessed the development of urban culture, yet the only known extensive cemetery is at Bâb edh-Dhrâº. Charnel houses, resembling contemporary domestic dwellings at Arad, were constructed for the dead. Steps led down into a rectangular brick structure in which heaps of bones, partly burned, distinctive pottery vessels, beads, and daggers lay scattered on the pebble floor. Pottery forms and the crescent-shaped battle axe demonstrate northern connections. As in the preceding period, both geography and culture influenced interment practices, giving rise to three distinct burial types in the Early Bronze IV (ca. 2300–2000 b.c.e.). Sedentary populations living in the Cis- and Transjordanian highlands interred their dead in shaft tombs similar to the Bâb edh-Dhr⺠Early Bronze Age examples. Very little is known of the archaeology of southern Syria in this period, but metals and pottery from northern Syrian sites such as Ugarit, Byblos, Qatna, and Tell As demonstrate connections with Cisjordanian shaft tomb burials. Pastoralists in the Negev, the Jordan Valley, the Transjordanian plateau, and the basalt regions of Hauran and the Golan, however, constructed tumuli for their dead, and a foreign population settled in the region north and east of the Sea of Galilee buried their dead in dolmens. Shaft tomb cemeteries were associated with villages and settlements of rectangular houses and/or cave dwellings, in proximity to Early Bronze Age urban centers (Bâb edh-Dhrâº, Tell Beit Mirsim, Beth-Yerah, Tell Burga, Dhahr Mirzbaneh, Tell Halif, Khirbet Iskander, Jebel Qaºaqir, Jericho, Lachish, Murkhan, Shaºar Hagolan, Tell Umm Hamad, Tell Zippor). A typical burial chamber contained only one to three articulated or disarticulated skeletons, with pottery vessels, occasionally copper weapons and tools (dagger, spear), and personal possessions (pins, bracelets, beads). Variations in the shape of the shaft, in primary or secondary burial, and the selection of metal objects and pottery forms have been attributed to chronological differences and related “tribal” groups with somewhat different burial customs.

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Tumuli consist of a mound of stones and earth covering a stone-lined and capped pit that encases an articulated or disarticulated body with pottery, copper artifacts, and beads. Tumuli were usually associated with settlements, either on the site between dwellings or on the summits of nearby mountain ridges. The associated culture, at least in the Negev, differed from the shaft tomb–burying population in its use of round or elliptical houses, a different flint tradition, and variant forms of cooking pots, lamps, and javelin heads. The commonly accepted seasonal transhumance model suggests the “egalitarian” society wintered in clustered round houses and buried their dead in tumuli, then summered in rectangular dwellings and caves and interred their deceased in shaft tombs. The differing technologies required to build round and rectangular dwellings and to construct tumuli as opposed to digging shaft tombs, coupled with the differences exhibited in material culture and associated technologies between the Negev and highland sites, argue against these settlements’ having been inhabited by the same people on a seasonal basis. Dolmens are large table-like structures composed of two or more vertical basalt blocks with a stone slab base and the largest slab of all placed horizontally over the vertical blocks like a table top. A heap of stones usually covered the dolmen, creating a tumulus. Intact dolmens characteristically contained the secondary remains of a single individual with pottery, weapons, and jewelry. The distinctive burial fields in Transjordan, the Golan, and the Galilee of thousands of dolmens dating from the Chalcolithic, Early Bronze I, and Early Bronze IV are sometimes attributed to Indo-Europeans. The urbanization of Middle Bronze I–III (2000–1550 b.c.e.) represents a dramatic break with the preceding period. Byblos and regions north provided the impetus and resources for urbanization in northern Cisjordan. The Semitic “Hyksos” Dynasty XV ruling in Egypt developed the Tell el-ºAjjûl region, creating a new portal for Egyptian and Mediterranean commercial interests into the southern Levant. Burial practices attest to both these northern and southern influences as well as the continuation of indigenous customs. The beginning of the period witnessed the continued use of Early Bronze Age practices as well as the introduction of northern burial types. Throughout the region, Middle Bronze II and III settlers (Byblos, Efrat, Tell el-Farºah (N), Gibeon, Jericho, Khirbet Kufin, Megiddo) reused or, perhaps, continually used caves and Early Bronze IV shaft tombs for burial. Continuing an Early Bronze Age practice, skulls were separated from the other bones in a Tell el-ºAjjûl burial pit. Beginning in the Middle Bronze I, burial within the settlement confines, known as intramural burial, was introduced into the region from northern Syria and practiced throughout the period at sites from Ugarit south to Tell el-ºAjjûl (Aphek, Tell Beit Mirsim, Dan, Tell el-Farºah [N], Tell el-Farºah [S], Hazor, Jericho, Lachish, Megiddo, and Taºanach). One or two mature individuals, positioned on their sides with a small selection of pottery vessels and jewelry, were buried in a pit cut into the earth beneath their homes or in the courtyard. Children with their accompanying goods were interred in a jar under the house floor. Cists, elaborate

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stone-lined and capped pits, were constructed at the prominent sites of Ugarit, Megiddo, and Aphek for the wealthy and/or individuals of high status (figs. 15, 16). New Middle Bronze II–III burial practices reflect increasing social complexity and foreign contacts. With the rise of urban centers in northern Cisjordan, the ruling elite copied north Syrian nobility in building Fig. 15. Cist burial, Tell Zeror. From palaces and burying their dead in corbelled E. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Pracvaults constructed below the floor (Ebla in tices and Beliefs about the Dead (ShefSyria, and Tell el-ºAjjûl, Hazor, Megiddo, and field: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) fig. 2. Used by permission. Taºanach in Cisjordan). Southern Cisjordanian burials incorporated Mediterranean influences introduced through Egyptianmediated trade. Cypriot-style bilobate and loculi tomb burials first appeared in the Middle Bronze III period (Tell el-ºAjjûl, Tell el-Farºah [S], Jerusalem, Lachish). Both were stone-cut chambers entered through a descending, stepped corridor. Bilobate tombs characteristically had two rounded chambers in a kidney-shaped configuration, while loculi tombs consisted of a single chamber with burial niches carved into the side walls. The peculiar practice of burying horses or donkeys in these tombs has been recorded from both eastern Delta sites (Tell ed-Daba, Inhas, Tell el-Maskhuta) and Cisjordanian sites (Tell el-ºAjjûl, Jericho, Lachish). Loculi tombs were also constructed in a Second Intermediate period cemetery in Sediment in Upper Egypt, with mudbrick vaulted chamber tombs. Egyptian and Aegean goods and influences permeated the Late Bronze Age Levant (ca. 1550–1200 b.c.e.) as a consequence of the battles between Egypt to the south and the Hittites and Mitanni to the north and the explosion of international maritime trade. This increased foreign presence and influence is reflected in the diversity of burial practices. Egyptian, Cypriot, and north Syrian-Anatolian burial types were employed along the coast and in the north. Meanwhile, more isolated highland settlers continued the Early and Middle Bronze Age practice of burying their dead in caves. The adoption of new forms of interment (fig. 21) highlights the emerging cultural divergence between the geomorphologically distinct lowlands and highlands. Whereas cave burial was utilized throughout the country in the Middle Bronze Age, by the Late Bronze Age its distribution was restricted to the highlands, from Safed south Fig. 16. Mudbrick vaulted cist tomb, Tell el-Maskhuta to Khirbet Rabûd (Tell L12.12408. From Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, fig. 3.

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el-Farºah [N], Gezer, Gibeon, Hebron, Jericho, Jerusalem, Lachish, Megiddo). As in the preceding periods, new or used caves accommodated multiple burials and modest provisions, such as domestic pottery, with few imports or metals. The frequent lack of associated settlement (for example, at Gibeon and Hebron) has been interpreted as indicating the presence of a nonsedentary population believed to have abandoned the cities in the face of repressive Egyptian policies. These burials may provide yet another exception to the prevailing theory that sedentary societies were responsible for multiple burials. Of all the intramural forms of burial from the Middle Bronze Age, only built tombs continued into the Late Bronze Age. At the sites of Aphek, Dan, and Ugarit, intramural burial continued with the construction of corbelled vaults below residence floors or courtyards. A well-preserved Dan tomb, with 40 men, women, and children and equipped with a lavish assemblage illustrates the continuing custom of distinctive elite burial. During the Late Bronze Age, Egyptian presence and influence proliferated, as evidenced by textual accounts, forts, temple and palace architecture, and art such as ivory carving. R. Gonen has argued that the Egyptian-style pit and cist grave burial should be attributed not to foreign settlers but to indigenous people influenced by prolonged exposure to Egyptian beliefs and practices. During Late Bronze II (ca 1400–1200 b.c.e.), extramural pit grave cemeteries reached their height of distribution through the lowlands: along the coast from Tel Ridan to Gesher ha-Ziv, and through the Jezreel, Beth-shan, and Jordan River Valleys (Tell Abu Hawam, Afula, Tell el-ºAjjûl, Deir el-Balah, Tell el-Farºah [S], Horvat Humra, Palmachim, the Persian Garden, Tell es-Saidiyeh, Tell Zeror) (fig. 17). Surprisingly, these richly provisioned burials for individuals, rarely two or three persons, were associated with a small settlement or no settlement at all, a distinct departure from the Middle Bronze Age Syro-Mesopotamian inspired practice of intramural pit and cist grave burial. Among the mortuary provisions, bowls for food predominated, with jugs and accompanying dipper juglets for liquids, plus luxury items such as imported pottery, jewelry, and metal objects. A host of other burial types are generally attributed to foreigners residing in the southern Levant. Bench and loculi tombs, utilized in Cyprus already in the Middle Bronze Age, were adopted in the southern Levant beginning in the Late Bronze Age (Tell ºAitun, Tell el-ºAjjûl, Tell el-Farºah [S], Lachish, Megiddo, Sarepta). In both of these tomb types, a rock-cut shaft led down into a chamber where the deceased was laid out on a bench or in a niche carved out of the side walls of the tomb. Numerous individuals with accompanying provisions were interred in the chamber over an extended period of time. Fig. 17. Simple burial, Tell esThe other rarely attested burial types, dat- Saºidiyeh Tomb 142. From Bloching from the end of the Late Bronze Age or Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, early Iron Age, entailed placing the primary or fig. 1.

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secondary remains into a receptacle, either a small ceramic coffin or a larnake following Minoan/Aegean practice; a large jar as practiced in Anatolia; or an anthropoid coffin according to Egyptian custom. Only two ceramic coffins resembling Aegean larnakes have been found. A multihandled chest placed in a Gezer bench tomb held the remains of two children plus the disarticulated bones of ten more children and one adult. A pit grave in the Persian Garden near Acco contained an overturned tub with the scattered remains of a young man. The jar burials from four sites in northern Canaan (Azor, Tell el-Farºah [N], Kfar Yehoshua, Tell Zeror) were extramural interments of exclusively mature individuals, inserted into one or two large jars positioned to form a burial receptacle. The 40year-old man buried at Kfar Yehoshua was provided with flasks, other pottery vessels, a bronze blade, and cuts of sheep, ox, and pig (fig. 18). Fig. 18. Jar burial, Kfar Yehoshua. From Bloch-Smith, Anthropoid coffins are a ceJudahite Burial Practices, fig. 4. ramic container with the lid modeled into the upper part of a human body, incorporating the Egyptian lotus flower on the forehead, an Osiris beard, and the emblem of Osiris grasped in the hands (Beth-shan, Deir elBalah, Tell el-Farºah [S], Lachish). Unlike Egyptian examples, the Deir el-Balah coffins sufficed for two adults and one or two other individuals. Canaanite, Cypriot, Mycenean, and Egyptian vessels plus other objects of Egyptian origin and form constituted the mortuary assemblage (fig. 19). Through all of the social and political upheavals of the Iron Age (ca. 1200–586 b.c.e.), the pattern of burial practices changed little from the Late Bronze Age (fig. 22). The cultural dichotomy between lowland and highland settlers, evidenced in the choice of burial types, became more pronounced. Simple pit and cist graves remained the predominant lowland burial type throughout the Iron Age (for example, Akhziv, Tel Amal, Tel elºAjjûl, Ashdod, Azor, Tell el-Farºah [S], Tell elMazar, Megiddo). Burial in caves or rock-cut chambers persisted as the virtually exclusive choice of highland settlers. The bench tomb, originally a Cypriot Fig. 19. Anthropoid coffin burial, Deir el-Balah Tomb 118. practice reported from From Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, fig. 5.

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Fig. 20. Development of the Bench Tomb. From Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, fig. 10.

coastal Late Bronze Age sites, was introduced into the highlands through the sites of Tell ºAitun, Gezer, and Lachish (fig. 20). This burial mode may have been adopted as an elaborate form of the cave tomb, since in fact the two continued side by side. However, the bench tomb may have become the preferred form of Judahite burial, while cave burial remained the practice of other elements of the autochthonous population. As in the preceding period, foreigners’ burials were few and had no lasting impact on the prevailing practices. They do, however, indicate the numerical, geographical, and chronological extent of foreign settlement in the southern Levant. While the number of sites employing the Egyptian and north SyrianAnatolian anthropoid coffin burial and jar burial respectively decreased through the Iron Age, the number of Phoenician cremations and Assyrian bathtub coffins increased. Anthropoid coffin burial in Cisjordan ceased with the end of Egyptian political subjugation in the mid–12th century b.c.e.; however, vestigial, debased versions of the coffin were employed in 7th-century Transjordan (Amman, Dhiban, Madeba, Sahab). The northern custom of jar burial, still widespread in northern and coastal Cisjordan and on the Transjordanian plateau in the 12th and 11th centuries b.c.e. (11 sites), has been reported from only six or seven sites from the 10th century through the end of the Iron Age. From two examples of Phoenician cremation dating from perhaps as early as the 11th century b.c.e. (Akhziv, Azor), the numbers increased until by the end of the Iron Age cremation was practiced at coastal and Jezreel Valley sites from Khaldé in the north to Tell er-Ruqeish in

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Fig. 21. Distribution of various Late Bronze Age burial types. From Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, fig. 21.

the south (Tell el-ºAjjûl, Akhziv, Atlit, Joya [?], Qasmieh, Khirbet Silm [?], Tambourit). “Bathtub coffin” burial appeared in the region with the Assyrian subjugation of the northern territory of Israel in the last quarter of the 8th century b.c.e. (Tell Abu Hawam, Amman, Dothan, Tell el-Farºah [N], Jerusalem, Tell

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Fig. 22. Sites with Iron Age burials. From Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, fig. 15.

el-Mazar, Megiddo, Tell el-Qitaf, Khirbet el-Qôm). Bathtub coffins are named for their characteristic shape: a deep bathtub-shaped ceramic vessel approximately one meter long, with one round and one straight end, and handles around the sides. Such coffins, containing skulls, other bones, and ceramic vessels, have been found in a pit grave (Tell el-Mazar), in chamber tombs (Amman, Jerusalem),

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and inside domestic structures and palaces (Tell Abu Hawam, Tell Dothan, Tell el-Farºah [N], Megiddo; fig. 23). This survey questions the commonly accepted interpretation of individual or multiple burial as a function of settlement type. It has been assumed that sedentary agrarian populations established multiple kin-based burials in caves or rock-cut chambers, and nonsedentary populations buried their dead individually, often secondarily, in “tribal” cemeteries of pit graves or shaft tombs. Individual and multiple burials were certainly in part determined by social organization and settlement pattern. Fig. 23. Bathtub coffin burial, Tell Unfortunately, few cemeteries or burials are el-Farºah (N). From Bloch-Smith, associated with settlements; therefore, it is Judahite Burial Practices, fig. 6. difficult to correlate the characteristic features of settlement, social organization, and material culture of the living with that of the dead. As evidenced by this survey, formative factors in the choice of burial type include societal determinants (which tend to be conservative in matters of burial), geomorphology, foreign settlers retaining their distinctive burial practices, and the adoption or imitation of foreign practices.

Bibliography Ben-Tor, A. (ed.) 1991 The Archaeology of Ancient Israel. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bloch-Smith, E. 1992 Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Brink, E. C. M. van den 1982 Tombs and Burial Customs at Tell el-Dabºa and their Cultural Relationship to Syria– Palestine during the Second Intermediate Period. Beiträge zur Ägyptologie 4. Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der Universität Wien 23. Vienna: AFRO-PUB. Campbell, S., and Green, A. (eds.) 1995 Archaeology of Death in the Ancient Near East. Oxbow Monograph 51. Oxford: Oxbow. Gonen, R. 1992 Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze Age Canaan. American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation Series 7. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Hallote, R. 1995 Mortuary Archaeology in the Middle Bronze Age Southern Levant. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 8/1: 93–122.

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Kenyon, K. M. 1973 Palestine in the Middle Bronze Age. Pp. 77–116 in The Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1800–1380 b.c. Vol. 2/1 in Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, T. J. 1989 Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Mazar, A. 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000–586 b.c.e. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday.

Elizabeth Bloch-Smith

Subsistence Pastoralism Subsistence pastoralism is a strategy for producing food that emphasizes breeding and herding of pasture animals, particularly, in the Levant, camels, cows, sheep, and goats. A “sedentary bias” has significantly hampered research into the history of subsistence pastoralism. A major reason for this situation is the difficulties that Western scholars have had in coming to grips with the fluidity of the rural foodproducing population of the Near East, especially when it comes to patterns of household migration and settlement. The tendency, therefore, has been for scholars to lavish attention on people whose lives have been more or less like their own—namely, people living year around in towns and villages on a permanent basis. This sedentary bias is apparent, for example, in writings by historians that all too often tend to perpetuate the stereotypes and superficial generalizations about subsistence pastoralists—the usual fare in the textual sources on which they rely for their information. Fortunately, this situation is now beginning to be remedied, thanks to the work of several individuals who have begun to incorporate insights from anthropology in their quest to understand the social organization and economies of corporate groups in the ancient Near East in the past. Levantine archaeologists as well have tended to work within the framework of a sedentary bias. This is evidenced in their traditional preference for “tell archaeology.” While most tells are made up of layers of debris representing alternating phases of build-up and collapse of permanent settlements, archaeologists have tended to focus their research on reconstructing the history of periods when sites were occupied permanently. Rarely have they invested much effort in investigating the seasonal uses that subsistence pastoralists might have made of their site. Even less common are regional surveys conducted concurrently with tell excavations to ascertain the contribution of subsistence pastoralism to the economy of a given site at different points in time. Although research on subsistence pastoralism in antiquity has been stymied because of the sorts of preconceptions and biases mentioned above, it is not as though no advances in our knowledge have occurred over the past century. Indeed, the past twenty-five years have been a time of rapid growth in knowledge in this regard. This growth has come about as a result of several interrelated factors. The first is the fortuitous accumulation of a wealth of ethnographic information on subsistence pastoralism during the 19th and early part of the 20th century. Much of this information was gathered for a variety of, usually self-serving, reasons by explorers, missionaries, and colonial administrators serving in the region. The second is the infusion over the past three decades of ideas and approaches from anthropology into the research agendas of Levantine historians and, espe-

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cially, archaeologists (the so-called “new archaeology” revolution). This led not only to renewed interest in ethnography by archaeologists (ethnoarchaeology) but to a virtual explosion of reexaminations by archaeologists of the documents (including writings, sketches, and early photographs) left behind by the aforementioned 19th-century explorers and missionaries. The third is the growth of regional archaeological surveys throughout the Levantine countries. Such surveys were mandated not only by the new archaeology revolution but also by the threatened destruction of antiquities sites by rapid expansion of modern roads, farming, and settlements throughout much of the region. Not surprisingly, perhaps, a very significant proportion of the sites recorded by these surveys have produced information pertinent to reconstructing the nature and contribution of subsistence pastoralism throughout previous centuries and millennia. An outcome of this recent escalation of research into the nature of subsistence pastoralism is an emerging consensus that the lives of nomadic pastoralists have always been enmeshed in various ways with those of village-based farmers in the region. In other words, the tendency of earlier scholars to emphasize the differences and hostilities that prevailed between farmers and herders has given way to new perspectives. Now scholars emphasize instead the varied ways in which raising crops versus raising animals have presented strategic food-production alternatives between which rural households and whole communities have had to choose in order to adapt to shifting environmental, economical, and political conditions. Three factors are especially important for understanding the migratory aspect of subsistence pastoralism in the Levant. The first is the availability of water in different parts of the region. Common to the whole region is a season of the year when it rains and a season when there is little or no rain, only dew. The rainy season normally begins in November and usually ends in March or April. Traditionally rainfall has been counted on not only to irrigate agricultural fields but also to replenish man-made cisterns and reservoirs above the ground and natural reservoirs and aquifers under the ground. In many cases the latter provide fresh water to springs and streams year around. An important advantage of subsistence pastoralism in this regard is that—unlike village-based agriculture—it is not dependent to the same degree on people’s labor to maintain terraced hillsides, cisterns, and reservoirs in order to provide water for their crops, animals, and households during the dry season. On the contrary, pastoralists rely to a greater degree on their knowledge of natural pastures and watering places for year-around access to these necessities. A second factor is the proximity of the region to the Arabian Desert, which borders the eastern frontier of the Levant from Jordan in the south to Syria in the north. During the rainy season, this vast desert (in most places too dry for people to cultivate) produces pastures of sufficient quantity and quality to feed hundreds of thousands of animals. Consequently, it has for millennia been adopted by varying numbers of Levantine families as a place to sojourn with their flocks of sheep

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and goats in quest of pastures during the winter and spring months. During the summer months, when the desert becomes inhospitable to man and beast, these families return with their flocks to graze them on the stubble that remains following the grain harvest in the well-watered areas surrounding their home villages and towns. A third factor is the location of the Levantine countries along the wellwatered coastline of the eastern Mediterranean—a fact that has made the region a natural land bridge connecting Egypt and the African continent to the south with Mesopotamia and the Indian subcontinent to the east and Anatolia and the European continent to the west. A consequence of being located along such an important corridor is that the local inhabitants of the region have had to cope with constantly shifting political and economic winds, as control over different parts of it has been fought over by a succession of external world powers to the west, south, and east. A consequence of this situation, in turn, has been that the local-level security necessary for sedentary agriculture to thrive has varied greatly over time and space, especially along its eastern and southern desert frontiers. During certain periods—especially along the desert frontiers—when the threat to sedentary livelihoods became too great, village farmers have been forced either to relocate to safer areas or to take up subsistence pastoralism. When conditions become more favorable again, they or their descendants have subsequently returned to their more settled ways. Such sedentarization and nomadization has been documented on both sides of the Jordan River. In the case of central Transjordan, where these processes have been studied intensively, sedentarization has been linked with a buildup of permanent settlements, such as farmsteads, villages, and towns; gradual increases in craft specialization, production of field crops and tree crops; centralization of power; bureaucratization of production; stratification of society; and delocalization of the food supply. Nomadization, on the other hand, has been linked with partial or complete abandonment of settled areas; increased reliance on animals, usually involving annual movements of households between pasture lands and cereal lands; camping in tents, caves, and abandoned buildings; and increased reliance on tribal affiliation for access to lands and protection against hostile tribes and states. The ubiquitous occurrence of these processes throughout the countries of the Levant cannot be fully understood without reference to tribalism—the variously fluid notions of common lineal descent that, since prehistoric times, have served to provide a strong sense of in-group loyalty among individuals and families claiming membership in particular tribes. Because such notions have throughout the centuries been integral to local-level social organization among subsistence farmers and pastoralists alike, they have provided a basis for various types of cooperation between them, regardless of differences with respect to their methods of food production. In other words, tribalism has remained a persistent, extremely resilient, and pivotal constant, by means of which individual households and larger groups of kin have been able to move back and forth along

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the sedentism–nomadism continuum in response to changing economic and political fortunes. But, while tribalism has remained a common denominator of local-level social organization in the rural regions of the Levantine countries for millennia, how tribal lineages and genealogies have been conceptualized has varied as groups of kin have shifted back and forth along the nomadism–sedentism continuum. For example, as families have increased the amount of labor they have expended on clearing, terracing, plowing, planting, watering, and guarding particular plots of plowland, their sense of ownership and investment—along with feelings of ingroup loyalty and obligation—has heightened. A correlate of thus becoming more land-tied and hence more concerned with the inheritance of particular plots of land has typically been the formation of more-rigid, less-flexible lineages. On the other hand, a correlate of becoming more dependent on pasture animals and rangelands (i.e., becoming more range-tied) has typically been the adoption of looser, more-flexible lineages. Such lineages have facilitated the formation of cooperative networks by means of which subsistence pastoralists have been able to maintain control over widespread rangeland pastures, watering places, camping sites, storage depots, and burial grounds. It is important to emphasize, at this point, that most Levantine tribes (whether subsistence farmers or pastoralists) have been made up of a combination of land-tied and range-tied households. This is because, depending on shifts in economic and ecological conditions within a particular tribe’s homeland, a certain amount of sedentarization and nomadization has continually occurred among their members. It follows from this that, at any given point in time, nomadic, seminomadic, semisedentary, or sedentary households could be found living side-by-side within a given region. What has changed over time in any given region is the proportional extent to which each of these types of livelihoods was represented. That subsistence pastoralism is a very ancient phenomenon in the countries of the Levant is in little dispute. A question about which there is some debate is exactly how it began. While prehistoric archaeologists have found evidence of sheep and goats being domesticated as early as ten thousand years ago by early agriculturalists, it is uncertain exactly when and how subsistence pastoralism emerged as a specialized food-production strategy separate from settled agriculture. Recent research in Jordan suggests that it was the expansion of crop cultivation during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (ca. 6000–5500 b.c.e.) that pushed prehistoric agriculturalists into experimenting with migratory herding of animals away from arable areas. Such early pastoralism likely began with herds of goats, since goats are a greater hazard to cultivated fields than are sheep. The extent to which pastoralism developed in the Levant during Pottery Neolithic times (ca. 5500–4500 b.c.e.) is uncertain, although it is likely that it was during this period that sheep as well were added to mobile herding operations. There is some evidence that these animals were raised primarily for their

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meat until Chalcolithic times (ca. 4500–3500), when they began to be kept for their milk and wool as well. The emergence of the first cities during the Early Bronze Age provided additional impetus to specialized production of sheep and goats as expanding urban populations needed to be supplied with meat, milk, fiber, skins, and wool. This “secondary-products revolution” coincided with the ass’s coming into full use as a means of transport, thus facilitating the hauling to urban centers of animal products produced in distant pastures. By the end of the Early Bronze Age, specialized production of animals had developed to the point that subsistence pastoralism as a viable alternative to sedentary agriculture had become fully established. Throughout most of the Levant, this mobile production of animals typically involved some sort of transhumance, whereby shepherds would migrate with their flocks between summer and winter pastures. This ascendancy of nomadic lifestyles (especially toward the end of the Early Bronze Age) signals the beginning of the cycles of sedentarization and nomadization that from this time onward have left their marks on the Levantine cultural landscape. The history of subsistence pastoralism throughout the later periods of human occupation in the Levantine countries is known better for some regions than for others. In central Transjordan, for example, where a concerted effort has been made to reconstruct the long-term history of subsistence pastoralism by means of inference from archaeological, ethnoarchaeological, and textual data, periods of ascendancy and even dominance of subsistence pastoralism over sedentary agriculture have been tentatively identified. In this region they include the Early Bronze IV/Middle Bronze/Late Bronze, Persian/Early Hellenistic, Abbasid/Seljuq, and Ottoman periods. It is important to stress at this point that the task of ascertaining the specific centuries during which subsistence pastoralism was the dominant way of life in particular regions of the Levant has barely been begun. No doubt, as such research progresses, it will bring to light temporal and cultural patterns that will be to a considerable degree unique to each region. To the “secondary-products revolution” mentioned above, which appears to have played a pivotal role in leading to the ascendancy of the pastoral way of life as an alternative to village agriculture, three subsequent events must be added— events that had a profound effect on the development of subsistence pastoralism in the Levant. These are the introduction of the camel to the Levantine countries; the invention of the North Arabian saddle; and the recent introduction of the pickup truck. There seems to be general agreement among experts about the domestication of the one-humped camel or dromedary—possibly in Somalia—sometime during the third millennium b.c.e. Whereas, prior to camel domestication, subsistence pastoralists had to rely primarily on domestic sheep, goats, cows, and donkeys for their livelihoods, the introduction of the camel allowed them to penetrate deeper into the desert in search of pasture for their animals. This increased capacity for

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mobility in previously unpassable desert regions, in turn, led to new opportunities for camel-breeding nomads when it came to long-distance trade. It is a curious fact, in this regard, that as far as the Levantine countries are concerned, the camel does not appear to have played a very significant role either as a herding animal or as a transport animal until after about 1400 b.c.e. After this time, however, the camel’s importance gradually increases, apparently because of the burgeoning overland trade in incense. Whereas at first the control of this trade was in the hands of settled merchants, after about 500 b.c.e. the invention of the North Arabian saddle so increased the usefulness of the dromedary in transport that it put the camel-breeding nomads themselves in control of this trade, resulting in the rise of such desert commercial centers as Petra and Palmyra. The increased military and economic advantage provided by the camel and the North Arabian saddle and by subsequent technological advances related to riding and raiding by camel nomads marks the beginnings of what is often referred to as Bedouin society. The Bedouin’s auspicious ascent as the undisputed masters of the overland trade routes crisscrossing the Arabic Desert lasted, alas, but a few centuries. For, ironically, as Bulliet (1990: 104) points out, the very “technological changes that originally made it possible for desert tribes bordering settled empires to gain control of the trade passing through their lands eventually raised the military capacity of all the Arab tribes to such a level that anarchy replaced the control exercised by the first trading states.” No doubt there were also other factors that contributed to the waning role of the Bedouin when it came to control of overland trade routes, not the least of which was the deliberate and eventually successful attempts by the Roman overlords of ancient Palestine to take over this control. Over the nearly two millennia that have passed since then, the fortunes of the Bedouin in regard to control of desert trade routes in Arabia have waxed and waned. Pivotal to the persistence of their way of life in the face of constantly shifting political fortunes has been their skill as breeders of camels, horses, sheep, and goats, and their intimate knowledge of the desert. Likewise, their resilient social organization invariably has included complex partnerships, not only among their own kind, but also with villagers and townspeople bordering their desert territories. The 20th century has brought enormous challenges and changes to the Bedouin way of life. In both Israel and Jordan, their numbers have dwindled as their traditional dry-season pastures in the settled areas have been converted to intensive cultivation of legumes, vegetables, and fruit trees; and their traditional raiding and collecting of protection taxes from villagers and townspeople have been stopped by local governments. Furthermore, the introduction of well-guarded national borders has impeded their traditional long-distance migrations. Despite these changes, however, the Bedouin continue to survive, and, because of their expertise at utilizing some of the most marginal lands in the world, they have an important contribution to make to the economies of their host countries. Their strategies for doing so are likely to change, however, not the least

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because of modern technology. Thus, the camel as a means of desert transport is rapidly being replaced by trucks, especially smaller pickup trucks. As such changes continue to be introduced, the question remains whether the Bedouin way of life will persist as a type of subsistence pastoralism or whether, as some predict, it will become a Middle Eastern version of commercial ranching.

Bibliography Adams, R. McC. 1981 Heartland of Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barfield, Thomas J. 1993 The Nomadic Alternative. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Barth, Fredrik 1971 A General Perspective on Nomad-Sedentary Relations in the Middle East. Pp. 11–22 in The Desert and the Sown: Nomads in Wider Society, ed. Cynthia Nelson. Institute of International Studies, Research Series 21. Berkeley: University of California. Bar-Yosef, Ofer, and Khazanov, Anatoly (eds.) 1992 Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives. Monographs in World Archaeology 10. Madison: Prehistory Press. Bulliet, Richard W. 1990 The Wheel and the Camel. New York: Columbia University Press. Cribb, Roger 1991 Nomads in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dever, William G. 1992 Pastoralism and the End of the Urban Early Bronze Age in Palestine. Pp. 83– 92 in Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov. Monographs in World Archaeology 10. Madison: Prehistory Press. Eickelman, D. F. 1989 The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. Ephºal, Israel 1982 The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Border of the Fertile Crescent, 9th–5th Centuries b.c. Leiden: Brill. Finkelstein, Israel 1994 The Emergence of Israel: A Phase in the Cyclic History of Canaan in the Third and Second Millennia b.c.e. Pp. 150–77 in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, ed. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Naªaman. Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society. Galaty, John G., and Johnson, Douglas L. 1990 The World of Pastoralism: Herding Systems in Comparative Perspective. New York: Guilford. Garrard, A., et al. 1988 Summary of Palaeoenvironmental and Prehistoric Investigations in the Azraq Basin. Pp. 311–37 in The Prehistory of Jordan, ed. A. Garrard and H. Gebel. BAR International Series 396/2. Oxford: BAR. Khazanov, Anatoly M. 1984 Nomads and the Outside World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kohler-Rollefson, Ilse 1992 A Model for the Development of Nomadic Pastoralism on the Transjordanian Plateau. Pp. 11–18 in Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov. Monographs in World Archaeology 10. Madison: Prehistory Press. 1993 Camels and Camel Pastoralism in Arabia. Biblical Archaeologist 56/4: 180–88. LaBianca, Øystein S. 1988 Sociocultural Anthropology and Syro-Palestinian Archaeology. Pp. 369–87 in Benchmarks in Time and Culture, ed. Joel F. Drinkard, Gerald L. Mattingly, and J. Maxwell Miller. Atlanta: Scholars Press. 1990 Sedentarization and Nomadization: Food System Cycles at Hesban and Vicinity in Transjordan (Hesban I). Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press. Lees, S. H., and Bates, D. G. 1974 The Origins of Specialized Nomadic Pastoralism: A Systemic Model. American Antiquity 39: 187–93. Levy, Thomas E. 1983 The Emergence of Specialized Pastoralism in the Southern Levant. World Archaeology 15/1: 15–36. 1992 Transhumance, Subsistence, and Social Evolution in the Northern Negev Desert. Pp. 65–82 in Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov. Monographs in World Archaeology 10. Madison: Prehistory Press. Marfoe, Leon 1979 The Integrative Transformation: Patterns of Socio-Political Organization in Southern Syria. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 234: 1– 42. Marx, E. 1967 Bedouin of the Negev. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ovadia, Eran 1992 The Domestication of the Ass and Pack Transport by Animals: A Case of Technological Change. Pp. 19–28 in Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov. Madison: Prehistory Press. Rosen, Steven A., and Avni, Gideon 1993 The Edge of Empire: The Archaeology of Pastoral Nomads in the Southern Negev Highlands in Late Antiquity. Biblical Archaeologist 56/4: 189–99. Sherratt, A. 1983 The Secondary Exploitation of Animals in the Old World. World Archeology 15: 90–104. Spooner, B. 1971 Towards a Generative Model of Nomadism. Anthropological Quarterly 3: 198– 210. Swidler, W. W. 1971 Adaptive Processes Regulating Nomad-Sedentary Interaction in the Middle East. Pp. 23– 42 in The Desert and the Sown: Nomads in Wider Society, ed. Cynthia Nelson. Institute of International Studies, Research Series 21. Berkeley: University of California.

Øystein S. LaBianca

Agriculture Agriculture—literally, the cultivation of fields—encompasses the broad array of activities and knowledge whereby human communities exploit plants to produce food and other crops (fibers and oils). In the Levant, agriculture-based subsistence has nearly always included a component of pastoralism. The nature of agricultural systems is determined by the complex interaction of environment, population, and technology. Technology includes tools and techniques as well as cultural traditions—knowledge and social organization—for dealing with the material and social environment. Population size and distribution determine the number of hands available for agricultural tasks. The environmental determinant embraces both the physical environment—climate, soil, vegetation, and topography—and the cultural/historical environment, including the configuration of interregional political power. The study of agriculture in the Levant has periodically highlighted technological innovation, environmental change, or population growth as the key to explain the ebb and flow of farming. Yet none of these determinants can be isolated from the others. Environment is no static dictator but responds to technological treatment. Technologies generally depend on economic feasibility, largely a matter of labor supply in the ancient world. Population is no straightforward measure of available labor, since a constellation of cultural traditions and historical circumstances affects the weight of per capital labor burdens.

Origins of Agriculture Archaeological data relating to the origins of agriculture have mushroomed since Braidwood’s Jarmo expedition began systematically gathering botanical evidence for plant domestication (1960). The transition from the foraging cultures of the late Epipaleolithic (about 11,000–9,000 b.c.e.) to the farming cultures of the Neolithic (about 9,000–5000 b.c.e.) is documented by vegetal and animal remains, by prehistoric tools and facilities, and by human skeletal remains. Village life preceded farming. At sites such as Hanoyim, Mureybit, and Abu Hureya in the southern Levant and Syria, villagers gathered wild cereals and pulses. Centuries of harvesting wild cereals altered their characteristics. So, too, generations of year-round communal life forged new forms of social organization. Early foragers paved the way for the development of agriculture. One key element of current models of the origins of agriculture is the recognition that dense stands of wild cereal offered an attractive subsistence source for early foragers. Explanations of what motivated the shift from gathering bountiful wild harvests to conscious cultivation call upon climatic deterioration, more permanent and populous settlements, and the resulting pressure on local resources, as well as the emergence of new social forms and cultural traditions. All explanations still suffer from an insufficient database.

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Domesticated crops first appeared in the southern Levant about 9000 b.c.e. Usually preserved through fire-produced carbonization, domesticated cereal seeds possess plumper kernels than their wild counterparts and less brittle ears that resist shattering when ripe. Such morphological indicators of domestication do not exist for lentils, peas, bitter vetch, and chickpeas. Yet these pulses routinely join barley, emmer wheat, and einkorn wheat in the archaeobotanical material from this period of incipient farming villages (Pre-pottery or Aceramic Neolithic, about 9,000–6,000 b.c.e.). Grains and legumes were complementary crops at an early stage of agricultural development. Botanical finds at Jericho ( Jordan Valley), Aswad (near Damascus), Abu Hureya (western Syria), Çayönü (southeastern Anatolia), Yiftahel (Galilee), and ºAin Ghazal (near Amman) represent the spread of agricultural life. Though hunting mammals such as gazelle and gathering wild fruits and seeds continued alongside farming, settled life in these mudbrick villages was thoroughly committed to crop cultivation. A number of sites attain sizeable proportions and show signs of social differentiation (for example, ºAin Ghazal). They witness technological developments as well, including the building of rectilinear houses, with some employment of lime plaster and timber in their construction. Flax, harvested for its fiber (linen) as well as its oil, also shows up in the plant medleys of pre-pottery villages. Many sites show evidence of herding sheep and goats as well. Since these animals were domesticated in the Zagros region, their place in the subsistence systems of the Levant may manifest interregional exchange. Sheep and goats represent the other side of the exchange network that sent domesticated cereals northward from the Levant.

Agricultural Villages By about 6000 b.c.e., the agricultural village was well established in the Levant. Farming cereals and pulses and herding sheep, goats, pigs (sporadically), and cattle formed its economic basis, initiating an enduring pattern of mixed subsistence. Subsistence security was enhanced by the proliferation of free-threshing wheat (where the kernel is freed from its hull during threshing, obviating pounding before use) and six-row barley. Though data from the pottery Neolithic period remain scant, changes in the distribution of settlements reflected increasing reliability of subsistence systems. The Chalcolithic period (5,000–3,500 b.c.e.) added a crucial component to the subsistence repertoire: the cultivation of fruit trees. Preserved fruit pips outside the natural range of wild trees and vines offer the first signs of horticulture. The olive and the date palm appeared earliest. Domestication of the fig, likewise a native species, probably did not occur until the Early Bronze Age. The same holds for the imported pomegranate and grape vine (a Eurasian native). Domestication of fruit trees required substituting vegetative for sexual propagation, and these five fruits shared the capacity to be multiplied by simple cuttings, rootings, or transplanting of offshoots. More technically demanding grafting enabled the taming of apple, pear, and other trees, but only much later. The earliest examples

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of olives and dates have been found at the large, fourth-millennium Jordan Valley site of Teleilat Ghassul. These same two fruits also showed up in the botanical remains excavated from the Judean Desert Cave of the Treasure (Nahal Mishmar). While it is possible that the fruits were imported at both sites from zones where they grew wild, Chalcolithic sites in the Golan have produced numerous finds of olive wood, demonstrating the cultivation of the tree. Spouted kraters at the sites make sense as tentative separator vats for the production of olive oil. Fruits have not appeared among the Beersheva culture sites, where evidence points instead toward a greater commitment to pastoral pursuits.

Mediterranean Mixed Economy All of the elements of what has come to be known as the “Mediterranean mixed economy” were assembled decisively in the Early Bronze Age. The emergence of full-fledged Mediterranean agriculture and pastoralism coincided with Palestine’s first urban period. The self-same transition took place earlier in Mesopotamia and Egypt, as the development of these riverine civilizations sprinted ahead. Yet both contexts experienced fundamentally the same dynamic: urbanization, intensification of agricultural production, and interregional trade. The population landscape showed the first signs of this transformation. Palestine witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of settlements and a conspicuous shift toward less arid plains and valleys, encompassing the highland region as well. Minimally two-tiered settlement patterns constellated villages around walled cities in the Levant, as they had previously done in Mesopotamia. Botanical remains from Bâb ed-Dhr⺠and Numeria on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea illustrate the changed economic regime. The major crop, barley, included the bounteous six-row variety. Figs and grapes joined the olive in the fruit assemblage. Flax was grown, and the large size of the preserved seeds suggests that it was an irrigated crop. Coupled with the large amounts of linen discovered in burials, the flax seeds suggest the appearance of a local textile industry. Faunal remains extended beyond the predominate sheep and goats to include the donkey, a crucial pack animal. Increasingly productive grain fields, expanding investment in horticulture, intensified production of selected crops, local industry, and advancing trade—in sum, intensified agriculture yielding a greatly augmented total economic product—are in evidence throughout the Levant. The ceramic repertoire included transport containers for oils and ointments—notably Abydos ware and metallic combed ware. Storejars of metallic ware have been found in conjunction with an elaborate oil press at Early Bronze Age Ugarit. Abydos jugs were widely distributed, ranging from southern Egypt to the northern coastland of Syria. An impressive array of goods was already flowing between Egypt and the southern Levant by the initial phase of the Early Bronze period. The EB III granary by Beth-yerah (near the Sea of Galilee), with its capacity of approximately one and one-half tons of grain, illustrates the expansion of grain production. Animal bone remains point to a likely contributor to this augmented

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capacity; the increased incidence of ox bones calls attention to the first widespread appearance of this draft animal in Palestine. The thousand-year old scratch plow (ard ), already in use in Mesopotamia at least during the Uruk period (4000– 3200 b.c.e.), must have cut furrows behind this source of tradition. Though textual sources do not exist, the collection and distribution of such qualities of grain demands no less a “managerial revolution” than transpired in Mesopotamia. The mechanisms by which this grain was produced for storage may have included elements of elite “stimulation” of increased production. More crucial were the growing abilities of an urban-based elite to “extract” or appropriate the product of subsistence cultivators, including the “normal” surplus produced as a buffer by village agriculturalists. During the Early Bronze Age, interaction between urban and rural spheres constituted the emergent economic context in which subsistence strategies developed over thousands of years bent to new urban-based demands. Typically for the Levant, this process took place in the context of increasing relations with more highly organized and more powerful neighbors, in this case, a unified Egypt.

Rainfall and Risk-Spreading The basic structure of the Mediterranean mixed economy achieved fully by the Early Bronze Age rests on the region’s sharp climatic bi-seasonality. Five months of rainless summer bake the soil hard. The winter rains must fall to inaugurate the plowing of the fields. Throughout most of the region precipitation is ample, above the eight-inch level necessary for dry farming, yet it is squeezed into a short, five-month rainy season. Moreover, throughout most of the Levant rainfall is notoriously erratic. The frustrating rainfall regime elicited a variety of coping strategies, from field techniques to exchange systems. Chief among these was risk-spreading, by which farmers attempted to diversify their productive base so as not to depend too greatly on any one variably productive pursuit. Farmers diversified especially by the cultivation of tree and vine crops, which at the same time matched the region’s fractured geography with limited expanses of level land. Plains and valley bottoms—from the Madaba Plains of central Jordan to the basin of the Orontes river in Syria—were always the focus of agricultural efforts. But farming extended into the highland regions. This terrain was perfectly suited to horticulture. Heavier rainfall and hilly topography demanded terrace construction to stabilize hillside soils and control runoff. Archaeological documentation of terrace construction, though still sporadic, stretches back to the Early Bronze Age. The widespread adoption of terraces was regularly limited by the high labor costs demanded by their construction and maintenance. Short-term challenges preoccupied subsistence-oriented agriculturalists. Yet terraced-based horticultural development held the key to any long-term highland agricultural tenancy. Like pastoralism, horticulture complemented rain-fed grain cultivation. Many of its products were storable (wine and raisins, olive oil, and fig cakes) and made essential dietary contributions (for example, sugar and fat). Horticulture provided a

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resource subject to a somewhat different set of environmental hazards than field crops, whose yields were not only erratic but notably meager. Moreover, the transportability of tree and vine products facilitated the creation of specialized regional economies and interregional exchange.

Subsistence-Pattern Oscillations The building, dismantling, and rebuilding of the Mediterranean mixed economy has stamped the ebb and flow of Levantine civilization since the Early Bronze Age. These subsistence-pattern oscillations represent movements along an increasingly well-understood and documented pastoral-agricultural continuum. At one end of this spectrum, periods of high-intensity agriculture manifest relatively higher population densities; settlement patterns with recognizable central places; specialization of production in agricultural, industrial, and pastoral pursuits, including the production of market-oriented goods; integration into interregional and international trading networks; and heightened investments in permanent production facilities, transportation, food storage, and water and soil management. At the spectrum’s other end, periods of agricultural abatement produce low-intensity constellations dominated by subsistence-oriented nomadic pastoralists. A relatively lower sedentary population density clings to a decentralized landscape with fewer settled towns and villages, while nonsedentary folk spread out in seasonal encampments. Regional isolation dampens trade, and production for self-consumption produces few large-scale permanent facilities. Many factors are associated with movement along this continuum. Agricultural intensification is propelled by population growth, centralization, expanding markets and international trade, bureaucratic direction, and innovation. Abatement is connected to environmental degradation, population decline, loss of trading opportunities, political disintegration, and military defeat. The Iron Age marked a particularly sharp and well-documented spike in the course of Levantine agricultural history. The Palestinian region is particularly well documented. There settlement patterns signal a thoroughgoing intensification of agricultural subsistence. The crucial context of this agricultural trajectory was the expansion of the Assyrian Empire and the florescence of Mediterranean trade. Increasing population density, growing urbanization and centralization, and burgeoning trade and militarization contributed to agricultural industrialization and commercialization. Olive oil and wine production flourished. Terrace technology spurted forward, reclaiming denuded hillside slopes. The terraces were accompanied by hundreds of rock-cut presses throughout highland regions where wine production progressed at both industrial sites (for example, Gibeon north of Jerusalem) and dispersed farmsteads. The addition of a beam to the press advanced pressing technology, adding leverage to extract grape juice and olive oil more proficiently. Signs of bureaucratic management of production and distribution took the form of royally stamped wine jar handles. The enormous concentration of olive oil production facilities at 7th-century Ekron on the southern Palestinian coast demonstrates the economic benefits of proximity to

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the sea and the access it afforded Mediterranean commerce. The overall intensification stretched even to the arid lands of the Negev, where runoff farming created costly wadi terraces, catchments, and even diversion systems to trap a meager rainfall. With its emphasis on commodity production, Iron Age agricultural intensification supplies a signal instance of urban manipulation of the economy. The ambitions of agricultural intensification supplanted the subsistence-oriented objectives of villages.

New Research Strategies Charting the dynamic relationship between urban and rural zones is one area that benefits from emergent archaeological strategies that pursue quantitative reconstructions of ancient agricultural economies. In the absence of ancient agricultural records, researchers turn to data from preindustrial societies to posit levels of yields and proportions of various crops and animals, as well as human dietary needs. These data are collected in ethnoarchaeological fieldwork or are mined from the census figures of the late premodern and even the earlier Ottoman periods. Such data can be placed next to other archaeological indicators to enable assessments of agricultural intensity. Recently receiving increased attention, paleo-osteological analysis of faunal remains—stratified bone refuse—permits characterizations of animal production systems and their temporal development. Because of the interdependency of pastoral and farming systems, these data decisively advance the reconstruction of ancient agricultural subsistence systems.

Bibliography Borowski, O. 1987 Agriculture in Iron Age Israel. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Eitam, D., and Heltzer, M. 1996 Olive Oil in Antiquity: Israel and Neighboring Countries from the Neolithic to Early Arab Period. Padua: Sargon. Finkelstein, I. 1988 The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Halstead, P., and O’Shea, J. 1989 Bad Year Economics: Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hesse, B., and Wapnish, P. 1985 Animal Bone Archaeology: From Objectives to Analysis. New York: Tarazacum. Hopkins, D. C. 1985 The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age. Social World of Biblical Antiquity 3. Decatur, Ga.: Almond. LaBianca, Ø. S. 1990 Sedentarization and Nomadization: Food System Cycles at Hesban and Vicinity in Transjordan. Hesban 1. Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press. Nissen, H. J. 1988 The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000–2000 b.c. Translated by E. Lutzeier with K. J. Northcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Stager, L. E. 1985 The Firstfruits of Civilization Pp. 172–88 in Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages: Papers in Honor of Olga Tufnell, ed. N. Tubb. London: Institute of Archaeology, London University. Zohary, D., and Hopf, M. 1988 Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Cultivated Plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley. Oxford: Clarendon.

David C. Hopkins

Roads and Highways The geopolitical history of the southern Levant was profoundly influenced by the region’s roads. For example, the roads determined to a large degree the area’s demographic patterns throughout history, since towns and cities generally grew up along lines of communication. Moreover, the locations of roads dictated the movements of armies, royalty, messengers, merchants, and ordinary citizens and consequently played a major role in the region’s history. Roads probably appeared in the southern Levant during the earliest periods of intensive settlement. A network of roads, or at least footpaths, presumably developed as early as the Neolithic period, servicing the various Neolithic communities, whose similar cultural remains suggest that trade relations and lines of communication connected the settlements of the region. By the Early Bronze Age, the presence of a network of roads in the southern Levant is attested by the lines of Early Bronze Age sites that grew up along the region’s natural lines of communication. For example, a line of Early Bronze Age towns developed in Lower Galilee along the route that in medieval times was called the Darb el-Hawarneh, a thoroughfare connecting Transjordan with Acco and Phoenicia. Other lines of Early Bronze Age towns grew up along such natural lines of communication as the coastal route of south and central Palestine, the Farºah Valley route, the Carmel coastal route, and the Acco plain route. Since wheeled vehicles such as carts and wagons are attested for this period, it is safe to assume that the main roads of the period were wide enough to accommodate vehicular traffic, being at least two lanes in width. During the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, historical records witness the dramatic increase in vehicular traffic, especially chariots, in the Levant, suggesting the further development of roads in the region. These records also mention specific roads. For example, both the Annals of Thutmose III and the Letter of the Satirical Scribe mention the highway through the Megiddo Pass and note the fact that it was so narrow that at one point it was only one lane—a detail that was seen as unusual by the Egyptian writers. The road system of the region as it flourished during the Iron Age has been the subject of a more systematic study, with the result that the nature of the roads of this period is better understood than for previous periods. As during earlier periods, the roads of the Iron Age were unpaved. The assertion of Josephus that Solomon paved the roads leading to Jerusalem with black stones (Ant. 8.7, 4) is anachronistic. Evidence suggests that roads were generally two lanes in width, with wider ones of three or more lanes undoubtedly existing. Roads were prepared and maintained by a process of leveling and smoothing the roadbed and removing obstacles

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such as rocks. This process of maintenance was presumably the responsibility of the government and would have been carried out during the spring of each year by corvée teams following the destructive winter rains. To deal with the problem of crossing rivers and streams, the technology of both bridges and ferries was available during the Iron Age. Bridges, both permanent bridges and boat-bridges, were employed in Mesopotamia; and ferries are attested in Egypt during this period. There is no evidence, however, of either bridges or ferries being used in the Levant during this period. Roads apparently simply employed fords. In all of the instances in written records of travelers arriving at rivers, the travelers either simply forded the rivers or required divine intervention to cross. Roads of this period generally passed by cities rather than through them. This was due to two factors. First, cities of the Iron Age, as during earlier periods, often sat on hills or tells overlooking the surrounding terrain, which made it quite impractical to have a thoroughfare climb up to a city when it could more easily pass by below. Second, cities were fortified with walls and generally had only one gate, making passage through the city impossible. Access roads allowed travelers to “turn aside” from the main road to enter the city. Many highways of the period were guarded by government-sponsored forts placed at strategic points along the roads, especially roads through deserts and fringe areas. Numerous such forts have been found in archaeological surveys, and some have been excavated. From written evidence it also appears that way stations and inns served the roads of the Levant during the period. Roads were generally named according to their destinations. The “Bethshemesh Road” mentioned in 1 Sam 6:12 was the road that led to the town of Beth-shemesh; the “Bashan Road” (Num 14:25; Deut 3:1) was the highway leading to Bashan; and the Beth-haggan Road (2 Kgs 9:27) was the road leading to Bethhaggan. The major exception to this practice appears to be the designation “the King’s Highway”; however, this designation was not the name of a road but a descriptive designation for a particular kind of road, to be translated ‘the main road’ or ‘the public road’. Since no clearly identifiable physical traces of roads from the Iron Age have been discovered in the southern Levant, the reconstruction of the courses of these bygone thoroughfares is inferential, involving at least four lines of evidence. First, there may be evidence for a particular road in the historical sources. For example, the highway that went from Bethel to Shechem, passing west of Shiloh, is mentioned in Judg 21:19. Second, the lines of ancient settlements, as revealed by archaeological excavations or surveys, may testify to the existence of an ancient thoroughfare, since roads determined settlement patterns. Cities, towns, villages, way stations, forts, and so forth tend to grow up along roads; and, long after a road has fallen into disuse and has disappeared, the visible ruins of settlements that once existed along it attest to the road’s erstwhile existence. Third, the lines of later routes, including Roman, medieval, and 19th-century roads, may preserve the courses of earlier,

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unpaved roads, since these later roads generally simply followed the courses of earlier roads. Finally, the geographical and topographical conditions of an area must be taken into consideration in ascertaining the courses of ancient routes, since these realities determined the courses taken by roads to a large degree. Mountain passes, river fords, harbors, easily traversed valleys, ascents, springs, and other features attracted roads, while deep canyons, high mountains, swamps, deserts, and unfordable rivers were natural barriers, to be avoided by roads. On the basis of these lines of evidence, the courses of some 245 roads have been discovered in a study of ancient Israel’s road network. These include: 62 north–south roads that ran through Israel’s coastal plain, including the main international coastal highway and its numerous alternates; 9 routes leading from the northern Sharon plain toward the Beqaº Valley; 33 highways connecting the coastal route with northern Transjordan; 34 north–south routes in the highlands of Judea and Samaria; 5 north–south routes in the western Arabah and the Shephelah; 14 local and lateral thoroughfares in Galilee, 29 in Samaria, and 59 in Judah. During the Roman era many of the thoroughfares of the region were paved. The technology of Roman roads, which featured superb foundations, adequate drainage, and one or more layers of cement or stone paving designed to last for centuries, has been studied by R. J. Forbes and by L. Casson. The remains of many of these paved Roman highways can still be seen today throughout the region. Roman roads in the Levant were generally two to four lanes in width. Roman roads discovered in the Jordan wilderness measured from 10 to 40 feet in width. One of the Roman roads through the Beth-shan Valley measured some 30 feet in width—at least a five-lane highway. The Roman roads of the region have been the subject of several ongoing studies, including those of I. Roll.

Bibliography Aharoni, Y. 1979 Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography. Philadelphia: Westminster. Avi-Yonah, M. 1936 Map of Roman Palestine. Quarterly of the Department of Antiquity in Palestine 5: 139–93. Casson, L. 1974 Travel in the Ancient World. Toronto: Hakkert. Dorsey, D. A. 1987. Shechem and the Road Network of Central Samaria. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 268: 57–70. 1991 The Roads and Highways of Ancient Israel. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Forbes, R. J. 1934 Notes on the History of Ancient Roads and Their Construction. Amsterdam: NoordHollandsche Uitgevers. 1965 Land Transport and Road-Building. Pp. 131–92 in vol. 2 of A History of Technology, ed. Charles Singer et al. Leiden: Brill.

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Goodchild, R. G. 1958 Evolution of the Roman Roads. Pp. 500–509 in vol. 2 of A History of Technology, ed. Charles Singer et al. London: Clarendon. Karmon, Y. 1961 Geographical Influences on the Historical Routes in the Sharon Plain. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 93: 43–60. Roll, I. 1976 Map No. 12: Roman Road System, Third Century a.d.—Pictorial Archive (Near Eastern History) Est. Jerusalem: The Archive. Wilkinson, J. 1975 The Way from Jerusalem to Jericho. Biblical Archaeologist 38: 10–24.

David A. Dorsey

Nautical Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean The earliest evidence for seafaring in the Mediterranean comes from the Franchthi Cave on the Greek mainland, where obsidian from the island of Melos was worked into tools as early as the tenth millennium b.c.e. In the eastern Mediterranean, seafarers reached the Akrotiri Peninsula of Cyprus in the ninth millennium b.c.e. By 6000 b.c.e. both Cyprus and Crete had been permanently colonized by small farming communities. Such a feat must have required vessels with the capacity to transport large quantities of both people and animals. Unfortunately, we can only speculate about the construction and appearance of these unknown water craft. The picture grows clearer by the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000– 2000 b.c.e.), with the first unmistakable depiction of a sailing ship on an Egyptian vase of approximately 3100 b.c.e. Scenes of Egyptian seagoing ships are shown in two reliefs from the Fifth Dynasty temples of Sahure at Abusir and Unas at Saqqara. Egyptian seagoing ships were so long and slender that they had to be outfitted with a rope truss, that ran the length of the vessel and could be tightened to provide the longitudinal stiffening required for sea travel. This “hogging truss” was the Egyptian way of fortifying a Nilotic river boat for the rougher waters of the Mediterranean. Most Egyptian boats, such as the ship of Cheops discovered at Giza in 1952, were river craft built without keels or internal frames; planks were simply lashed or mortised together. The lashed construction technique dominated Egyptian shipbuilding but seems never to have attained the same predominance elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The creation of the sail and the ability to harness the winds meant that a ship could travel longer distances more efficiently, because it was not forced to rely exclusively on the manpower of its oarsmen. However, nothing influenced the sailing season in the eastern Mediterranean more than the winds. During the summer months the etesians, or modern meltemi, blow strong and steady from the north or northwest. With minimal changes in tides and currents, ancient sailors could navigate the eastern Mediterranean with little difficulty by following a counterclockwise route. Egyptians traveling northward along the rugged Levantine coast may have anchored in the small coves at Jaffar, Dor, or ºAtlit before reaching the more desirable port city of Acco on the Bay of Haifa. The ultimate destination of many Egyptian ships was the port city of Byblos, which remained Egypt’s principal source of timber, particularly Lebanese cedar, throughout Pharaonic times. The Tale of Wenamun from approximately 1075 b.c.e. describes the adventures of an official from the Temple of Amun at Karnak who is dispatched to Byblos to obtain wood for building the great bark of Amun. A millennium earlier,

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at the beginning of the Middle Bronze IIA period (ca. 2000–1800 b.c.e.), the settlement pattern of Palestine shifted dramatically toward the coastal plains—a direct reflection of the increased importance of seafaring. With the rise of the great Canaanite city-states in the east and the Minoans to the west on the island of Crete, the eastern Mediterranean became a maritime maze of people, ideas, and goods. Ships sailed to Cyprus for copper; to Egypt for gold, faience, and stone; to the Aegean for pottery (or its contents); and to the Levant for timber, ivory, oil, and grain. In order to appreciate fully the intensely international nature of trade in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean, one need look no further than the Uluburun shipwreck. The excavation of this wreck, which lay in 145 to 170 feet of water off the coast of southern Turkey, was directed by George Bass and Cemal Pulak of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A & M University between 1984 and 1994. Dendrochronological testing has determined that the ship most likely sank shortly after 1305 b.c.e. Raw materials constituted the ship’s primary cargo, with 10 tons of copper, in the form of 354 ox-hide and 130 bun ingots, and one ton of tin, also in ingot form. Ongoing chemical analyses of the copper ingots indicate that they are of Cypriot origin. Additional cargo included nearly one ton of terebinth resin in over 145 Canaanite amphoras; 175 blue glass ingots; 135 pieces of Cypriot pottery; thousands of glass and stone beads; gold and silver scrap jewelry; cedar and blackwood logs; ostrich eggs; hippopotamus teeth; and a whole elephant tusk. Also retrieved from the wreck were 5 faience drinking cups, a biconical gold chalice, and the only gold scarab known to carry the name of Nefertiti, wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. The rich and very diverse cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck makes it difficult, but not impossible, to determine where the ship originated, who was on board, and where it was going. The cargo itself could have been taken on in Cyprus or Syria or both. Personal items from the ship, such as amulets, a razor, and a partially gilded bronze female figurine, as well as the tools, lamps, and galley ware that make up the ship’s equipment, all have Syro-Palestinian parallels. The recovery of Mycenaean beads, razors, knives, spears, lentoid seals, a pair of swords, and two dozen utilitarian pottery vessels is thought to reflect the presence of at least one Mycenaean Greek on board. The excavators conclude that the ship set sail from a port in Cyprus or Syria (perhaps Ugarit) and was probably bound for the Aegean when it was wrecked at Uluburun. Furthermore, prestige goods found on the ship suggest that this was at least in part a royal voyage, because many items recall the gift exchange between kings that is so vividly described in the Amarna Letters. The Mycenaeans on board the ship would then have served as emissaries accompanying these items. When all of the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck had been removed, a portion of the ship’s hull was found intact on the rocky slope. Examination of the remains has shown that the hull was constructed using pegged mortise-and-tenon joinery, the traditional construction technique of Greco-Roman shipwrights. In this method the hull planks are edge-joined to one another and to the keel by fit-

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ting tenons into precut mortises and locking the tenons in place with pegs driven from the inside. The assembled planks form a very sturdy, watertight “shell” into which frames are inserted for added lateral stiffening. The preserved section of the Uluburun hull has revealed that the original ship was some 50 feet long, with keel and planking of cedar, and tenons and pegs of oak. Curiously, no frames were found, although it is conceivable that the Uluburun hull remains are simply too meager to contain evidence of the ship’s framing pattern. Prior to the discovery of the Uluburun shipwreck, the earliest example of a pegged mortise-and-tenon ship was a vessel that sank off the northern coast of Cyprus 1000 years later. The Kyrenia ship, excavated by Michael Katzev in 1968 and 1969, was a Greek merchantman that sank in or shortly after 306 b.c.e. More than 75 percent of the ship’s hull survived and has been the subject of detailed research by ship reconstructionist J. Richard Steffy. The Kyrenia ship, which measured 46 feet long and 14 feet in beam, was constructed almost entirely of Aleppo pine, with oak tenons and pegs. Radiocarbon tests have shown that the timbers were cut approximately 389 b.c.e., making the vessel more than 80 years old when it finally sank. Steffy found that the Kyrenia ship had been hauled out of the water at least twice for repairs, which involved sealing the entire hull with a protective layer of pitch and lead sheathing, as well as replacing rotten planks, a section of the keel, and a floor timber. The Kyrenia ship carried a cargo of wine in nearly 400 amphoras, most of which were Rhodian, as well as almonds and millstones from the island of Nisyros. The nationality and size of the ship’s crew were deduced from the galley ware, which was Rhodian and recovered in multiples of four. The absence of personal items on the ship, coupled with the presence of eight iron spearpoints embedded in the hull’s lead sheathing, led Katzev to conclude that the ship was seized by pirates shortly before it sank. The reconstructed remains of the Kyrenia ship are on display inside Kyrenia’s Crusader Castle, and a full-scale replica of the vessel, built in 1985, is currently berthed in southern Greece. It is worth noting that, while mortise-and-tenon joinery was the predominant method of ship construction in the Mediterranean for almost 2,000 years, it was not without its variations. An interesting example from the eastern Mediterranean is Israel’s Maºagan Michael shipwreck, excavated in 1988 and 1989 by Elisha Linder of the University of Haifa’s Recanati Center for Maritime Studies (CMS). The wreck lay in 5 feet of water, under 5 feet of sand. The 12 tons of schist (stone) that had originally served as ballast were of key importance in protecting the submerged timbers from destruction by marine organisms. The ship itself, which is estimated to have been 43 feet long and 13 feet in beam, was built almost entirely of pine, using the traditional “shell-first” mortise-and-tenon method. The excavators were quick to observe, however, that at the ship’s extremities the planks were sewn or lashed to the endposts through triangular holes in the stem and sternpost. The use of ligatures to fasten a ship longitudinally (not laterally, as in Egyptian ships) is known from at least four wrecks in the western Mediterranean, and one recently explored near Bodrum, Turkey at the site of Pabuç Burnu. Many

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of these lashed ships appear to be Greek and all date to the 6th century b.c.e. Artifacts retrieved from the Maºagan Michael shipwreck included carved wooden boxes; a tool kit; large quantities of rope; and 70 pieces of Cypriot pottery that date the wreck to the late 5th century b.c.e. Following conservation (currently underway), the reassembled ship will be exhibited at the University of Haifa. Between 1999 and 2001, the author assisted in INA’s excavation of another fifth-century b.c.e. shipwreck, this one off the coast of Turkey at Tektav Burnu. This small, local merchantship, which sank between 440 and 425 b.c.e., constitutes rare and important evidence for maritime trade at a time when Athens ruled the Aegean. Another noteworthy find was made in Israel’s Sea of Galilee in 1986. Severe drought had exposed the remains of a small wooden boat, which would have promptly deteriorated had it not been rescued in a salvage excavation directed by Shelley Wachsmann for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums. The Galilee boat is 26 feet long, 6!/2 feet wide, with pegged mortise-and-tenon joined cedar planks and frames fashioned out of naturally curved oak tree limbs. Five other wood types are present on the vessel, suggesting that the woods preferred for construction were either unavailable or unaffordable in this area at the time. Radiocarbon analyses and associated artifacts indicate that the vessel had a relatively long use-life during the 1st century b.c.e. and/or the 1st century c.e. The Galilee boat was a working man’s boat; it likely served primarily as a fishing boat, but also as a transport. Wachsmann likens the boat to a vessel depicted in a mosaic from nearby Migdal, where Jews and Romans clashed in battle in c.e. 67. The Galilee boat probably carried a crew of five, recalling descriptions of the boats manned by the Jews at Migdal ( Josephus, Jewish War 3.522–31) and those used by Jesus’ apostles (Mark 1:20 and John 21:2–3). The Galilee boat saw numerous repairs during its lifetime, and many of its timbers had been recycled from other vessels. In the end, the Galilee boat seems to have met the same fate: its deck, stem, sternpost, and steering gear were intentionally removed, presumably for reuse on another boat. Following the discovery of the vessel, the media immediately dubbed it “the Jesus boat,” although there is no scientific means of connecting the boat to any historical person or event. The Galilee boat has been conserved and is on display at the Yigal Allon Center in Ginnosar. Proof of the potentially enormous size of Roman merchant ships was uncovered near Caesarea Maritima in 1976. Excavations by Michael Fitzgerald of Texas A & M University during the 1980s revealed a portion of a lead-sheathed Roman hull that is estimated to have been 130–45 feet long. The Caesarea ship was heavily built, with hefty, four-inch-thick, edge-joined pine planks and closelyspaced pine frames. A comparative analysis of the construction details enabled Fitzgerald to date the Caesarea ship to the 1st century c.e. The harbor at Caesarea, commissioned by Herod the Great in the late 1st century b.c.e., represents one of the most ambitious ancient building programs known. An equally ambitious excavation project over the last two decades has exposed the walls, towers, breakwaters, and warehouses of the ancient harbor and has greatly enhanced the

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study of Roman hydraulic concrete. Caesarea’s foremost competitor for maritime traffic was the elaborate harbor at Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 332 b.c.e. Recent underwater exploration of Alexandria, directed by Jean-Yves Empereur of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), has located stone inscriptions, sculptured sphinxes, and more than 4,500 architectural blocks from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. With the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of the ancient world came important changes in shipbuilding technology. The reasons for these changes and their geographical extent are not entirely understood, but the changes themselves are visible in two wrecks from the eastern Mediterranean. The first of these is one of seven shipwrecks located in Tantura Lagoon, a harbor serving ancient Dor in Israel. Excavated jointly by INA and CMS under the direction of Shelley Wachsmann in 1994 and 1995, the Tantura A shipwreck is a 40-foot-long coaster dated to the late 5th or early 6th century c.e. The ship was assembled not “shell-first,” as tradition stipulated, but “frame-first,” by first bolting frames to the keel and then fastening the one-inch-thick pine planks to the frames with iron nails. The excavators found absolutely no evidence of mortises or tenons, but they did notice that the inside of the hull planking was charred, presumably as a result of char-bending the wet planks around standing frames. The second shipwreck, the 7th-century Yassıada ship, was excavated by INA between 1961 and 1964, and published by George Bass and Frederick van Doorninck in 1982. The mortise-and-tenon joinery of this hull could be called vestigial, because the unpegged tenons are too small and the mortises too widely spaced to make a meaningful contribution to the strength of the hull. The time and labor required to build a pegged mortise-and-tenon based ship clearly did not exist at this time, for the Yassiada ship was hastily built by lightly nailing planks to frames. The 65-foot-long ship carried a cargo of wine and was equipped to serve passengers warm meals prepared on an iron grill in the galley. Coins from the ship’s locker date the wreck to c.e. 626. A reproduction of the ship’s galley and stern quarters is exhibited in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Bodrum, Turkey. Some readers will have noticed that this brief synopsis has addressed only the ancient merchant ship and that the topic of naval affairs is conspicuously absent. The reason for this is that ancient warships are likewise conspicuously absent from the archaeological record. In all but the most exceptional cases, ancient hulls are preserved because the weight of their cargo contains them on the seabed. In time, the timbers are covered with sand or sediment, and they are thereby protected from destructive marine organisms. It is assumed that ancient warships, which carried little or no cargo, did not enjoy the benefit of this process. What we know of ancient war galleys comes mostly from iconographic and written sources, but also from an amazing discovery made in 1980 at ºAtlit, Israel. This is an expertly cast bronze ram, 7.5 feet long and !/2 inch thick, that once adorned the bow of a Hellenistic warship. Inside the ºAtlit ram were the remnants of that bow—16 timbers designed to distribute the shock of the

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ramming blow to the bottom of the ramming vessel. Research on the ºAtlit ram has shown that the primary goal of ramming was not to puncture the hull, which might cause the ram to become lodged in the enemy ship, but to deliver a blow that would separate the seams of a mortise-and-tenon built ship, causing it to sink. In this instance, the study of ancient naval tactics has been meaningfully enhanced by the excavation and analysis of numerous ancient merchant ships.

Bibliography Bass, G. F. 1987 Oldest Known Shipwreck Reveals Splendors of the Bronze Age. National Geographic 172/6: 692–733. Bass, G. F. (ed.) 1972 A History of Seafaring Based on Underwater Archaeology. London: Thames & Hudson. Bass, G. F., and van Doorninck, F. H. 1982 Yassiada: A Seventh-Century Byzantine Shipwreck. College Station: Texas A & M University Press. Carlson, D. N. forthcoming The Classical Greek Shipwreck at Tektav Burnu, Turkey. American Journal of Archaeology. Casson, L. 1995 Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World. 2d ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Casson, L., and Steffy, J. R. (eds.) 1991 The Athlit Ram. College Station: Texas A & M University Press. Empereur, J.-Y. 1998 Alexandria Rediscovered. New York: Braziller. Fitzgerald, M. A. 1994 The Ship. Pp. 163–223 in The Harbours of Caesarea Maritima: Results of the Caesarea Ancient Harbour Excavation Project 1980–85, Vol. II: The Finds and the Ship, ed. J. P. Oleson. BAR International Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Linder, E. 1992 Excavating an Ancient Merchantman. Biblical Archaeology Review 18/6: 24–35. Kahanov, Y. 1998 The Maªagan Mikhael Ship (Israel): A Comparative Study of Its Hull Construction. Pp. 155–60 in Construction navale maritime et fluviale: Approches archéologiques, historique et ethnologique, ed. P. Pomey and E. Rieth. Paris: Archeonautica / Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Pulak, C. M. 1998 The Uluburun Shipwreck: An Overview. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 27/3: 188–224. 1997 The Uluburun Shipwreck. Pp. 233–62 in Res Maritimae: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean from Prehistory to Late Antiquity, ed. S. Swiny, R. Hohlfelder, and H. W. Swiny. Atlanta: ASOR Archaeological Reports. Steffy, J. R. 1994 Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks. College Station: Texas A & M University Press.

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Swiny, H. W., and Katzev, M. L. 1973 The Kyrenia Shipwreck: A Fourth-Century b.c. Greek Merchant Ship. Pp. 339– 59 in Marine Archaeology, ed. D. J. Blackman. London: Archon. Wachsmann, S. 1998 Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant. College Station: Texas A & M University Press. 1995 The Sea of Galilee Boat: An Extraordinary 2000 Year Old Discovery. New York: Plenum. Wachsmann, S., and Kahanov, Y. 1997 Shipwreck Fall: The 1995 INA/CMS Joint Expedition to Tantura Lagoon, Israel. Institute of Nautical Archaeology Quarterly 24/1: 3–18.

Deborah N. Carlson

Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology The discipline of ethnography involves the study of living people to learn about the social, political, economic, and religious aspects of their societies. Ethnographic research began prior to the 20th century, when one goal was to collect and describe both exotic and ordinary artifacts for museum displays. In contrast, ethnoarchaeology is a more recent term, coined in 1900 by Jesse Walter Fewkes in his attempt to identify ancient sites according to Hopi migration legends passed down from one generation to the next. He chose to excavate sites in the American Southwest mentioned in the Hopi migration legends, but he found it difficult to associate the sites with the legends. Fewkes abandoned this project, but in calling himself an “ethno-archaeologist” he coined a new term, and this term has recently seen a revival, especially since the 1970s. Other names for ethnoarchaeology include action archaeology, living archaeology, and archaeological anthropology. Whereas ethnography is often, but not entirely, concerned with contemporary human behavior and how living societies function rather than the material products of the societies, archaeology deals largely with ancient material culture—in other words, the artifacts that people made. Ethnoarchaeology combines each of these disciplines in that it is the study of archaeologists of living peoples for the purpose of observing the variability in their artifacts and its relation to human behavior. The goal is to use these data to generate hypotheses to be tested archaeologically for the purpose of understanding and accounting for the sources of variability that archaeologists detect in the ancient material. To succeed, ethnoarchaeological fieldwork requires the selection of a community appropriate for addressing a particular issue confronted by the archaeologist, a commitment to long-term fieldwork within this community, and the rigorous recording of the activity under observation by using adequate sampling strategies that take into consideration as many variables as possible. One major difference between the field practices of ethnographers and ethnoarchaeologists is the manner in which they obtain data. Ethnographers rely heavily on interviews with informants. Ethnoarchaeologists also use interviews, but it is more important to them to observe activities and collect quantitative data that contribute to an objective study beyond mere impressions of a particular aspect of a society. The selection of an appropriate community for ethnoarchaeological fieldwork is essential for drawing up hypotheses from the ethnoarchaeological research for testing on ancient material. For instance, it is inappropriate to compare the work habits of contemporary potters who produce ceramics for the tourist market with ancient potters who made cooking pots, water jugs, and other utilitarian containers for use in the household or for sale to clientele. Instead, one must find traditional potters who make cooking

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Fig. 24. A potter from Kornos in Cyprus shapes the neck of a water jug as she rotates the turntable with her foot. Partially finished jugs in the foreground dry slightly before the handle is added. After the ropes tied around the lower body (to support the wet clay) are removed, the potter scrapes away excess clay to create a rounded bottom. 1986. G. London.

pots and water jugs. In other words, the social and economic conditions in the ancient and contemporary society should be comparable. Since all potters face similar problems related to the nature of the raw materials, it is possible to compare and contrast potters from different parts of the world as long as they use comparable tools and operate on the same scale of production and for the same local or regional use and distribution. To study village architecture, one can select a contemporary village in Iran or Syria to observe the house plan and construction, the activities carried out in the home, and the household composition. Unfired mudbricks, the traditional raw material for rural houses, have been used for millennia throughout the Middle East and therefore are useful for studies elsewhere related to demography, longevity or mudbrick houses, artifacts in the houses, interaction with neighboring settlements, and other similar issues. Each of these subjects is confronted by archaeologists when they study the ancient material, yet in traditional societies it is possible still to observe a comparable, dynamic situation. Given the rapid modernization of the world, traditional societies are either disappearing or changing, but ethnoarchaeologists can still record the older techniques before they cease entirely. As a result,

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there has been an increase in this kind of research since the 1970s. However, the goal of ethnoarchaeology is not merely to record how people produce, use, or do something; the goal of the fieldwork is to solve a specific problem encountered by archaeologists in the interpretation of ancient material. Much ethnoarchaeological research involves societies whose technologies are the most removed from Western culture, especially societies in which stone tools predominate over metal, as in parts of Africa, or in which people built homes of unfired mudbrick, as in the Middle East. Other studies deal with traditional butchering techniques, farming, herding, or almost anything that has ancient parallels. Butchering techniques are useful to learn not only how it is done but where, what happens to the bones, how many individuals and families share in the kill, and how often. These questions help archaeologists learn how better to interpret the bones found in excavations, the diets of ancient peoples, and the interactions among people. It is appropriate to study butchering (along with the distribution and discarding of animal bones) in other parts of the world and then to use the data for understanding the discard patterns of animal bones at ancient Near Eastern archaeological sites. Most valid for drawing hypotheses to test archaeologically are the ethnoarchaeological studies that involve long-term field projects and rigorous sampling strategies. An ethnoarchaeologist might observe how long it takes to make mudbricks to build one house, but a better strategy would be to observe the construction of ten or more houses over a period of time before drawing conclusions from which hypotheses can be formulated for archaeological testing. When selecting a sample to study within a community, one includes people of different families, generations, origins, and gender to obtain as much information as possible about the sources of variation in the finished product. One family might build a house differently from another. Styles can change from one generation to the next. All of these factors are important to consider to learn about the sources and causes of variability in the material culture, both in the contemporary society and in the ancient. In the areas encompassing the modern countries of Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, due to the persistence of traditional lifestyles in which some people continue to work as the generations before them did, without modern conveniences, ethnoarchaeologists can study the relationships between objects and people, including: producing, processing, distributing, and storing foods and goods; demography; land use; storage facilities; farming and harvesting techniques; construction practices for tents and buildings; and settlement patterns. For example, traditional houses today typically have only one window, have flat rooftops, and are of stone and brick construction. People use the roof for a variety of activities, such as food preparation and sleeping. The one window is designed to keep in the heat during the winter and keep it out during the hot summer months. These same criteria may have been important factors for designing houses in antiquity. One can learn who lives in tents for part of the year and when the same people maintain permanent but often unoccupied homes. These data

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have bearing on the demography, trade, and interaction among people, land, and water rights, and so forth. Although potters function in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, none of them works in a way that is comparable to the work of the female potters of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, who produce traditional goat milking pots, cheese and water jars, pita plates, three types of cooking pots, incense burners, and miniature vessels. In contrast, male potters working in small factories outside the cities use imported clays and glazes to create table and tourist wares made with electric equipment, wheels, or molds. The rural female potters use local clays on a wooden turntable rotated by hand or foot, a technique that is comparable to pottery production in antiquity (fig. 24). To conduct one ethnoarchaeological study, potters from four villages were chosen; quantitative data on the number of pots produced and fired together in a kiln, breakage in the kiln, types of pots produced, vessel dimensions and proportions, have been applied to archaeological materials from the ancient Near East. For example, pottery made in each of the Cypriote villages, though similar in appearance to the untrained eye, can be differentiated by subtle nuances in the manufacturing technique, incised decoration, and vessel proportions. These same criteria should enable archaeologists to identify ancient pottery made in different workshops or villages that operated in a single archaeological period. The longevity of pottery and the factors contributing to changes in surface appearance and vessel form in traditional societies help to explain similar characteristics in antiquity. Additionally, the work of individual potters can be identified in traditional societies as well as in antiquity. The meanings and purposes of marks incised into the wet clay can be learned as well as ways to use, clean, and repair particular vessels.

Bibliography Bar-Yosef, O., and Khazanov, A. (eds.) 1992 Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives. Monographs in Old World Archaeology 10. Madison, Wis.: Prehistory Press. Kramer, C. (ed.) 1979 Ethnoarchaeology, the Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press. London, G.; Egoumenidou, F.; and Karageorghis, V. 1989 Traditional Pottery in Cyprus. Mainz: von Zabern. London, G. (ed). 2000a Ethnoarchaeology I. Journal of Near Eastern Archaeology 63: 1. 2000b Ethnoarchaeology II. Journal of Near Eastern Archaeology 63: 2. Longacre, W. A. (ed.) 1991 Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Watson, P. J. 1980 The Theory and Practice of Ethnoarchaeology with Special Reference to the Near East. Paléorient 6: 55–64.

Gloria London

Ethnicity and Material Culture Ethnicity is a subject important to archaeologists working in the ancient Near East, in part due to texts mentioning the existence of peoples identified by different names. The Hebrew Bible, Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and other written sources refer to many groups living throughout the region. One goal of archaeologists has been to identify the location of specific groups of people known from the texts by assuming that each people will have artifacts or institutions that are distinctive or mutually exclusive. For example, painted Philistine pottery is considered a hallmark trait of the Philistine people because it is found in greatest concentration along the southern coast of the Levant, where according to the Hebrew Bible the Philistines lived. However, one cannot assume that wherever archaeologists find painted pottery of Philistine style the people who lived at the site were Philistines. One can consider the possibility that Philistine people were present at the site, but it is also possible that the pottery was brought to the site by other people who had minimal contact with the Philistine coastal region. The sites can be considered to belong to the Philistines only if there are elements other than painted pottery that differentiate it from sites inhabited by people of other ethnic groups. More than a single artifact, or even several aspects of the material culture, one needs behavioral evidence to distinguish among ethnic groups. Links between specific peoples and material culture, or the artifacts they used, have been made from the 19th century onward. However, the appropriateness of associating a people with particular artifacts has come under increasing scrutiny. Furthermore, the concept ethnicity has received considerably more attention than formerly, both in regard to ancient societies and in regard to our own society. It is assumed that the names of people mentioned in the texts represent ethnic groups, rather than linguistic, national, or religious entities. This is a debatable issue, but for the present one may understand the names to be ethnic designations. This requires a definition of ethnicity, yet it defies a simple, single definition because ethnic affiliation is not necessarily permanent, nor is it a unilateral designation. An ethnic group may be defined as “a people with mutual interests, based on common understandings and values.” Individuals might belong to one group and call themselves by a certain name, but other people might assign the same individuals to a different group with a different name, in part because ethnicity is neither permanent nor based on one factor alone; it is fluid and changes with time. People shift their allegiances and may belong to more than one ethnic group at any given moment. For example, although their lifestyles appear to vary considerably, pastoralists who herd sheep and goats may belong to the same ethnic group as villagers and urbanites in the Middle East. On the other hand, all urbanites who live in one city will not necessarily belong to the same ethnic group(s).

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Fig. 25. Four-room house excavated at El-ºUmeiri in Jordan. Photo courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project—ºUmeiri. Drawing by R. Root.

If we accept the above definition of ethnicity, and the hypothesis that the names of groups mentioned in the ancient documents may represent diverse ethnic groups, we then confront the problem of identifying these groups based on their material culture. Can one determine whether Philistines lived at a site where the so-called Philistine painted pottery is found or determine whether it was brought to the site by a middleman selling pottery or someone who visited the coastal region where the Philistine pottery was produced? If the pottery is found in significant quantity at sites along the southern coast of the Levant, in architecturally distinct houses, and if it was made using a technique differing from contemporaneous ceramic technologies, one might legitimately conclude that Philistines were in residence. In this instance, a specific artifact made in a manner unlike other wares has a spatial distribution that coincides with the region attributed to the Philistines in the ancient texts. It is the overlap of several different factors, including behavior, that allows one to associate the sites with the Philis-

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Fig. 26. Collared-rim storage jars excavated at El-ºUmeiri. Photo courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project–ºUmeiri. Drawing by L. Herr.

tines. Conversely, in the case of painted Philistine pottery found outside the Levantine littoral, in tombs or homes not typical of the coast, there is little reason to assume a Philistine presence. A highly debated topic in biblical archaeology since its inception has been identifying the earliest Israelite settlements in Canaan, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Archaeologists and biblical scholars assumed that the Canaanites and Israelites were two distinct ethnic groups, identifiable by a specific material culture. Different artifacts, including architecture, farm technology, pottery, religious artifacts, and settlement pattern were defined for each group; but more recently the differences have been explained by some scholars as two aspects of a single group with urban and rural components (fig. 25). One reason for the new interpretation was the occurrence of a specific jar, initially associated with the Israelites, in areas outside the region traditionally associated with them in the biblical accounts (fig. 26). Rather than revealing ethnicity, the jar reveals the economic need to store foodstuffs, regardless of the owners’ ethnicity. Bearing this need in mind, one would expect to find collared rim store jars in rural settlements rather than in cities, wherever the rural settlements existed and in areas inhab-

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ited by Israelites, Canaanites, or others. Food storage is a requirement in all villages, regardless of their location or residents. Language is another cultural element that does not necessarily indicate ethnicity. People living in one region might have a single language in common, such as Turkish, but speak and use more than one language and be known as Arabs rather than Turks. Consequently, although archaeologists excavate artifacts bearing names of individuals, it is not necessarily possible to associate the names with specific ethnic groups. Archaeologists compare and contrast material culture from different places to determine the ethnicity of the people who produced and used the artifacts, but the fallacy of this approach is becoming increasingly apparent. Ethnoarchaeological field studies could identify which factors are useful for discerning ethnicity. Ethnoarchaeologists might observe and use quantitative data to record the behavior of people of different ethnic groups who lives in a single region to determine how each ethnic group behaves, identifies itself, and is identified by others.

Bibliography Adams, W. Y. 1979 On the Argument from Ceramics to History: A Challenge Based on Evidence from Medieval Nubia. Current Anthropology 20: 727– 44. Barth, F. 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown. Cohen, R. 1978 Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 379– 403. Dever, W. G. 1995 Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origins. Biblical Archaeologist 58: 200–213. 2001 What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Kamp, K. A., and Yoffee, N. 1980 Ethnicity in Ancient Western Asia during the Early Second Millennium b.c.: Archaeological Assessments and Ethnoarchaeological Prospectives. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 237: 85–104. London, G. 1989 A Comparison of Two Contemporaneous Lifestyles of the Late Second Millennium b.c. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 273: 37–55.

Gloria London

pag e sho rt o n to p 2 pic as

Women in the Ancient Near East All ancient Near Eastern cultures were patriarchal, with a woman’s role typically confined to the domestic sphere. There, she was subordinate to the men in her family, so that before marriage she was answerable to the authority of her father and brothers and after marriage she was subject to the hegemony of her husband. Although there are exceptions, women were generally excluded from or marginalized in their cultures’ economic, political, and religious life.

Women in the Levantine Bronze Age Most of our information concerning women in the Levantine Bronze Age comes from the library archives of Ras Shamra (Ugarit). Although legendary in nature, the Kirta text probably describes accurately Ugaritic females as those who sort straw at the threshing floor and draw water from wells and springs (CAT 1.14.3.8–10, 14.4.52, 14.5.1–2). Yet while tasks such as these kept women close to home and confined their activities to the domestic sphere, women of a certain social class could have a more prominent place in Ugaritic society. Documents describing a royal divorce, for example, indicate that the divorcing queen’s son could leave the court with his mother. To be sure, the choice was the son’s, but it is notable that the woman had any custody rights at all. It is of further significance that, in choosing to leave, the son was required to renounce any claim to the throne. This was necessary to ensure that if her son became king, the divorced wife would not return to assume the office of queen mother. The Ugaritic queen mother was extremely powerful: several letters from Ugaritic kings to their queen mothers describe the king’s paying homage to the queen mother by bowing at her feet (CAT 2.11, 2.12, 2.13, 2.24, 2.30, 2.33). The letters’ contents, moreover, seem to describe political and administrative matters that queen mothers attended to, as their sons’ regents, when the sons were away from court. Queen mothers also may have played a crucial role in determining the royal succession, in one example establishing a beloved younger son as monarch instead of his older brother (RS 17.352 [= PRU 4, 121–22]). Queen mothers at Ugarit owned land and storage facilities housing agricultural produce; they also were able to buy and sell property. While most upperclass women may not have had extensive property rights, there are some records of property transactions undertaken by women. Most notably, the dowry a woman brought with her when marrying reverted to her in case of divorce. Further, although widowhood generally left a woman in a precarious financial position, there are some indications that upper-class widows could inherit from their husbands.

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Women in the Levantine Iron Age Our richest source of information concerning women in the Iron Age Levant is the Hebrew Bible. The remains from other Iron Age cultures are comparatively scant.

Women in the Hebrew Bible Biblical law generally indicates a marginalized status for Israelite women. Women were not allowed to own or sell property (the permission given to the daughters of Zelophehad in Num 27:1–11 to inherit their father’s estate is a notable exception, but, even in this case, the petition was granted only so that the women could hold the land in trust until they bore sons). Indeed, a woman could herself be considered property, as the tenth commandment, which includes a man’s wife in a list of his other possessions (manservants, maidservants, oxen, asses) makes clear. Moreover men, as the owners of women, had the right to control a woman’s sexuality, so that illicit intercourse on a woman’s part was considered a crime against her father if she was unmarried (Deut 22:20–21) or her husband if she was married (Lev 20:10). A husband in addition had the right to divorce his wife, but women could not typically initiate divorce proceedings (Deut 24:1–4). Grounds for divorce included marital infidelity (Deut 24:1) and barrenness (Mal 2:15). The biblical ideal, on the other hand, was the woman who perfect fulfilled the roles of wife and mother. Particularly important was motherhood, for a woman’s ability to bear sons for her husband ensured the continuation of his patriarchal line. Childlessness was thus a cause for great concern, and biblical strategies for dealing with it include the tradition of polygyny (Leah [fertile] and Rachel [barren] as wives of Jacob [Gen 29:15–35]; Peninnah [fertile] and Hannah [barren] as wives of Elkanah [1 Sam 1:1–3]); the tradition of a barren wife’s giving to her husband a surrogate to bear children for him (Gen 16:1–3; 30:1–8, 9–13); and the institution of the levirite marriage and its requirement that the brother or close kinsman of a man who had died childless marry the man’s widow and have children by her (Genesis 38; Deut 25:5–10; Ruth 4). Because a woman’s primary role as wife and mother kept her confined to the home, it was generally only women who were without husbands or women who were postmenopausal who could assume public responsibilities. Thus the wise woman of 2 Sam 14:1–20, who acts as a counselor in political matters, is described as a widow with only one adult child; similarly, her wise woman counterpart in 2 Sam 20:14–22 is not depicted as having a family. Deborah, the military heroine of Judges 4 and 5, is not said to have a husband or children according to the poetic version of her tale in Judges 5; she is also without children and possibly without husband (depending on whether one translates ªeset lappîdôt in v. 4 as ‘wife of Lappidoth’ or ‘a fiery woman’) in the prose version of the story in Judges 4. We are explicitly told that another famed woman warrior, Judith, is a widow and hence free from domestic obligations ( Jdt 8:2–6, 16:8).

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Fig. 27. A silver bowl from Cyprus depicting female musicians reminiscent of those indicated in the biblical record. From C. Meyers, “Of Drums and Damsels: Women’s Performance in Ancient Israel,” Biblical Archaeologist 54 (1991) 22. Reproduced by permission of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Widowed women who exercised power outside the domestic sphere also include the queen mothers of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, who, like their Ugaritic counterparts, helped to determine the royal succession, acted as advisors to their sons, officiated as regents if necessary, and, it has been recently argued, served as patrons of the goddess Asherah. Other women who performed religious functions are women called ‘prophetess’ (nébîªâ): Miriam (Exod 15:20), Deborah ( Judg 4:4), Huldah (2 Kgs 22:14, 2 Chr 34:22), Noadiah (Neh 6:14), and the unnamed woman of Isa 8:3. Also of note are the women who served as professional musicians (fig. 27) during religious rituals, in particular rituals associated with mourning (2 Sam 1:24, Jer 9:17–21, Ezek 32:16, 2 Chr 35:25), with the fall vineyard festival ( Judg 21:16–24; Isa 5:1–7, 32:9–14), and with the celebration of military victories (Exod 15:20–21; Judg 5:1, 11:34; 1 Sam 18:6–7; Judith 16). In one case, a woman is remembered as the founder of a ritual observance (the daughter of Jephthah in Judg 11:39–40). Notices of women’s participation in Israel’s cultic life, however, are not uniformly positive. While women could dedicate votive statues to the deity ( Judg 17:3– 4; see also 1 Kgs 15:13) and also could dedicate their sons ( Judg 13:5; 1 Sam 1:11, 28) and even themselves (Num 6:2), a woman’s husband could nullify her vow (Num 30:2–15), and her value as a dedicatory was only thirty shekels, whereas a man was worth fifty (Lev 27:3– 4). Only men were required to attend the three

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pilgrimage festivals central to Israelite ritual (Deut 16:16), and the sign of inclusion in the covenant community, penile circumcision, is by definition a male-only rite. Language in the prophetic books denigrates the role of women in Israelite religion by singling them out as especially responsible for religious apostasy within their communities (for example, Isa 3:16–24; 32:9–14; Jer 7:18; 44:15–29, 25; Ezek 8:14; Hosea 1–3; 4:13; Amos 4:1–3). A variant motif in prophetic literature personifies Jerusalem or Zion as a woman and accuses her of religious harlotry (Isa 1:21–23; 3:25–26; 57:6–13; Jer 4:30; 13:20–27; 22:20– 23; Ezekiel 16; 23:1–4, 11– 49).

Women Elsewhere in the Levan t The lack of textual data concerning private life has generally meant that information is available only about women who played public roles in their societies. According to the Phoenician inscription of King ªEsmunºazor (KAI no. Fig. 28. Eighth-century relief from Karatepe 14), the queen mother ªAmoºastart showing a queen mother (?) paired with a sacred served as regent for her son in his tree. From U. Winter, Frau und Göttin (Freiburg: youth, took credit alongside him Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck for military victories, and helped und Ruprecht, 1983) fig. 411. Reprinted with him in the building of temples. permission. ªAmoºastart is also described as a priestess, recalling the cultic function performed by Judean queen mothers. An 8th-century relief from Karatepe may likewise depict an Anatolian queen mother fulfilling a cultic role, since the woman in the relief is paired with the sacred tree of the goddess Asherah (fig. 28). Indeed, iconographic materials have increasingly been used by scholars seeking to describe women’s roles in Levantine societies. Images of women on funerary steles and tombstones from northern Syria, for example, may suggest that, like women in Israel, these women had special responsibilities as ritual mourners. Yet these same women are also depicted with spindles and mirrors,

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symbols of the domestic sphere, indicating that their primary place was still in the home.

Women in the Greco-Roman Levant While data concerning ancient Near Eastern women’s lives in the Hellenistic and Roman periods are not as scarce as they are for the Iron Age, the Bible is again the primary source of information. The gospel literature generally depicts Jesus’ ministry as patriarchal in character. Still, the four evangelists do admit the possibility of female participation. According to Luke 8:1–3, 23:49 and Mark 15:40–41, women were among those who traveled with Jesus. Luke also reports that Jesus preferred that women listen to his teachings rather than attend to their usual domestic chores (10:38–42). All the gospels depict women as having a central place in the events surrounding crucifixion and resurrection, keeping watch at the cross, preparing Jesus’ body for burial, and sitting in vigil outside the tomb (Matt 27:55–56, 61; Mark 15:40–41, 47; 16:1; Luke 23:49, 55–56; 24:1; John 19:25; 20:1). These acts recall the role of women as ritual mourners that was found earlier in Levantine tradition. According to all of the gospels, it was Mary, mother of James and Joseph, and/or Mary Magdalene who brought word to the disciples of the resurrection (Matt 28:1–8, Mark 16:1–8, Luke 24:1–11, John 20:1–10); in Matthew and John, moreover, the first resurrection appearance was to Mary, mother of James and Joseph, and/or to Mary Magdalene. Like the gospels, the authentic writings of Paul reflect their culture’s prevailing patriarchy yet suggest certain opportunities for women. Thus while Paul in 1 Cor 11:2–16 insists that women, unlike men, must wear veils in church, suggesting subordination, he admits in the same passage that a woman, properly veiled, could pray and prophesy (v. 5). Elsewhere he mentions women church leaders (Phil 4:2–3) and assigns to Phoebe the title of deacon (Rom 16:1) and to Junia that of apostle (Rom 16:7). Women are also frequently lauded for hosting churches in their homes (Philemon 2; Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19). Particularly notable is Prisca (Priscilla), who seems to carry out a ministry side-by-side with her husband Aquila (Acts 18:2, 18, 26; Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19), an arrangement consistent with Paul’s teachings elsewhere concerning equality in marriage (1 Cor 7:2–5). In many respects, Paul’s feelings are summed up in Gal 3:28, with its dictum that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female in Christ Jesus. Paul’s followers, however, although writing in his name, deviate in many cases from the master’s teachings. 1 Cor 14:33b–36, a secondary addition to Paul’s original letter, and 1 Tim 2:8–15 enjoin women’s silence in churches. Eph 5:22–24 and Col 3:18 require a wife to submit to her husband. And in Col 3:11, Paul’s words of Gal 3:28 concerning unity in Christ are paraphrased yet omit any mention of gender equality.

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Bibliography Ackerman, S. 1992 Isaiah. Pp. 161–68 in The Woman’s Bible Commentary, ed. C. A. Newsom and S. Ringe. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox. 1993 The Queen Mother and the Cult in Ancient Israel. Journal of Biblical Literature 112: 385– 401. 1997 The Queen Mother and the Cult in the Ancient Near East. Pp. 179–209 in Women and Goddess Traditions: In Antiquity and Today. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Ed. K. L. King, with an introduction by K. J. Torjeson. Minneapolis: Fortress. Albenda, P. 1983 Western Asiatic Women in the Iron Age: Their Image Revealed. Biblical Archaeologist 46: 82–88. Bird, P. A. 1997 Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis: Fortress. Bottéro, J. 1965 La femme dans l’Asie Occidentale ancienne: Mésopotamie et Israël. Pp. 155– 247 in Histoire mondiale de la femme, ed. P. Grimal. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France. CAT 1995 M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín. The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places (KTU: 2d, enlarged edition). Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syren-Palästinas und Mesopotamiens 8. Munster: Ugarit Verlag. Danmanville, J. 1965 La femme dans l’Asie Occidentale ancienne: Chez les Hittites. Pp. 248–66 in Histoire mondiale de la femme, ed. P. Grimal. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France. Durand, J.-M. (ed.). 1987 La femme dans le Proche-Orient antique. Compte rendu de la XXXIIIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale (Paris, 7–10 juillet 1986). Paris: Récherche sur les Civilisations. KAI 1962–64 H. Donner and W. Röllig (eds.). Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Kraemer, R. S. 1992 Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. New York: Oxford. Levine, A. J. (ed.) 1991 “Women like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Meyers, C. 1988 Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press. Muntingh, L. M. 1967 The Social and Legal Status of a Free Ugaritic Female. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26: 102–12.

spread one pica short

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Parpola, S., and Whiting, R. M. (eds.) 2002 Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001. 2 vols. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. PRU 1955–70 J. Nougayrol and C. Virolleaud. Le palais royal d ’Ugarit 1–6. Mission de Ras Shamra, ed. C. F. A. Schaeffer. Paris: Imprimerie nationale. Schüssler-Fiorenza, E. 1983 In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad. Siebert, I. 1974 Women in the Ancient Near East. New York: Schram. Witherington, B. 1984 Women in the Ministry of Jesus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Susan Ackerman

Everyday Life (Customs, Manners, and Laws) In the world of the ancient Near East, the central issue facing every person was coping with environmental conditions. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, this meant adapting to the strictures of riverine culture, based on the predictable yearly inundations of the Nile River in Egypt and the unpredictable flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia. The land bridge of SyroPalestine, which will be the focus of this article, also had to cope with water problems, but these were based more on average annual rainfall amounts than on irrigation. The civilizations that developed in these lands necessarily based their calendar, their workday, their religious festivals and theology, and even their warring on the manifestations of the weather, the change of seasons, and the topography of their lands. The panhandle of Syria–Palestine makes up less than 60 miles of land mass, west to east, between the 34th and 36th meridians of longitude and 350 miles, north to south, between the 31st and 33d meridians of latitude. Nonetheless, there are four clearly defined geographical and climatic zones. Moving from west to east, the first zone is a coastal plain along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The plains are separated by foothills (shephelah) from the hills west of the Jordan River, that make up the second zone where the Hebrews settled. The third zone is the valley created by the Jordan River and the Dead Sea (arabah); and the fourth is the hills or plateaus west of the Jordan River. To the south, this panhandle is separated from the Sinai Desert by the Negev desert, which provides the last year-round springs or wells large enough to support permanent settlements. The region enjoys only two seasons, wet and dry. Moist winds blowing west to east create the wet season; hot dry winds blowing from east to west create the dry. The plains cause temperature changes in the winds blowing off the Mediterranean Sea that create the rain. With the withdrawal of the Egyptians and the Hittites from Syria–Palestine, its population dropped dramatically at the end of the Bronze Age. Cities and towns collapsed. By 1250 b.c.e., some scholars estimate that perhaps as much as sixty percent of the people had died from starvation due to crop failures that followed subtle changes in climate, regional wars, and the exhaustion of natural resources. These disasters were not isolated but ongoing. Such tragedies and hardships afflicting the slave or surplus economies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Syria–Palestine gave rise to free peasant or subsistence economies like that in early Israel. Some of Egypt’s and Hatti’s former villagers and slaves in Syria–Palestine took advantage of their newfound freedom and tried to insure their households

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against an uncertain future by migrating into the hills, where they reestablished abandoned villages or founded new ones of their own. The writing, language, material culture, and religious traditions of the early Israelites who resettled or founded these villages link them to the Canaanite culture found throughout Syria–Palestine. More than likely, these early villagers were social survivors who fled the famine, plague, and war that brought the Bronze Age to an end. The economy in these early Israelite village was a subsistence economy, not a surplus or slave economy like the economy common throughout the city-states of Syria–Palestine. In this subsistence economy, there was no monarch. Therefore there were no taxes and no army, and there were no slaves. The challenge facing early Israel was not so much a military conquest, as portrayed in Joshua and Judges, but rather farming a difficult and demanding land. A standard harvest in these hills produced ten to fifteen percent more grain than was needed to plant it. While positive changes in the quality of the land, the number of farmers available, and the way in which they worked could increase the standard harvest, there was always a greater risk of negative changes that could destroy the economy of the village and its households altogether. Fields that produced as little as a ten to fifteen percent harvest in good years failed altogether in three years out of ten. To get the most from the human labor available in the village, farmers used a variety of techniques. They managed their time and pooled their labor, with both men and women working in the fields, and they had as many children as possible. Farmers in early Israel staggered sowing by planting a single crop in several stages over a period of time. Although it would be impossible for the farmers to care for a single large crop at one time, the numbers of farmers available could handle the same-size crop one section at a time. Farmers also planted a variety of vine, tree, and field crops, mixing a variety of cereals with fruit and nut crops. By living together in pillared houses, farmers pooled their labor. Together, farmers cleared land, terraced fields, planted, cultivated, and harvested crops. The basic plan of the pillared house was a simple rectangle divided into three areas by a row of four roof-supporting pillars and a solid inside wall. Some houses had an additional room across the back of the basic rectangle, entered through a door off the main section of the house. The inhabitants wore a loincloth and a tunic. Everyone had a cloak that doubled as a blanket. Few bathed or regularly washed their clothes (Gen 27:26). There was no furniture. People sat cross-legged on the packed clay and stone floor or on a stone ledge along the base of the inside wall of the house. Flat stones were used for stools. Everyone slept on the floor. Several households shared a common outdoor courtyard kitchen. Bread was baked on a pottery bowl inverted over the coals (Hos 7:8). Most village farmers also maintained at least a small herd of sheep and goats as an economic hedge against famine. Herding was often carried out by youngsters and therefore did not deprive the village of needed field labor (1 Samuel 16). The villagers also raided passing caravans transporting goods between Syria and

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Egypt, or occasionally served as transit agents, taxing goods that passed through their territory. In some cases, farmers served as trading partners, especially in metals that were acquired as imports and shaped into tools. By combining farming with herding, raiding, trading, and manufacturing, they distributed their labor more evenly throughout the season and insured themselves against facing the dry season without having produced any food at all. Eventually, in their attempt to compete with other Canaanite and Philistine cultures, the early Israelite villages had to transform their strictly rural culture into a society centered on an urban-based monarchy. This required new social accommodations and meant the establishment of social boundaries and the recognition of power groups outside of normal kinship relationships. At this point, more than in the village culture, social stratification determined task differentiation, leadership responsibilities, and relative levels of power. The new social landscape was defined by domination of others and accomplished by various means— including physical force, social or psychological control, and economic coercion. In ancient Israel there existed a patrilineal, segmentary lineage system in which each of its households (bêt-ªabôt) belonged to a lineage (mißpa˙a). These lineages, in which membership and inheritance was based on the father, made up a clan. The clans formed several phratries, and the phratries comprised the tribe. Once the Israelites entered Canaan, its lineages were also described as localized, having their own designated territories ( Joshua 13–19). These social groupings were not necessarily evolutionary. They all continued to exist, even when the monarchy was established, and there was no linear progression that required each to exist in turn for the monarchy to be established. Social custom and law, as it developed in the village and was transmitted and transformed in the urban setting, was defined by the people’s sense of honor and shame. These two concepts revolved around both a sense of self and a recognition of behavior by others, and they provided the basis for social reward and social control. Those who obeyed the covenant with Yahweh, upheld the rights and obligations of their households, and set an example of hard work and devotion to family were designated honorable and looked to for advice. Shame resulted from antisocial behavior, violations of the religious code, and physical deformity or illness. The gate court and later the royal court system provided the legal basis for dealing with shameful behavior.

An Example of Social Custom and Law: Marriage Marriage customs fit under the rubric of “honor and shame,” since they also involve “proper” behavior. In ancient Syria–Palestine, as in the modern Mediterranean region, they encompassed an emphasis on female chastity and the desirability of premarital virginity. In the ancestral narrative, the one criterion that surfaces most often is endogamy. Authority for this position, which establishes a preferential pool of eligible marriage partners, is presented in the ancestral narratives, where solemn oaths

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are taken to insure this practice (Gen 24:2–6; Abraham and his servant). Family tensions are created when the principle is violated (Gen 26:34–35; Esau’s wives). These episodes may be projections of attitudes or customs that actually date to the postexilic period’s emphasis on “in-marrying,” which formed a part of the Jewish identity movement of that era (see the emphasis placed on endogamy in Ezra 9–10 and Neh 13:23–27). They may even be based on a postexilic interpretation of the Deuteronomist’s recriminations on Solomon’s marriages (1 Kings 11 and Neh 13:26) and the need to ensure a pattern of “correct” marriages in the genealogical narratives that form the roots of the nation. However, no such restrictions are evident when one examines the marriage practices of the royal family in general. It is possible that the higher levels of society may have felt or may actually have been above the restrictive traditions adhered to by the peasant and/or middle classes, or they may have had a different set of restrictions placed on them altogether. The political realities of a king’s position, which required a show of “dominance” through political marriage alliance, may have also mitigated adherence to previous custom. Marriage is often thought of as an event, while in some societies it is a long, drawn-out process, with several stages. In the biblical text, certain protocols were to be followed that would establish the alliance between families and spell out the contract in exact terms. Thus, the legal action of betrothal included the final choice of partners, usually made by the male heads of household of the two families and the agreement on bride price and dowry (Gen 24:52–54). There were exceptions to this rule, such as a socially unattached male arranging his own marriage with the bride’s family (see Jacob in Genesis 29), but they were fairly rare in the biblical narrative. Consideration of a prospective marriage alliance had its economic side, of course, and many times a marriage was made on strictly economic grounds, with the intent of further enriching both families or strengthening the manpower of the group (Gen 34:21, Exod 2:21). Other considerations, however, included kinship obligations (Gen 24:3–4); political advancement (see David’s marriages to Michal in 1 Sam 18:17–28 and to Ahinoam in 1 Sam 25:43); and, occasionally, personal desire ( Judg 14:3, 2 Sam 11:27). The concept of inheritance was also an integral part of the system of marriage customs, especially with regard to the ability of the male to transmit his goods and property to a son and the ability of the female to produce an heir for her husband. This sometimes required legal side-steps: adoption (Gen 15:2), the law of levirate obligation (Deut 25:5–10), or the compromise involving the daughters of Zelophehad (Num 36:2–12, Josh 17:3–6). The precedent for inheritance rights is set in the ancestral narratives with the promise made to Abraham that he and his descendants would receive Canaan as their special domain. Since eventually several collateral lineages developed claiming Abraham as their common ancestor, some distinction had to be developed that would designate those who had the right to live in and exploit the “Promised Land.” Two basic criteria emerged: the blessing associated with the covenant and physical presence within Canaan.

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A Second Example of Social Custom and Law: Hospitality One other social custom that demonstrates “right behavior” and the importance of reciprocity in ancient Syria–Palestine is hospitality. The protocol that emerges from the biblical narrative is twofold. (1) There is a sphere of hospitality that comprises a zone of obligation both for individuals and for the village or town within which they have the responsibility to offer hospitality to strangers. The size of the zone is of course smaller for the individual than for the urban center. The basis for this obligation is reciprocity. In the ancient Near East, the giving of water, food, and shelter meant that the traveler had a greater chance of survival on the road. It also lessened the instances of theft, raiding, and murder that might have occurred in an inhospitable land where every person’s hand was turned against another. Thus it becomes the responsibility of each person to offer hospitality to strangers (defined as persons not of his kinship or communal group) who enter his sphere of proprietal control. This is to be done: (a) to give back to God a portion of what has been given to him (Deut 16:17); (b) to set up attendant obligations on others so that they will be properly treated should they ever play the role of guest themselves (Deut 23:24–25) and to protect the reputation of the host or the village as a place where hospitality is freely given; and (c) to protect themselves from possible violence and the threat of loss of property by transforming the stranger into a guest. (2) The stranger must be transformed from potential threat to an ally by the offer of hospitality. No society can tolerate a hostile presence for long. When a stranger approaches a village or dwelling place, by definition this person is a threat to inhabitants of that place. One reason for this is that a stranger is without status; there are no rules that apply to him, since he is a person without a place in society. To avert hostility, the stranger must be neutralized by temporary adoption or “englobing” into the community. (3) The invitation of hospitality can only be offered by the male head of household or a male citizen of a town or village. Within this male-dominated legal framework, it is the prerogative of the male head of household to provide for and protect his extended family. It is his right and responsibility, therefore, to serve as host and make the initial invitation of hospitality. His wife and daughter(s) may serve the guest as well but only at the behest of their husband or father (Gen 18:6). Independent action on their part, such as Sarah’s questioning of the guests’ statement, is a breach of custom (Gen 18:13). (4) The invitation may include a statement of the time span for the period of hospitality, but this can then be extended, if agreeable to both parties, on the renewed invitation of the host. (5) The stranger has the right of refusal, but this could be considered an affront to the honor of the host and could be a cause for immediate hostilities or conflict if proper respect is not shown to the host. While the stranger is generally

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at the mercy of his host or host city, it is the visitor’s right to refuse hospitality when offered. This may be based on a desire to continue one’s journey ( Judg 19:9–10) or, as in the case of the angels’ visit to Sodom (Gen 19:2), refusal may be based on the legal inappropriateness of the one making the invitation. (6) Once the invitation is accepted, the roles of the host and the guest are set by the rules of custom. (a) The guest must not ask for anything, but it is his/her obligation to accept what is offered. (b) The host provides the best he has available—despite what may be modestly offered in the initial invitation of hospitality. It is typical for the host to make a modest offer to the guest (usually water, food, shelter, and foot-washing). This does not preclude more being given to the guest, but it does protect the host who may find himself in the dishonored position of offering more than he can deliver. (c) The guest is expected to reciprocate with news, predictions of good fortune, or gracious responses based on what he has been given. (d) The host must not ask personal questions of the guest. These matters can only be volunteered by the guest. Just as it is inappropriate for the guest to ask for something from the host, it is totally inappropriate for the potential or actual host to ask questions of his guest. To do so is to demonstrate a lack of tact within the ritual of hospitality. It is certainly permissible for the guest to volunteer information about him/herself. (7) The guest remains under the protection of the host until he/she has left the zone of obligation of the host. The sphere or zone of obligation that the guest enters and leaves has its limits. There will be spaces between these zones that are uninhabited in the sparsely populated area of ancient Palestine. In these areas, travelers are isolated and are subject to the dangers of the road: brigands, wild animals, hostile climate, and uncertain terrain. This then magnifies the importance of the hospitality ritual when a traveler enters the zone of obligation of an individual household or population center. In summary, the village-based culture of ancient Israel required strict attention to the land and to the social obligations inherent to small, relatively isolated populations. The intensive labor necessary to maintain the food supply and, when possible, to produce a surplus blurred the work roles of the genders, although females were still strictly monitored, with marriage and sexual taboos dominating their social choices. Inheritance patterns also contributed to the development and the rigidity of the social order, although the growth of urban centers did modify these customs somewhat. Finally, the concept of reciprocity, found in the hospitality code as well as in much of the legal formulations further defined “insider”/“outsider” roles and established a sense of honor and shame that dominated most social actions and reactions.

Bibliography Callaway, J. 1983 A Visit with Ahilud: A Revealing Look at Village Life When Israel First Settled the Promised Land. Biblical Archaeology Review 9/5: 42–53.

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Cohen, R., and Westbrook, R. 2000 Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginning of International Relations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hopkins. D. 1985 The Highlands of Canaan. Sheffield: Almond. King, P. J., and Stager, L. E. 2001 Life in Biblical Israel. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster / John Knox. Matthews, V. H. 1988 Manners and Customs in the Bible. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson. Matthews, V. H., and Benjamin, D. C. 1993 The Social World of Ancient Israel. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson. Stager, L. E. 1985 The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260: 1–35.

Victor H. Matthews

Archaeological Survey in the Southern Levant Survey is often the first stage of an archaeological field project, and involves a body of techniques that can be used to discover sites in a region or detect patterns in the distribution of sites on a landscape or cultural materials on a site. In this essay, regional survey will be the focus, but survey within sites prior to or in place of excavation is also very important and employs many of the same principles. Archaeological survey has a long history in the southern Levant, having begun with the travelers’ itineraries of the Holy Land as early as the 8th century. By the early 19th century, some of these travelers, such as Ulrich Seetzen and J. L. Burckhardt, were reporting quite systematic explorations of the physical and cultural geography, toponymy, and antiquities of the Levant. The classic surveys were the massive ones of western and eastern Palestine and Syria by Capt. Claude R. Conder and Capt. H. H. Kitchener, later followed with details for northern Transjordan and the Golan by Gottlieb Schumacher. These scholars and others of the 19th and early 20th centuries relied on biblical and Classical texts and their knowledge of linguistics to identify sites on the basis of modern place-names. Except on sites with inscriptions or clearly Hellenized or Roman art, they had no criteria for dating any of the sites they encountered or even determining, in many cases, whether there was any ancient occupation at all. After Albright’s excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim in the 1920s–1930s, the possibility of dating sites by the characteristics of pottery sherds scattered on the surface opened up a new phase of survey. Among the most ambitious of these were Nelson Glueck’s surveys of the Negev and Transjordan (Glueck 1934). Glueck recorded thousands of sites, dated them by associated pottery, and drew conclusions about population movements and the rise and fall of settlement over several millennia. Even though some of his conclusions have not stood up to closer scrutiny, he showed that archaeologists could indeed use surface survey to investigate complex questions about what happened in the past. Since the early 1970s, the sophistication of archaeological survey has increased substantially. In the Near East, this has come partly from the observation that Robert Adams’s (1981) long and intensive surveys in Iraq produced invaluable information and partly from the influence of colleagues working in North America and Europe. The principal ways in which survey developed were increases in intensity, adoption of statistical sampling, and awareness of factors that can skew our perception of the distribution of ancient cultural materials on the landscape (Banning 1996; 2002; Bar-Yosef and Goren 1980; Plog, Plog, and

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Wait 1978; Portugali 1982; Schiffer, Sullivan, and Klinger 1978; Wilkinson 1989; Wobst 1983). More recently, archaeologists working in the Near East have begun to consider “off-site” artifact scatters, earthworks, and trackways (e.g., Wilkinson 1989; 1993). Extensive, unobtrusive sherd scatters not necessarily associated directly with settlements can sometimes tell us much about ancient land use, and some surveys are directed specifically at such low-density scatters. Meanwhile, surveying for “hollow-ways” that are traces of ancient tracks and roads can reveal communications between sites and lead to detection of small, unobtrusive settlements. Early explorers surveyed huge territories in relatively short periods of time, often relying on guides and local informants to tell them where to find sites. Later surveys employed vehicles to record the larger and most obtrusive sites quickly. Modern surveys are usually much more intensive, with crews of at least several people spending many hours to walk over each square kilometer of land surface or, in some cases, even to dig small trenches at intervals to check for subsurface remains. At the other end of the scale, surveys increasingly make use of aerial photography and satellite imagery to help in the search for archaeological evidence. Survey can be carried out in many ways, but it is important to select methods that are consistent with the survey’s goals (Banning 2002: 27). Sometimes archaeologists want to assess archaeological resources on behalf of governments, to make inferences about settlement systems and population changes, or simply to estimate the proportion of sites that have certain characteristics. It is possible to meet these kinds of objectives with survey of only a few hundred of the many thousands of sites that survive. In these cases, archaeologists have adopted statistical sampling methods that allow them to make such inferences with confidence (Banning 2002: 113–32). For example, a statistical sample might allow us to estimate that the human population of a particular valley grew by 30–40% between the Iron I and Iron II periods, with a confidence of 90%. Sampling sites presents a paradox, because to make a random selection of all of the sites in a region we would have to know where all of the sites are in advance. Since this is rarely if ever the case, we instead sample by spatial units, such as squares or long rectangles. It is important for statistical reasons to remember that we really have a sample of these spaces and not, strictly speaking, a sample of sites. This is known as “cluster sampling.” The number or total area of the sites encountered within each spatial unit is simply an observation or measurement on the unit, not conceptually different from the proportion of unit occupied by Terra Rossa soil or the area of land more than 500 meters above sea level. For some kinds of archaeological problems, however, surveying a statistical sample would be wasteful or, worse, misleading. For example, if an archaeologist is trying to find a settlement site that is mentioned in a historical or biblical text, but only the general region in which it occurred is known, survey of a sample is highly unlikely to find it. It is much better to use prospection methods

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that take advantage of all the information available, as well as reasonable conjectures, to focus survey in the areas most likely to be productive (Banning 2002: 133–54). Sophisticated means for optimizing such searches, or predicting site locations with models in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), are beginning to find application in the southern Levant. Archaeologists conducting surveys need to consider a number of factors that affect the likelihood that they will successfully discover cultural remains of various kinds, including ancient settlements (Banning 2002: 39–68). One of these, the intensity or density of effort, is the degree of thoroughness with which an area was surveyed. We might measure this with the number of person-hours invested in surveying a unit of area. Coverage is a measure of the area actually subjected to survey, typically smaller than the entire region of interest. Visibility is a measure of the ease with which archaeological materials can be detected through such filters as vegetation cover or sediment buildup and is specific to the survey methods employed. If visibility is poor when walking and visual inspections are the techniques, it may be necessary to adopt such methods as digging small pits or using magnetic or electromagnetic devices to detect sites or features. Obtrusiveness, on the other hand, is a measure of the degree to which archaeological materials stand out, as a result of their inherent properties and how they contrast with their environment. Buildings with standing walls, for example, are more obtrusive than sherd scatters or underground tombs (Plog, Plog, and Wait 1978; Schiffer, Sullivan, and Klinger 1978). The problem of visibility is one that requires special consideration in the Near Eastern context (Bar-Yosef and Goren 1980; Field and Banning 1998). In the floodplains of rivers, it is no coincidence that most of the known sites are large mounds or tells; the relatively rapid buildup of alluvial soil on these plains can bury other kinds of sites under many meters. In the highlands, however, most of the known sites are on hilltops, where erosion tends to expose artifacts and architecture, at the expense of sites in wadis or near the foot of slopes where soil displaced from higher up can bury them. In some cases, landslides can bury such sites completely in a single day. In others, natural processes or construction and road-building activities have destroyed them altogether. These problems and others due to differences in accessibility or construction and development make it necessary for the modern survey in the southern Levant to have a careful design that takes these problems into account. Where site burial is a problem, for example, we may need to do time-consuming subsurface survey by digging many small trenches, often called sondages (Banning 1996; McManamon 1980; Nance 1983). If we cannot rule out the possibility that the patterns we see in site distribution are simply a function of biases in our surveys, we will make little headway in understanding changes in human use of the landscape in ancient times. It is also important to evaluate surveys’ results, providing realistic estimates of coverage, intensity, and any biases that might remain (Banning 2002: 217–28).

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Bibliography Adams, R. McC. 1981 Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlements and Land Use of the Central Floodplains of the Euphrates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Banning, E. B. 1996 Highlands and Lowlands: Problems and Survey Frameworks for Rural Archaeology in the Near East. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 301: 25– 45. 2002 Archaeological Survey. New York: Kluwer / Plenum. Bar-Yosef, O., and Goren, N. 1980 Afterthoughts Following Prehistoric Surveys in the Levant. Israel Exploration Journal 30: 1–16. Field, J., and Banning, E. B. 1998 Hillslope Processes and Archaeology in Wadi Ziqlab, Jordan. Geoarchaeology 13: 595–616. Glueck, N. 1934 Explorations in Eastern Palestine I. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 14. Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research. McManamon, F. P. 1984 Discovering Sites Unseen. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 223– 92. Nance, J. D. 1983 Regional Sampling in Archaeological Survey: The Statistical Perspective. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 6: 289–356. Plog, S.; Plog, F.; and Wait, W. 1978 Decision-Making in Modern Surveys. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1: 384– 421. Portugali, Y. 1982 A Field Methodology for Regional Archaeology (the Jezreel Valley Survey, 1981). Tel Aviv 9: 170–88. Schiffer, M. B.; Sullivan, A.; Klinger, T. 1978 The Design of Archaeological Surveys. World Archaeology 10/1: 2–28. Wilkinson, T. J. 1989 Extensive Sherd Scatters and Land-Use Intensity: Some Recent Results. Journal of Field Archaeology 16: 31– 46. 1993 Linear Hollows in the Jazira, Upper Mesopotamia. Antiquity 67: 548–62. Wobst, H. M. 1983 We Can’t See the Forest for the Trees: Sampling and the Shape of Archaeological Distributions. Pp. 37–85 in Archaeological Hammers and Theories, ed. J. A. Moore and A. S. Keene. New York: Academic Press.

E. B. Banning

Restoration of Ancient Monuments: Theory and Practice History and Theory of Restoration Since the essence of a monument is its enduring quality, it is often assumed that the restoration of monuments is an old practice that proceeds according to enduring concepts. Nothing could be further from the case. The concept originated in modern Europe very recently, and it is anything but fixed in what it designates. The first person to give scholarly currency to the term restauration/restoration was undoubtedly Viollet le Duc (1814–79), who noted that the activity and the word were both a product of the second quarter of the 19th century (that is, of his own generation). This is entirely in accordance with the appearance of the term in English. Perhaps its first appearance in literature is in Byron (Don Juan, ca. 1824), where it is used as a novelty with a pejorative sense; and it maintained this pejorative connotation in general throughout the 19th century. These notices point to the following facts. Restoration of monuments was a concept (whatever was to be understood by it) that belonged to the Romantic Movement and historicism, sub specie the Gothic Revival. It might also be noted that restoration was not so much an independent manifestation of these factors but was brought into the world by a midwife: literature. It was probably Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (1821) that crystallized sentiment into an activity: note the preface, “En attendant les monuments nouveaux conservons les monuments anciens.” In any event, the Commission for Historic Monuments was established in France in 1832, and its first two directors were men of letters (the second, Prosper Merimée). This provided the channel for Viollet le Duc’s talents, and Viollet himself, for all his influential career in building and engineering, was primarily a literary man. Certainly Viollet’s opinions and activities antagonized two major figures of English literature, his contemporaries John Ruskin and William Morris (both also men of the highest talents, as designers, draftsmen, and artists). The cause of this dissension is at the root of the concept of restoration. Its application, in the first instance, was very specific. Many old public buildings (that is, Gothic churches) required major attention to the fabric to keep them in commission or to bring them back into commission, and these buildings were newly perceived to be of great artistic and historic interest. How was this to be done so as to maintain and maximize their (newly discovered) monumental value? This was the common problem of Viollet and of his English critics. Viollet’s basic assumption was as follows: It was the style (the idea, the “forms”) of the building that was the marvelous thing; and this had to be understood

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perfectly in the finest detail and all the necessary techniques maintained for it to be reproduced perfectly. His approach was metaphysically a Platonic one (and he was much interested in the ideal church, the ideal castle). In spite of its illogical nature and repeated deceptions, this outlook seems a natural one and has always survived to emerge in practice from time to time, most recently in the complete rebuilding of the Stoa of Attalos in the Athenian Agora during the 1950s. This outlook, however, was effectively expelled from the theory of restoration of monuments by the representations of Ruskin and Morris. They took Viollet’s assumptions and expressed them overtly, characterizing his “restoration” as the worst form of destruction. Their aesthetics were based on a thorough-going Aristotelianism. The “forms” only existed as qualities of the substance and could have no independent existence. Alter or take away the substance and you altered or took away the forms; you destroyed them. The problem was how to “preserve” the ancient building (in substance), not how to “reproduce” it. In the upshot (rather surprisingly), the terms of this analysis of dealings with Gothic churches in France and England were soon found to apply to dealing with monuments of all sorts and all periods in all places—for example, monuments that were not in use at all (ruins of prehistoric monuments or of classical monuments, and so forth). In fact, in English the first type of monuments other than Gothic churches that came up for attention (preservation, restoration) were the oldest of all: megalithic tombs of such antiquity as was undreamed of at the time. Equally, the famous ancient monuments of Italy and Greece came to be analyzed in these categories. With the colonialism of the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, attention was also drawn to the famous monuments of the Middle East. The aftermath of the Second World War occasioned a transforming development in the restoration of monuments. The destructiveness of the War meant that the question was of great urgency. Furthermore, colonialism was being ousted in favor of internationalism, with an attendant cultural emphasis (note the work of UNESCO). Consequently, Rome became the recognized international center for restoration of monuments, and the views promoted there were very definitely designed for export to “third-world countries.” It is these ideas that provide the vehicle for the current practice of restoration in the Levant, and an effort is made here to summarize them. Limitation of space means that only the leading concepts can be mentioned (indicated in italic type), with virtually all of the controversy suppressed in an endlessly controversial subject. Restoration of monuments is manifestly different from maintenance, repairs, renovation, and rebuilding of contemporary structures (as Viollet le Duc correctly pointed out), but it is certainly not to be equated with reproducing the appearance of the monument when it was originally completed (far less as it should or would have appeared in some ideal circumstances—as Viollet went on to say). The factor that lies behind the distinction is time and the concept monumentality. An architectural monument reminds the understanding (monere ‘warn, advise’) of some significant human experience. Its definition thus involves the transference of associations across the passage of time. That is, a monument can be viewed in

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two instances: an aesthetic instance by virtue of its composition; and a historic instance by virtue of its human associations. The expression of monumentality is incorporated in a twofold manner: as material and image, structure and aspect. The structure is derived entirely from human design. The aspect, on the other hand, is partly of human design and partly of natural development over time, since such factors as patina, decay, and lighting enter into it. Ultimately, these terms are of philosophical application, but they are also especially useful and relevant in considering the restoration of monuments. It is important to realize that one is not a quality of the other, nor are the two mutually exclusive attributes of the fabric. Rather, they are two different instances or ways of regarding the same reality—both being constituted in (and only in) the physical presence of the monument. Thus, they are both equally proper vehicles for the work of the restorer; any measure of restoration is carried out in the interest of either (or both); and its necessity must be justified on one account or the other. Before considering the operations of restoration, an indication must be given of different types of monuments, since this conditions different aims and processes. Monuments may be divided into four groups. (1) Archaeological ruins— vestigial remains that are so incomplete that they cannot be recomposed into any semblance of their original form. Their present nature as ruins has its own esthetic, and it is this that is being restored or conserved. The term commonly used for this process is systematization (or, occasionally, anastylosis). The coherent parts are set up, and the isolated fragments arranged in a systematic fashion. (2) Ruined monuments—structures that no longer perform their original function in contemporary society, but sufficient fabric remains so that the original form of the building is or can be made recognizable. Here it is the original building that is the subject of the restoration. (3) Living monuments—structures that, created by forces no longer surviving in society, nevertheless still survive in social use, fulfilling more or less the function for which they were originally designed. For the most part these are religious monuments, since religion, by definition absolute, long outlasts other social characteristics. Great problems arise here out of conflicting interests of the double personality (historic monument and functioning church, mosque, or the like), and it is by no means necessary that restoration of the monument qua monument will prove desirable or even acceptable to the current functional interest. For the sake of completion, a final category may be added. (4) Modern (contemporary) monuments exist, but they are an exception to the theory, since the artistic tradition that created them is still living and thus they may be treated in the same way as other contemporary buildings (maintained, repaired, etc.). The new work will be matched up with the old, and a normal building inscription will meet the claim of history. The first step in restoring damaged or destroyed monumentality is the investigation of the causes of destruction. These may be human or natural; catastrophic or continuous. This is a basic preliminary on which all succeeding proposals are based, and it demands an adequate understanding of both history and science.

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The purpose of restoration is twofold: it must provide either for preservation or for exhibition. It can well provide for both at the same time, although regrettably the two claims are very often diametrically opposed and sometimes irreconcilable. Any interference with an ancient monument with the above purposes is called an intervention. All interventions are per se undesirable and are to be limited to the minimum necessary. They can be considered as operating under two heads: removal and addition (the terminology goes back to Michelangelo), and directed to either the structure or the aspect of the monument. Restoration by removal is the most productive operation. A truly astonishing recrudescence of monumentality can be effected by removing nonmonumental excrescences. The problem that may arise here is the question of periods. And it may be difficult to decide between the esthetic interest of the primary period and the historic interest of a secondary period. Addition of new material can be either to the aspect or to the structure of the monument. Acute difficulty arises with additions to the aspect. This is never done for its own sake but to bridge gaps in the aspect between surviving original material. It must proceed by way of representation, not reproduction—that is, it must be clearly seen to be not original (otherwise it constitutes falsification), but this appearance should not detract from the surviving original aspect. It is also possible to add new material to the structure of a monument without this being apparent aspectually. Here the only limiting consideration is possible adverse reaction between new and old material (that is, metal reinforcing concealed inside stone may shatter the stone). Thus it is the best practice to consolidate the structure with the same material as the original. In general, it may be said that the clear analysis of a restoration project into its constituent questions and problems presents little difficulty. The difficulty arises in the conflicts that are endemic among the various categories, instances, and interests revealed by this analysis. There are conflicts between the historical instance and the esthetic instance; conflicts between monumental and functional interests (the now ubiquitous problem of transferred function, for example, restoring a ruined basilica for use as a site museum); and bitter conflicts between exhibition and preservation. The analytical categories bring these conflicts into consciousness; they cannot solve them. (This may only be done by prayer and fasting.)

Practice of Restoration in the Levant The Levant is a region that has always been a center of monumental stonebuilding and contains three of the most renowned monumental sites of Oriental Hellenism: Palmyra, Baalbek, and Jerash. However, in effect the practice of restoration was not introduced into the region while it remained under Ottoman dominion, and made an appearance only with the post–World War I mandates. The French Department of Antiquities in Syria carried out important work at Palmyra and Baalbek, as well as among the Byzantine monuments centered about Qalat Seman. The British authorities in Palestine and Jordan did not undertake routine restoration work, but as an exception made a noteworthy extension of

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restoration to a secular Islamic monument, the Hunting Lodge of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham near Jericho. In fact, however, this colonial activity was only a precursor of the large-scale restoration programs that were instituted in the region beginning with the 1960s, when the Middle East for various reasons became the center of the world’s wealth, and international funds and international experts were both made available for restoration projects (for example, at Petra and Jerash, and other places). In large part these were concentrated on the many “Roman Temples in Syria”—and here the name of H. Kalayan must be mentioned. A Lebanese mathematician and civil engineer who had worked with the French mandate architects, he had enormous energy that allowed him to undertake restoration work at a half-dozen monumental sites simultaneously (for example, Baalbek, Ainjar, Tyre, among others). He was in charge of the Lebanese departmental work for many years and, when civil disorder there resulted in a new cycle of destruction of monuments, Kalayan was employed in Jordan (for example, at Jerash). All of these works follow in the mainstream of the theory described above as applying to ruined monuments. One exception is the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a living monument where there was not only an overriding functional religious concern but the conflicting claims of half a dozen rival sectarian interests. More recent developments turn in other directions. The almost “instant” disappearance of the traditional domestic architecture of the modern Levant has given rise to some concern for a sort of ethnological conservation and restoration and the designation of “Old Towns,” “Traditional Quarters,” and the like. Perhaps more potentially significant is a drive to go beyond the doctrine set out here. Statements are now made that all excavation must entail conservation and restoration, and this refers even to fugitive remains of prehistoric sites. These concerns are also linked to concerns for “the environment” and the development of national parks. It may well be that inflated archaeological excavation is damaging to the environment; however, the remedy where the remains are for the most part nonmonumental is prompt refilling—or better still, some discriminating limitation of excavation. The incidents of mass tourism are now acknowledged to be the most serious cause of damage to ancient monuments in the Middle East. Hence, the most pressing measure for their conservation lies in the control, avoidance, or abolition of these incidents.

Bibliography Brandi, C. 1963 Teoria del Retauro. Rome. Crema, L. 1959 Monumenti e Restauro. Milan: Ceschina.

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Morris, W. 1877 Manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. London. Ruskin, J. 1849 The Seven Lamps of Architecture (VI The Lamp of Memory). London: George Allen / Philadelphia: Reunee, Watley and Walsh. Thompson, M. N. 1981 Ruins, Their Preservation and Display. London: British Museums Publication. Viollet le Duc, E. 1858–75 Dictionnaire Raisonné de l’Architecture Français. Vol. 7, s.v. “Restauration.” Paris: Morel.

G. R. H. Wright

Metalworking/Mining in the Levant Most surviving metalwork from the Levant comes from hoards, often from a specific type of hoard, a votive deposit associated with a temple or shrine. The circumstances surrounding the deposition of the hoard from the Dead Sea cave at Nahal Mishmar, the earliest and still the most important hoard of Levantine metalwork, are still the subject of much debate. This hoard of over 400 objects made of copper or alloyed copper was discovered in 1961 and is dated, in terms of calibrated radiocarbon dates, to the second quarter of the fourth millennium b.c.e. It does not seem to be either a merchant’s or a foundry hoard but is best seen as some sort of votive deposit remarkable in every respect, not least for the copper alloy used for many of the so-called “prestige” objects it contains (see below). The same explanation may apply to the Kfar Monash hoard, most likely of EB I date, although this assemblage seems to have been an isolated deposit made in the sands of the Sharon plain with no associated remains. What the small, thin sheets of copper from Kfar Monash represent remains undetermined, for the suggestion that they are scutes of scale armor cannot be accepted. The large, leafshaped spearheads from this hoard are reminiscent of a spearhead from locus 4034 at Megiddo. The Megiddo spearhead does seem to be part of a votive deposit associated with the EB I (Stratum XIX) temple. The EB III hoard from Tell el-Hesi and the two “Hortfunde” from Tell Mumbaqat in Syria, one of Akkadian, and the other Middle Bronze date, are also best explained as votive deposits. The best-known hoards/votive deposits from the Levant are certainly the Dépôts des Offrandes, found in association with the Obelisk Temple at Byblos. The countless numbers of small human figurines cut out of thin sheet bronze that these hoards contain can only be seen as votive objects. They most likely date to the first quarter of the second millennium b.c.e. Graham Philip has also proposed a votive purpose for the numerous bronze hoards from Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, especially for the so-called Poche aux bronzes, which should be associated with the nearby Temple of Baal (Philip 1988). This explanation assumes that all of these metal hoards represent deliberate deposit, not accidental loss or burial for safe-keeping in response to some keenly-felt emergency. It has further been suggested that all of these copper and bronze artifacts were of local manufacture, made at or near their place of deposition, in metal workshops associated with some cultic establishment. The bestdocumented example of this type of workshop has been excavated within the temenos of the Hathor Temple at Timna, the building published as the “Egyptian Mining Temple.” Other known metal workshops have been found in association with a palace or main administrative building, as at Late Bronze Age Kamid elLôz; in houses, as at early Iron Age Tel Masos; just inside the city gate, as at Tel Dan; or by the potters’ compound, as at Tel Acco.

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Most of the objects from these boards were nonutilitarian, made for votive use. Utilitarian objects are known primarily from graves and, because of the nature of Levantine burial customs, are poorly attested before the EB IV period (ca. 2300– 2000 b.c.e.). For some reason weapons were not commonly placed in Levantine tombs prior to EB IV. On the other hand, more weapons were placed in the tombs of this period than at any other time during the Levantine Bronze Age. This is why the metalwork of the EB IV period, a phase known primarily from cemetery evidence, is so well represented in the archaeological record (Palumbo 1991). Fortunately, the practice of metal deposition in tombs continued in the following MB I and II periods. This enables us to study a seemingly radical transformation of Levantine metalworking traditions around 2000 b.c.e. The hook-tang weapons (called both daggers and spearheads), tanged knives, and crescentric axes of the EB IV period—products of a metalworking tradition that seems to have had considerable influence on the development of the metal industry of EBA Cyprus—were replaced by the ribbed or grooved daggers, fenestrated axes, and socketed spearheads of the Levantine MB I period (Philip 1991a). This typological change seems, in some way, to be associated with the introduction of tin and the development of bronze metallurgy. Bronze objects with a sufficient amount of tin (> 5.0% Sn) are known perhaps as early as the end of EB III (a dagger from Bâb edh-Dhrâº) and are fairly well attested in EB IV (daggers from ºEnan, Jericho, and Jebel Qaºaqir), but this early use of tin seems to have been confined to daggers. Nor were all EB IV daggers made of bronze. The dozen EB IV daggers from Tell el-ºAjjûl that have been analyzed were all made of arsenical copper with insignificant traces of tin. We know very little about the sources of raw material or the methods of manufacture used for this metalwork. The small bar ingots known from EB IV sites such as Beªer Resisim and Har Yeruham contain neither tin nor arsenic, apparently indicating that these elements were deliberately added at a final stage of dagger production (Merkel and Dever 1989). In MB I, bronze had a much wider distribution and was used for many types of weapons. There is even evidence for the use of a leaded bronze containing over 5.0% tin and a roughly equal amount of lead. Bronze certainly continues to be used in the MB II period, whereas leaded bronzes, known from Hama, Bethshan, and Tel Rehov (near Beth-shan), seem to have been a peculiar feature of MB I (Philip 1991b). Nor is leaded bronze the most unusual alloy known from the pre-Iron Age Levant. Recent analytical work has shown that the “prestige” objects from the Chalcolithic Nahal Mishmar hoard were not made of arsenical copper, as previously believed, but of a remarkable copper-arsenic-antimony ternary alloy, having as much as approximately 20% antimony. This unusual alloy seems to have been used only for the ceremonial objects present at southern Palestinian sites during the Chalcolithic period. Moreover, nothing like it was ever again used in the ancient Levant (Tadmor et al. 1995). This phenomenon raises questions regarding the origins of this metallurgical tradition and the place of manufacture of these artifacts. Evidence for the actual

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smelting of copper ores in the Chalcolithic period was first discovered by Jean Perrot at Tell Abu Matar in 1952 but is still published only in a preliminary report (Perrot 1955). Since then similar evidence has been uncovered at other Chalcolithic sites, most notably at Shiqmim and Neve Noy. But all of this evidence (ores, furnaces, crucibles, and slags) points to rather small-scale operations dealing only with the production of utilitarian objects (axes and chisels) made of pure, unalloyed copper averaging approximately 99% copper. This utilitarian production was a local metal industry that made use of copper ores from the vicinity of Feinan, some 60 miles to the east (see below), but had nothing to do with the manufacture of the “prestige” objects that make up the bulk of the Nahal Mishmar board. The only source of the ternary alloy used in making the “wands,” “scepters;” and “crowns” from Nahal Mishmar and other Chalcolithic sites appears to have been located in eastern Anatolia, where examples of a copper-arsenic-antimony ore have been excavated in a Chalcolithic context at the site of Norsuntepe. Yet all scholars seem to agree that the style and iconography of the Palestinian metal “prestige” objects duplicates those of contemporary artifacts in stone, ivory, and terra-cotta. The metal industry seems to be very much a part of the material culture of the southern Palestinian Chalcolithic (Tadmor 1989). In other words, Palestinian metallurgy had its greatest period at the very beginning, in the Early Chalcolithic, as documented by a metal industry that had no local antecedents and no successors. After about 3000 b.c.e., the primary developments in metallurgical technology are found in the north, at the great Syrian Bronze Age sites of Ebla, Mari, Ugarit, and Emar. At these sites the development of metallurgical technology is documented in the artifacts themselves, as well as in the numerous references to metals and metalworking found scattered throughout the thousands of cuneiform texts from Bronze Age sites in Syria, especially from Ebla (Archi 1988). The use of Feinan copper has also been documented at Late Chalcolithic sites in Jordan, notably at Tuleilat Ghassul, but the finds from Ghassul are now dated, on the basis of some twenty calibrated radiocarbon dates to the second half of the fifth millennium b.c.e. (Bourke 2002). Palestinian sites in the Early Bronze Age have produced far fewer metal artifacts and no textual evidence relating to metalworking or to mining. The third millennium b.c.e. was an innovative period for advances in metalworking technology in many different parts of the world, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and the Aegean, but not Palestine. Recent archaeometallurgical research in the region of Feinan, an area of some 300 square miles, has established that the mining of copper ores there began during the Chalcolithic period. Similar claims have been made for Chalcolithic (and even Neolithic) mining at Timna, on the western side of Wadi Arabah, but the evidence necessary to substantiate these claims remains, for the most part, unpublished. Work at Feinan, in Wadi Ratiye and in Wadi Abiad has identified over 100 mines dated to the Chalcolithic period (Weisberger and Hauptmann 1988; Hauptmann et al. 1992; Muhly 1984).

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The two regions, Timna and Feinan, share a common geology, with massive brown Cambian sandstones containing rich deposits of chrysocolla, overlying dolomite-limestone-shale (or DLS) deposits rich in copper and manganese. The difference is that, at Timna, these DLS deposits had no surface exposure and were therefore never worked in ancient times. The sandstone deposits of Feinan, containing chrysocolla with up to 51.8% copper and some malachite, seem to have produced the ore found at Tell Abu Matar and Shiqmim, which would have yielded a very pure metallic copper and very little slag after smelting—exactly the industry documented in the archaeological evidence from these sites. This is the copper used in making the utilitarian metal artifacts from Chalcolithic Palestine. But neither Feinan nor Timna (nor the southern Sinai) have any mineral deposits containing arsenic or antimony (Hauptmann et al. 1992). The copper mines of Feinan, and now certainly Timna, were also exploited during EB II, III, and IV (ca. 2900–2000 b.c.e.), but in these periods the ores were smelted at the mining sites themselves. During the Chalcolithic, the ore itself seems to have been exported across the Jordan, to be smelted at sites such as Tell Abu Matar and Shiqmim. From the EB II–III period, some 15 smelting sites have been discovered at Feinan, associated with the production of over 1,000 tons of slag. One of these, Feinan 9, has produced 27 copper smelting furnaces. At Timna, a mine (Site 250A) and the associated workshop and smelting installation (Site 149) have been dated to the EB IV period (Rothenberg and Shaw 1990). Operations like these could have produced at least some of the copper used during the Levantine Early Bronze Age but do not explain the arsenic present in many Early Bronze Age artifacts. It is worth pointing out that the use of arsenical copper was one of the major features of the metal industry of the Anatolian Early Bronze Age (see above regarding the significance of the EB IV bar ingots). Mining and smelting activity at Feinan and Timna seems to have ceased, for no apparent reason, during the Middle Bronze Age and the first half of the Levantine Late Bronze Age, approximately 2000–1300 b.c.e. It was during this period that Cyprus, the land of Alashiya, emerged as one of the major sources of copper for the eastern Mediterranean world. References to copper from Alashiya are found in texts from Mari, Alalakh, Ugarit, and Boghazköy (the ancient Hittite Capital of Hattusha), as well as in New Kingdom Egyptian royal inscriptions and the Amarna Letters (Knapp [ed.] 1996). At that time there was, especially at Timna, a limited revival of copper mining and smelting under Egyptian domination (13th and 12th centuries b.c.e.). The inscriptions of Rameses III seem to designate Timna as the land of ªAtika. In the following Iron Age, especially during Iron II B–C (900–500 b.c.e.), Feinan experienced its main period of copper mining and smelting activity. Recent research in the area has identified over 100 mines dating to this period (many of them being reopened EB mines) and over 100,000 tons of slag. This could be the period of mining activity described in the famous mining passage in the book of Job (28:1–11). At Timna, on the other hand, Iron Age mining and smelting seems to be confined to small-scale operations at only one location, Site 30, Stratum I. But what of the Early Iron Age, especially the 11th and 10th centuries b.c.e.? In

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particular, what about the career of Solomon the “Copper King”? What of Solomon’s copper mines in Wadi Arabah and his smelting installations at Ezion-geber? In past years every biblical commentary and handbook of Palestinian archaeology spoke of the wealth acquired by Solomon through his exploitation of the copper deposits of Wadi Arabah. The ore mined there was processed in his smelters located at Ezion-geber, and the resulting copper was transported to distant lands by his Red Sea (Tarshish) fleet. Nelson Glueck declared the site of Tell elKheleifeh, which he identified with Ezion-geber, as the “Pittsburgh of Palestine.” All of this has now been called into question (Muhly 1984). The final publication of the archaeological evidence from Tell el-Kheleifeh, issued some fifty years after excavations at the site (Pratico 1993), dates the pottery from the 8th to early 6th centuries b.c.e.; regards the “smelter” as a storehouse or granary and the “crucibles” as examples of Negavite handmade wares; and even calls into question the identification of the site with biblical Ezion-geber or Elath (many of these revisions had, in fact, already been proposed by Glueck himself, in a 1965 article). As for Wadi Arabah, Beno Rothenberg, the director of the Timna Project, found no evidence for any mining or smelting activity at Timna contemporary with the age of Solomon. Yet the archaeometallurgical evidence remains surprisingly ambiguous. There is no good evidence for dating the beginning of Iron Age operations at Feinan. At Timna the “limited” operations at Site 30, Stratum I, actually involve the introduction of a major advance in smelting technology, combining the introduction of the shaft furnace with the first use of a manganese flux, which resulted in the clean separation of metal from slag and the formation of “typical” slag cakes weighing nearly 50 pounds. In contrast, the bowl furnaces of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age produced only copper prills entrapped in a slag that had to be crushed in order for the prills to be extracted (Rothenberg [ed.] 1990). It is hard to understand the remarkable innovations in smelting technology documented at Site 30, Stratum I, within the context of small-scale operations of limited duration. There is clearly still much to learn about mining and smelting operations in Wadi Arabah. Much of the uncertainty that affects the interpretation of Levantine history and archaeology in the 10th century b.c.e., the “Age of Solomon,” stems from the ambivalent assessment of the previous period, especially the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. In metallurgical terms, some scholars see the metal industries of Early Iron Age Palestine as something new, introduced to the area by the invading Sea Peoples (Tubb 1988). Others see the metalworkers of the Levant, both in the Bronze and in the Iron Age, as a seminomadic group employed by the dominant political authority of the day, be it Canaanite, Egyptian, Israelite, Edomite, or Phoenician. The entire site of Tell Deir ºAlla in the 12th century b.c.e. is seen as a seasonal camp used by seminomadic metalworkers who smelted copper and worked bronze during the winter months (Franken and Kalsbeek 1969). This nomadic background has even been presented as the explanation for the distinctive “southern” metallurgical tradition that developed in Egypt, Sinai,

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Mesopotamia, and the Levant, as opposed to the “northern” tradition found in Iran, Anatolia, and the Aegean (Davey 1988). All of this is highly speculative, but it does reflect the considerable uncertainty that still underlies all interpretations of Levantine history and archaeology during the years of approximately 1200– 900 b.c.e. The above account has focused on what might be called the archaeometallurgical evidence for the copper and bronze metallurgy of the Levantine Chalcolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages. It must be admitted that, for reasons having more to do with politics than with scholarship, this evidence is badly skewed. All major archaeometallurgical programs have been carried out in the lands of present-day Israel and Jordan. Virtually no work of this nature has been done in Syria or in Lebanon. Syria presents the modern investigator with a wealth of archaeological and artifactual evidence, as well as a rich textual record comprising references to metals, metalworking, and the trade of metals from sites as diverse as Ebla (EB), Mari (MB), and Ugarit (LB); but this wealth of material cannot, at present, be compared with any body of analytical data. This unfortunate situation raises serious scholarly problems. The Early Bronze Age texts from Ebla contain many references to tin and to the production of bronze, but did northern Syria really have a bronze metallurgy in the mid– third millennium b.c.e.? It would be very useful to have analytical evidence to confirm (or refute) the rich textual record. The Middle Bronze Age Mari texts provide a wealth of evidence for the importation of tin from sources located to the east, not to the north, and its storage and transshipment to Carchemish, Hazor, Ugarit, and even to Kaptaru or Minoan Crete. According to these texts, the merchants of Mari imported copper from Alashiya (Cyprus) and Dilmun (Bahrain). In the latter case the copper itself actually came through Bahrain from Oman (ancient Magan; Muhly 1986). It should be possible to say something more about this on the basis of analytical work (especially lead isotope analysis) done on copper (metal, ores, and slags) from Cyprus and Oman. Unfortunately, we have no comparable body of analytical evidence from Syria. For the Late Bronze Age we have only a few very antiquated metal analyses from Ugarit. The situation in Lebanon is even worse. There most of the Late Bronze metalwork, including entire stylistic groups of metal figurines, actually comes from the antiquities market and is of uncertain date and provenience, in some cases even of doubtful authenticity (Moorey and Fleming 1984). The cultural/historical transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and the technological transition from bronze to iron are still developments associated with considerable controversy. What is certain is that, from the perspective of technology, this change did take place. During the years 1200–1000 b.c.e., there was a steady increase in the use of iron, especially of iron as a practical metal in everyday use. By the 10th century b.c.e., it is possible to say that iron (and especially carburized iron or steel) had achieved the status of a “working” metal (as this term is used by Snodgrass 1980). The question to be answered is, simply put, why all this came about.

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The traditional explanation for the shift from bronze to iron was based on the assumption that iron was a metal possessing crucial properties—hardness and the ability to take and keep a sharp edge—that made it superior to bronze as a material for weapons of war. The working of iron determined the military superiority of the Hittites, who had a monopoly on the use of iron and were therefore able to defeat the Egyptians at the battle of Kadesh (1274 b.c.e.). The Hittites passed this monopoly in ironworking on to the Philistines who were, in turn, able to maintain their domination of the ancient Israelites because of their superior weapons made of iron. These arguments are no longer found in the pages of serious scholarship and with good reason. There is no evidence for any “iron monopoly” in the ancient world, whether held by Hittites, Philistines, or other ancient peoples. Nor is simple wrought iron superior to bronze in any way whatsoever. Iron is softer than bronze; it neither takes nor keeps a good cutting edge; and iron, compared to bronze, was both more difficult to make and harder to work. Whereas bronze could be cast in the molten state, making use of crucibles and molds in a technology that had been mastered at least by the early fourth millennium b.c.e., the ancient ironsmelting furnace produced a bloom, a spongy mass consisting of particles of metallic iron trapped in slag This bloom had to be hammered on an anvil in order to drive out the slag and consolidate the particles of iron. The hard labor associated with this work is emphasized in several biblical passages, notably Isa 44:12 and Qoh 38:29–31. What, therefore, possessed (or provoked) ancient man, at the end of the second millennium b.c.e., all over the eastern Mediterranean world but especially in Cyprus and the Levant, to begin working with iron in a serious way? The relative abundance of iron ore in the crust of the earth was certainly a factor, since almost every country has local deposits of iron ore. Access to sources of copper, and especially tin, involved the sort of international trade now well documented by the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck, approximately 1300 b.c.e. (Pulak 1997). If this trade were disrupted by the chaotic events that brought about the end of the Bronze Age, as many scholars have maintained, then the resulting “bronze shortage” could have generated something of a “materials crisis,” forcing contemporary metalworkers to seek an alternative raw material to replace the missing bronze. The problem with this argument is that it is difficult to document any shortage of bronze during the years 1200–1000 b.c.e. Nor does tin seem to have been in short supply, as many high-tin bronzes survive from the period (Waldbaum 1989). It is, in fact, difficult to find any explanation to account for the shift from bronze to iron (Zaccagnini 1990), except the explanation of the technology of ironworking and, in particular, the production of steel. The coming of the Age of Iron is, in may respects, really the coming of the Age of Steel, for it was the quenching of carburized iron that created a metal far superior to the finest bronze (Muhly, Maddin, and Stech 1990). Most of the basic technical analyses of Early Iron artifacts from the Levant were done in the late 1970s and the 1980s by the team of Maddin, Muhly, and

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Stech. This work dealt, in particular, with objects from Kinneret, Taºanach, and Tell el-Farºah (south). The basic conclusions derived from this work were summarized in an article published in 1990 (Muhly, Maddin, and Stech 1990, with relevant bibliography). Since that time, virtually no technical work involving the use of metallography has been done on any Early Iron artifact from the Levant. As of 1990, it was possible to demonstrate the existence of a number of artifacts made of carburized iron, or steel, already in the 12th century b.c.e. These included a knife from Tomb 562 at Tell el-Farºah (S) and a group of bracelets from a burial cave in the Baqºa Valley of Jordan. The remarkable iron pick from Har Addir, in the northern Galilee, seems to date from the 11th century b.c.e., but the remarkable state of preservation of this object has led some scholars to question the validity of this early date. There is no reason, however, to question the archaeological context of this find. The structure of the metal from which it was fabricated, showing clear evidence for the use of carburization, quenching, and tempering in order to produce a pick made of tempered martensite, indicates that the iron industry of the Levant was fully developed by the 11th century b.c.e. Evidence like this still provides the best explanation for the shift from bronze to iron.

Bibliography Archi, A. 1988 Testi amministrativi: Registrazioni di metalli e tessuti—Archivi reali di Ebla, Testi VII. Rome: Missions archeologica Italiana in Siria. Bourke, S. J. 2002 The Origins of Social Complexity in the Southern Levant: New Evidence from Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 134: 2–27. Conrad, H. G., and Rothenberg, B. (eds.) 1980 Antikes Kupfer im Timna-Tal: 400 Jahre Bergbau und Verhüttung in der Arabah. Bochum: Deutsches Bergbau-Museum. Davey, C. J. 1988 Tell edh-Dhibaªi and the Southern Near Eastern Metalworking Tradition. Pp. 63–68 in The Beginning of the Use of Metals and Alloys, ed. R. Maddin. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Franken, H. J., and Kalsbeek, J. 1969 Excavations at Tell Deir ºAlla, Vol. I: A Stratigraphical and Analytical Study of the Early Iron Age Pottery. Leiden: Brill. Hauptmann, A., et al. 1992 Early Copper Produced at Feinan, Wadi Arabah, Jordan: The Composition of Ores and Copper. Archeomaterials 6: 1–33. Knapp, A. B. (ed.) 1996 Sources for the History of Cyprus, Vol. II: Near Eastern and Aegean Texts from the Third to the First Millennia b.c. Altamont, N.Y.: Greece and Cyprus Research Center. Levy, T. E., and Shalev, S. 1989 Prehistoric Metalworking in the Southern Levant: Archaeometallurgical and Social Perspectives. World Archaeology 20/3: 352–72.

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Levy, T. E., et al. 2002 Early Bronze Age Metallurgy: A Newly Discovered Copper Manufactory in Southern Jordan. Antiquity 76: 425–37. Merkel, J. F., and Dever, W. G. 1989 Metalworking Technology at the End of the Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant. Institute for Archaeo-metallurgical Studies Newsletter 14: 1–4. Moorey, P. R. S., and Fleming, S. 1984 Problems in the Study of the Anthropomorphic Statuary from Syro-Palestine before 330 b.c. Levant 16: 67–90. Muhly, J. D. 1984 Timna and King Solomon. Bibliotheca Orientalis 41: 275–92. 1986 The Role of Cyprus in the Economy of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Second Millennium b.c. Pp. 45–62 in Cyprus between the Orient and the Occident, ed. V. Karageorghis. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. Muhly, J. D.; Maddin, R.; and Stech, T. 1990 The Metal Artifacts. Pp. 159–75 in Kinneret: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf dem Tell el-ºOreme am See Gennesaret 1982–1985, ed. V. Fritz. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Palumbo, G. 1990 The Early Bronze Age IV in the Southern Levant: Settlement Patterns, Economy and Material Culture of a “Dark Age.” Rome. University of Rome. Perrot, J. 1955 The Excavations at Tell Abu Matar near Beersheba. Israel Exploration Journal 5: 17– 41; 73–84; 167–89. Philip, G. 1988 Hoards of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in the Levant. World Archaeology 20/2: 190–208. 1989 Metal Weapons of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in Syria–Palestine. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. 1991a Cypriot Bronzework in the Levantine World: Conservatism, Innovation and Social Change. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 4: 59–107. 1991b Tin, Arsenic, Lead: Alloying Practices in Syria–Palestine around 2000 b.c. Levant 23: 93–104. Pratico, G. D. 1993 Nelson Glueck’s 1938–1940 Excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh: A Reappraisal. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Pulak, C. 1997 The Uluburun Shipwreck. Pp. 233–62 in Res Maritimae: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean from Prehistory to late Antiquity, ed. S. Swiny, R. L. Hohlfelder, and H. W. Swiny. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Rothenberg, B. (ed.) 1990 The Ancient Metallurgy of Copper. Archaeology-experiment-theory. London: Institute for Archaeo-metallurgical Studies. Rothenberg, B., and Glass, J. 1992 The Beginnings and the Development of Early Metallurgy and the Settlement and Chronology of the Western Arabah, from the Chalcolithic Period to Early Bronze Age IV. Levant 24: 141–57. Rothenberg, B., and Shaw, C. T. 1990 The Discovery of a Copper Mine and Smelter from the End of the Early Bronze Age (EB IV) in the Timna Valley. Institute for Archaeo-metallurgical Studies Newsletter 15–16: 1–8.

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Shalev, S., and Northover, J. P. 1993 The Metallurgy of the Nahal Mishmar Hoard Reconsidered. Archaeometry 35: 35– 47. Snodgrass, A. M. 1980 Iron and Early Metallurgy in the Mediterranean. Pp. 335–74 in The Coming of the Age of Iron, ed. T. A. Wertime and J. D. Muhly. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tadmor, M. 1989 The Judean Desert Treasure from Nahal Mishmar: A Chalcolithic Traders’ Hoard? Pp. 249–61 in Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor, ed. A. Leonard Jr. and B. B. Williams. Chicago: The Oriental Institute. Tadmor, M., et al. 1995 The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert: Technology, Composition, and Provenance. ªAtiqot 27: 95–148. Tubb, J. N. 1988 The Role of the Sea Peoples in the Bronze Industry of Palestine/ Transjordan in the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Transition. Pp. 251–70 in Bronze-Working Centres of Western Asia c. 1000–539 b.c., ed. J. Curtis. London: Kegan Paul. Waldbaum, J. C. 1989 Copper, Iron, Tin, Wood: The Start of the Iron Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. Archeomaterials 3: 111–22. Weisberger, G., and Hauptmann, A. 1988 Early Copper Mining and Smelting in Palestine. Pp. 52–62 in The Beginnings of the Use of Metals and Alloys, ed. R. Maddin. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Zaccagnini, C. 1990 The Transition from Bronze to Iron in the Ancient Near East and in the Levant: Marginal Notes. Journal of the American Oriental Society 110: 493–502.

James D. Muhly

Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Syria–Palestine Introduction Archaeological evidence for ancient warfare comes in three main forms: artifacts; structures; and representational evidence, such as paintings and wall reliefs bearing military scenes. Most wall reliefs are found outside the Levant but many refer to campaigns conducted by Egyptian or Assyrian armies in Syria–Palestine. Although these scenes contain valuable information, the artists were depicting events in far-flung lands. Thus, some scenes are stereotyped, and facts may have been skewed to suit a particular audience. Texts, or inscriptions accompanying reliefs, provide additional material; however, this material may often consist of “the official version.” Administrative records dealing with the logistic of military establishments provide further insights. Occasional literary texts describe combat or siege but usually accent individual heroes.

Artifactual Remains Most artifactual evidence comes from graves and occasional hoards. Few groups of weapons have been found within buildings. Grave objects and the tools of war may differ. For the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, the best archaeological evidence shows weapons used in hand-to-hand fighting. Middle Bronze Age texts refer to archery, but the equipment rarely survives. Texts refer to sieges and mention various forms of military engineering, but these too leave little archaeological evidence.

Weapons for Hand-to-Hand Combat Most weapons of Chalcolithic date come from special contexts. Copper and stone mace-heads and socketed axes were found in a cave at Nahal Mishmar, while fourth-millennium b.c.e. graves at Byblos produced a number of daggers. From the mid–third millennium b.c.e. on, more weapons entered the archaeological record, becoming particularly favored in graves. This shift may indicate changing burial practices as much as increasing militarism. Early Bronze Age sites produce mainly daggers, axes, and spearheads. The Hypogeum, a rich Early Bronze Age tomb at Til Barsip in Syria, produced numerous weapons, including axes with a cast-in socket. Mid–third millennium b.c.e. texts from Ebla indicate a stratified society based on an urban center with tributary villages. Ebla was itself conquered by Naram-Sin of Akkad in the 23d century b.c.e. Texts from Ebla refer to metal supplies and the production of bronze, some of which was destined for weapons manufacture. Within a world of high-status gifts, daggers decorated with precious metals feature alongside other valuable objects. In the Early Bronze Age, weapon forms from inland Syria and the Euphrates Valley differ from coastal and Palestinian styles. Inland examples are technologically more sophisticated and include socketed axes of types having Mesopotamian

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Fig. 29. A selection of Bronze Age weapons from Syria–Palestine. 1. Socketed axe resembling Mesopotamian types (Syria EB III–IV); 2. narrow-bladed dagger (Palestine EB III–IV); 3. crescentic axe (Palestine EB III); 4. square-section tanged spearhead (Palestine EB IV); 5. fenestrated axe (Syria–Palestine MB I); 6. socketed axe (Palestine MB II–III); 7. dagger with ribbed blade, made in a two-piece mould (Palestine MB I); 8. small socketed spearhead (Palestine MB I); 9. larger socketed spearhead (Syria MB II–III).

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and Anatolian parallels (fig. 29:1). In Palestine, simple narrow-bladed daggers are found (fig. 29:2), while flat crescentic axes predominate over socketed varieties (fig. 29:3). Simple square-sectioned spearheads are found in both areas (fig. 29:4). While most Palestinian Early Bronze Age weapons were made by hammering a simple cast billet, some Syrian material was cast in two-piece molds. Tin-bronze was also more common in Syria. In Palestine, few weapons are found in Early Bronze Age I–III contexts. Many more occur in Early Bronze IV graves, despite a shift in settlement from large defended sites to smaller rural communities. Some scholars believe that this is indicative of the arrival of new peoples. However, the weapon styles are of local ancestry, and a change in funerary practices seems an equally good explanation. In the Middle Bronze Age new, standardized metal styles appear throughout Syria–Palestine. These reflect the widespread use of two-piece molds, permitting the repeat production of fenestrated and narrow-bladed axes and daggers with relief decoration on the blade (fig. 29:5–7). Socketed spearheads now replace the earlier tanged forms (fig. 29:8). Lightweight spearheads are soon joined by larger, heavier types (fig. 29:9). Weapons now appear frequently in graves, often in sets, part of a contemporary phenomenon that can be traced from the Nile Delta to Iran and that endures until the later Middle Bronze Age. These burials may signify high-status individuals. While Yadin argued that changing weapon styles in the Middle Bronze Age reflected the need to penetrate armor, there is little evidence for armor at this time. Texts indicate that, within a community, weapon production was often controlled by the central administration. As a result, the distribution of weapons may have been embedded within social and political structures. Styles and fashion may have been as important as mechanical efficiency, especially for weapons of the elite, perhaps designed for semiritualized combat between champions. That weapons played a role as common status symbols would explain the wide dispersion of certain styles. The discovery of many weapons, including examples in gold and silver alongside other “valuable” materials in a group of temple offerings at Byblos, confirms that these objects had multiple levels of meaning. During the Late Bronze Age, fewer weapons are found in graves. Axes became rare, and dagger styles changed. Swords and daggers with the hilt and blade cast as one came into general use, being favored by the Sea Peoples and related mercenaries who served in Egyptian armies. The final success of the sword proper may owe to the coming of iron, which was hot-forged rather than cast into shape, enabling the production of good-quality, long blades. Elaborate curved swords are occasional finds from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, with three examples coming from the Royal Graves at Byblos. In representational art they are associated with deities and may be part of the iconography of gods and royalty, rather than everyday weapons.

Projectile Weapons Flint projectiles are known to have been hunting weapons as early as the Natufian period. Projectiles were less common after the Neolithic, with archaeological

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evidence only becoming widespread again in the Late Bronze Age, when numerous metal arrowheads appear. Self-bows, made from a single piece of wood, were an old tradition but had serious limitations. An example from the early fourth millennium b.c.e. was recently found with a burial in the “Cave of the Warrior” located northwest of Jericho. Made from a single length of olivewood, the bow was of double curved form and had a relatively short draw-length, but would have been quite accurate over short distances. However, powerful, accurate wooden bows required suitable wood, were so long as to be immobile, and could not remain strung for long periods. Composite bows, constructed from layers of wood, horn, and sinew were more powerful and could be kept strung. They were also smaller and more manageable than a wooden equivalent. Bows are perishable, of course, and rarely survived. Composite bows may have originated in mid-third-millennium Mesopotamia and are mentioned in early-second-millennium b.c.e. texts from Mari under the term tilpanum. These texts also include royal orders for as many as ten thousand projectile heads of various weights. Because the glues used require time to dry out, composite bows were suitable for batch-production in large institutional workshops. Their distribution may have been restricted to individuals supplied from those sources. Reed was the best material for making arrowshafts, while arrowheads were of metal, stone, bone, or hardwood. From the Late Bronze Age onward, mostly metal arrowheads have been found. Fire arrows too would have been used, especially when walled settlements or buildings were attacked. Sling-bolts are all but absent from graves, although this weapon was certainly used and appears at Mari under the term wapsum.

Armor While there is representational evidence from Mesopotamia for the use of helmets (Akkadian gurpisu), these may have been of wood or leather rather than metal. In the Levant, there is little archaeological evidence for helmets other than representations in seals and metal figurines, both of which may depict deities. The evidence of Egyptian reliefs suggests that helmets were more common in the Late Bronze Age, when scale armor also begins to appear. This consists of overlapping rows of bronze, or more often leather, scales sewn onto a fabric backing and worn long enough to cover the body and upper legs. Relatively light, leather scale armor would not have overly restricted the wearer’s movement, although a complete suit of bronze scales would have been very heavy and expensive. It may have originated to protect chariot drivers and archers, neither of whom had a hand free to hold a shield, but would have been a costly, prestigious item. Egyptian reliefs show warriors from the Sea Peoples wearing chest armor composed not of scales but of overlapping strips, perhaps leather or metal, arranged diagonally in a V-shape. Assyrian reliefs suggest that helmets were quite common in the Iron Age, and there is now more evidence for the use of body armor. An interesting feature of the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) is that Goliath carries a javelin and wears greaves (leg armor) in addition to coat of mail.

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Both the javelin and the greaves are unusual for Syro-Palestinian warriors of this date and hint at his foreign connections. For shields, the evidence is mostly representational, often from Egyptian reliefs depicting foreigners. Many were made of wood or leather. The recent discovery at Pi-Rameses in Egypt of a mold for making shields of a shape generally associated with the Hittites highlights the international nature of Late Bronze Age weapons manufacture.

The Horse Despite claims in the past, there is no good evidence to associate the introduction of the horse or the chariot with any particular ethnic group. The domesticated horse was known in Syria–Palestine by the early second millennium and was probably used by fast messengers. However, its main military function was to draw chariots.

Chariots The first texts referring to chariots appear in the later stages of the Middle Bronze Age. Large-scale use of chariots dates from the Late Bronze Age, when they were employed in the armies of the major powers of that period. Vehicles drawn by equids (but not horses) appear in graves in southern Iraq as early as 2650 b.c.e. In addition to military functions, early wheeled vehicles had a role of prestige in parades and hunting, which was assumed by later chariots. From a military standpoint, the important innovation was harnessing the horses to a fast, light, bent-wood vehicle with two spoked wheels. There are two main views concerning the chariot’s introduction to the Levant. One sees chariots as an innovation of the south Russian steppes, perhaps introduced to western Asia via Anatolia by an immigrant Indo-European aristocracy. The other argues for a local derivation from the heavier, Mesopotamian, four-wheeled platform cars mentioned above. Early chariots were not used as primitive tanks, to charge directly into packed infantrymen. In fact, the effectiveness of the chariot depended on its combination with the composite bow and scale armor. Together, these provided a powerful, highly mobile force on the battlefield. This mobility was also invaluable in enforcing a blockade and in communicating. Not only did styles of fighting and the appearance of the battlefield change with the new chariot forces, but the organization of warfare was revolutionized as the new skills required greater training of individual warriors. A new and influential class of specialist chariot troops arose—the maryannu. This term has no ethnic significance but merely refers to these soldiers. Chariots also required an extensive support network: farriers, wrights, harnessmakers, armorers. As with the composite bow and armor, the implication is that much of this equipment was centrally manufactured, was supplied by palace arsenals, and was not owned by individual warriors. This was state-directed warfare. Chariots continued in use through the Iron Age. Syrian chariots are illustrated in both Assyrian reliefs and reliefs from the Aramaean and Neo-Hittite city-states, and are mentioned at various points in the Old Testament.

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Fig. 30. The rampart at Qatna in central Syria. Several kilometers long, this earthen bank encloses an acropolis and extensive town. Photo by the author.

Records indicate that Late Bronze Age armies could comprise thousands of soldiers. At the battle of Kadesh in Syria, the Hittite army numbered some fifteen to twenty thousand men. The Egyptians fielded a force of similar size. However, other texts such as the Amarna letters refer to much smaller numbers, garrisons of a few hundred or even tens of soldiers. The Old Testament texts, especially those in Judges, describe small-group guerilla tactics employed against the better-equipped, “standard” armies of the established city-states.

Mounted Troops Mounted troops appear in the first millennium b.c.e. A mounted warrior with shield and helmet features on an early Iron Age relief from Tell Halaf, while Assyrian armies campaigning in Syria–Palestine included mounted warriors in their ranks. They were employed alongside chariots, although, as before, the bulk of the army consisted of infantrymen. Camel-mounted Arab warriors are also shown on first-millennium Assyrian reliefs. These unarmored men, wielding self-bows or spears, contrast with the heavily protected Assyrian footsoldiers and cavalry operating against the steppe tribes. Another relief, also from Nineveh, shows the destruction of a bedouin-style tent camp by Assyrian soldiers. Assyrian reliefs show archers protected by coats of mail, infantrymen with swords or spears and shields, many wearing pointed or plumed helmets. These men suggest a well-equipped, efficient fighting force, a military machine, not a band of warriors. Well-armed soldiers with round shields and plumed helmets also feature on Iron Age reliefs from Carchemish, suggesting that many Iron Age armies had similar equipment. Assyrian reliefs also depict sieges, providing

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Fig. 31. At Apamea in western Syria, the modern town sits atop an ancient tell. The wall surrounding the top of the tell gives a good impression of the appearance of ancient fortified towns. Photo by the author.

valuable details about Iron Age fortifications. These reliefs reveal Assyrian tactics to have involved combinations of battering-rams, climbing-ladders, and direct assault under covering fire.

Structural Evidence The importance of towns in the ancient Levant meant that great stress was placed on their defense. It was the effectiveness of fortification techniques that rendered siege warfare so important. The capture of a town meant the acquisition of booty from its temples and palaces, as well as future control of its defenses. There is some debate about the date of the first appearance of fortification walls, as opposed to enclosure walls to restrain livestock. A large dry-stone wall and tower at Jericho, dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period, is so far unique. While most have seen this wall as being defensive, other views have been advanced. Enclosure walls occur at the Chalcolithic shrine at En-Gedi, while substantial defensive walls appear at several late-fourth-millennium sites, including Jawa in eastern Jordan. Walled settlements are a characteristic feature of the Early Bronze Age. Stone walls were often built in sections and may have borne mudbrick superstructures. Many Early Bronze Age examples had projecting buttresses or towers, giving a clear field of fire for archers. In the Middle Bronze Age, sloping earth ramparts known as glacis appear. (This is not unique; some Iron Age sites reveal similar fortification techniques.) While some ran for several kilometers, enclosing extensive

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Fig. 32. The superbly preserved mudbrick gate at Tell Dan dates to the Middle Bronze Age. Note the depth of the modern ground surface in the foreground. Photo by the author.

lower cities, as in the case of Hazor and Qatna (fig. 30), others, often located at the edge of preexisting tells, may have incorporated parts of earlier walls and may have built up gradually. Topped by a mudbrick wall, and with a broad ditch in front, these walls would have served to protect the walls against the approach of siege towers and battering rams, as well as defending the interior against projectile weapons. Gates required additional protection (fig. 32). Some were approached by a steep incline, others defended by a bent-axis approach. From the Early Bronze Age onward (e.g., Tell el-Farºah [N]), the entrance was defended by towers. The gates were of wood, sometimes sheathed in metal to resist fire, and there may have been two or three pairs of gates within a single, multichambered entrance structure. Small posterns allowed sorties by the defenders and the escape of messengers, as well as convenient access to fields outside the walls. Basic fortification techniques showed little change through the later second and first millennia. The effectiveness of defenses is demonstrated by the need for long investments, such as the seven-month siege of Megiddo by Tutmosis III in the 15th century b.c.e., or the three-year siege of Iron Age Samaria by the Assyrians. While food could be stored, water was more of a problem, and some ancient cities (e.g., Megiddo, Hazor, Tell es-Saºidiyeh) had concealed shafts or tunnels leading to springs below or outside the walls. The later Iron Age saw the construction of small fortresses, often with casemate walls and towers. Too small to be settlements, most are found in less-wellexplored areas, such as the Negev or the uplands of central Jordan. While the

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construction of those in the Negev is often ascribed to “Israelite” royal policy, the presence of similar structures in Jordan should make us wary of such explanations. At Khilda north of Amman, several such drystone walled structures are located within a few hundred meters of each other. Are these really evidence for central planning on the part of Iron Age kingdoms, or are they perhaps indicative of a more fluid sociopolitical structure, with the “forts” the bases of leading families or figures among tribal groups?

Bibliography Dalley, S. 1984 Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian cities. London: Longmann. Dawson, D. 2001 The First Armies. London: Cassel. Kempinski, A., and Reich, R. 1992 The Architecture of Ancient Israel: From the Prehistoric to the Persian Periods. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Littauer, M. A., and Crouwel, J. H. 1979 Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East. Leiden: Brill. Moorey, P. R. S. 1986 The Emergence of the Light Horse-Drawn Chariot in the Near East c. 2000– 1500 b.c. World Archaeology 18: 196–215. Murnane, W. J. 1990 The Road to Kadesh: A Historical Interpretation of the Battle Relief of King Seti I at Karnak. 2d ed. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilisation 42. Chicago: The Oriental Institute. Philip, G. 1989 Metal Weapons of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in Syria–Palestine. British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 526. Oxford: BAR. 1995 Warrior Burials in the Ancient Near Eastern Bronze Age. The Archaeology of Death in the Ancient Near East, ed. A. R. Green and S. Campbell. Oxbow Monographs in Archaeology 51. Oxford: Oxbow. Piggott, S. 1983 The Earliest Wheeled Transport: From the Atlantic Coast to the Caspian Sea. London: Thames & Hudson. Sasson, J. M. 1969 The Military Establishment at Mari. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute. Wright, G. R. H. 1985 Ancient Building in South Syria and Palestine. Handbuch der Orientalistik 1/2. Leiden: Brill. Yadin, Y. 1963 The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands in the Light of Archaeological Discovery. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson.

Graham Philip

Ceramics/Kilns Ceramic objects are the most abundant artifacts found in Near Eastern excavations and include clay pots, bricks, figurines, ovens, jewelry, and crucibles. Clay can be made into permanent shapes, large or small, which when fired to a relatively low temperature become as durable as rock. Clay occurs naturally as a product of the geological weathering and disintegration of rocks, an ongoing process everyplace, thereby making clay readily available. Variations in clays account for the different uses to which they are put. Primary clays derive from a single rock type, unlike secondary clays, which are composed of more than one parent rock. The former are cleaner and can result in fine, thin-walled pottery. Since secondary clays often travel some distance from their place of origin due to water or wind action, they contain extraneous materials or impurities that impose restrictions on the potter. The different qualities of clays impacted international trade in antiquity. From Greece and Cyprus, where one finds a full range of clay types, beautiful, thin-walled, painted fine wares were exported throughout the Middle East. In contrast, most clays of the Levant are secondary clays well suited for utilitarian containers such as the jars containing agricultural products, which were shipped to the Mediterranean world. Potters could produce fine wares in the Levant, but only when the society would support an industry requiring a lengthy production process to clean the clay, after which it was suitable for fine, thin-walled wares. Making pottery, or ceramic containers, requires locating and mining the clay, transporting it to a work space, preparing it, shaping the pot, rendering the surface treatment, drying, firing, and distributing the finished product. Since clay is available in many places, potters have a choice between learning to work with a locally available clay or importing clay from a more distant source. The heavy weight of clay encourages the use of local deposits. Clay preparation involves simple pounding and/or a more elaborate alteration of its composition by adding or removing components. Large rocks are always removed, after which a potter uses the clay as is or adds organic material (dung, straw, cattails, and so forth) or small rocks to the cleaned clay. Additives to clays are known as nonplastics or tempering materials. Unlike the clay, whose plasticity allows it to be shaped and change its form, the rock and mineral additives are a-plastic and change minimally throughout the firing. It is difficult to determine, even microscopically, whether the nonplastics are added or native to the clay. Ethnoarchaeological studies demonstrate that many potters add water exclusively to clay. Potters might mix two clays to benefit from qualities inherent in each, especially if they present problems when used individually. Pottery-making appears deceptively easy. Considerable skill is required, however, for all stages of the work, including the shaping, which traditionally involves:

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pinching; mold support; building in segments, coils, or slabs; wheel throwing; rotating on a turntable; or a combination of these techniques. The choice of clay and the degree to which the potter is able and willing to alter it determine the manufacturing technique and every subsequent stage from surface treatment to firing. Clay containing abundant stones is difficult to paint, slip, burnish, and incise. While clay absorbs paint and slip, stones in the clay cannot. Slip is a watery mixture of the finest clay particles covering the surface. Paint is a clay slip containing a small amount of pigment and then arranged in a pattern rather than applied to the entire surface. A pot whose surface is rubbed with a hard object, such as a shell, can have a burnish or shiny surface, if fired correctly. The sheen Fig. 33. After stacking 100–400 pots in the disappears if pottery has been fired too square-shaped kiln in Kornos, Anthoulla high. Clays containing abundant and constructs a temporary door of bricks. Pots large stones present problems for in- can touch each other in the kiln, but care is cised patterns; as the potter moves a taken to avoid contact with the kiln floor tool across the surface, there is a risk and walls. Jugs, cooking pots, goat-milking that it will drag stones, thereby mar- pots, and lids discernible here are occasionally separated or supported by reused ring the pattern. Pottery must dry before firing and is sherds and broken bricks. Since the brick thus never drier than the surrounding door is built without mortar, the potters air. Dried but unfired pots can reabsorb add small incense burners behind the bricks to maximize kiln space and heat. moisture from the air. Therefore potKornos, Cyprus. G. London 2000. tery production is often seasonal work, restricted to the dry months. (Other weather-related difficulties include mining wet clay, wet fuel, and wet kilns.) Fine clays with few nonplastics require the greatest care during the drying phase. A slow, steady drying period in a protected place is preferable for all wares. Once dry, a handful of pots or even several hundred can be stacked and fired in a kiln or laid in a pit for one to twelve hours (figs. 33–34). Traditional kilns are built of stone, brick, and/or organic materials. Pit kilns, especially suitable for large containers, are holes dug into the ground, then lined and covered with organic materials. Fuels include wood, coconuts, palm fronds, dung, and so forth.

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Little is known about the organization of the ancient ceramics industry. It was a multifaceted industry with both male and female potters and assistants working in production locations ranging from small household courtyards, modest assembly line productions to larger factory settings normally located away from the main population centers. Small workshops producing figurines near temples in urban centers suggest that certain ceramic artifacts were highly valued in antiquity. Pottery helps to determine the date and function of the deposit in which it is found. Because clay pots break and crack easily if they are dropped or if water splashes on them when they are hot, utilitarian pottery was replaced rapidly. As the pots were replaced, styles changed through time. ThereFig. 34. The last pots enter the kiln fore, most sherds (or shards, pieces of a through the permanent dome-shaped roof broken pot) and pots are datable to a after the kiln is stacked and the brick door specific archaeological period. Pottery is assembled. Suzanna reaches up with a made in contemporaneous communiflat-bottomed cooking pot and has anties within one region will vary, as does other one ready if there is room. A circupottery made in different countries lar, flat sheet of metal will rest on top of during the same time period. In addithe hole to close the roof opening after the tion to chronological concerns, ceramic last pot is put in place. Kornos, Cyprus. containers reflect local, regional, and G. London 2000. international trade, as well as social interaction among neighbors. Pottery informs us about diet, social conditions, economics, religion, mortuary practices, and technology.

Bibliography Amiran, R. 1969 Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Massada. Franken. H. J. 1971 Analysis of Methods of Potmaking in Archaeology. Harvard Theological Review 64: 227–55.

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London, G. A. 1989 Past Present: The Village Potters of Cyprus. Biblical Archaeologist 52: 219–29. 2000 Women Potters of Cyprus. Video. London, G.; Egoumenidou, F.; and Karageorghis, V. 1989 Traditional Pottery in Cyprus. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Rice, P. M. 1987 Pottery Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago. Shepard, A. O. 1976 Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 609. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution.

Gloria London

Jewelry in the Levant Aspects of the macrocosm of human life in the lands of the Levant are hidden in the world of miniature artifacts that we call jewelry. The study of jewelry gives us anthropological information about the earliest human communities; it tells of geographical settlement, trade, and technology; and it provides chronological synchronisms with other centers of civilization. We can find out about economic prosperity, social and political stratification, utilitarian necessities, clothing and textile use, cultural interchange, fine arts and industry, craft guilds, societal leadership, family heraldry, and marriage customs. Here we have windows into religious narratives, metaphorical illustrations, sacred rituals, beliefs, prayers, offerings, moral and aesthetic values, and burial practices. We learn of peace and war, victory and defeat, military recognition, invasions of aggrandizing peoples, and migrations far from home. In these small wonders we see the rise and fall of dynasties and empires, and hopes and dreams for what lies beyond this world.

The Stone Age The study of Stone Age jewelry of the Levant may begin with the el-Wad Cave, the largest of the Mount Carmel caves, where tightly-flexed bodies in group burials wore necklaces of dentalium shell beads from the Mediterranean seashore and bone ornaments characteristic of the Early Natufian culture, 12,950 b.p. Natufian Layer B of the cave contained the earliest evidence of prehistoric art in the Near East and included flint objects, stone implements, and a bone sickle haft with carved animal head, as well as stone and bone jewelry pendants, beads of animal bones, and dentalium shells. From the one hundred Enan tombs in the northern Jordan Valley burials with personal ornaments of headbands, belts, necklaces, and bracelets with bone and shell beads were found. In lower Galilee, Yiftahel, one of the largest Neolithic (8000–4000 b.c.e.) sites in Israel, produced greenstone beads. A rectangular dwelling unit, “House 100,” had five strata producing seashell ornaments from the Mediterranean, two from the Red Sea, and beads of semiprecious stones—serpentine, agate, and greenstone. Chips of stone and narrow flint drills indicated the presence of beadmaking. Beads of nephrite were found in Neolithic Jericho. Tuleilat el-Ghassul, famous for its masks and spectacular polychrome star wallpainting, Chalcolithic period (4000–3200 b.c.e.), was situated five kilometers northeast of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley. A new culture here with its pit dwellings and later rectangular houses produced many types of pendants in bone, stone, and mother-of-pearl, bead necklaces in shell and bone, a bone bracelet and bone pins. Tell Abu Matar and Megiddo give evidence for the first contacts between the Nile Valley and the Levant with pendants of semiprecious stones from Egypt of turquoise, carnelian, and haematite, as well as ivory.

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From the Early Bronze Age (3200–2000 b.c.e.), two secondary group burials of approximately two-hundred men, women, and children at Azor, south of Jaffa, were found in caves with Early Bronze I pottery and had more than a thousand beads of such local stones as crystal, malachite, and limestone. There were imported beads (some from Egypt) of carnelian, amethyst, chalcedony, and jasper, as well as two in gold, and three silver earrings. The Early Bronze II and III period produced gold jewelry from the cemetery at Bâb edh-Dhrâº. A cave tomb from the area of the Sea of Galilee, at Kibbutz Kinneret, possibly a Beth Yerah burial site, had over three hundred beads in analyzable shapes (spherical, cylindrical, elliptical, conical, and biconical) in materials of gold, copper, faience, ruby, crystal, jasper, quartz, clay, and mother-of-pearl. A singular find in the Levant, which had Anatolian comparisons from the second half of the third millennium, was a gold foil disc, 5.8 cm in diameter, with a hole in the center, with repoussé dots arranged in a circle around it, and four arms of dots making a cross. Deeper bosses decorated the arms and spaces between. From Tomb A at Jericho came two star-shaped faience pendants with two perforations in each. Egyptian Pre-Dynastic “faience” sought to replicate precious stones, especially turquoise, with blue-green shades of glaze used to cover a molded paste of powdered quartz. At the beginning of the the Middle Bronze, in the 20th century b.c.e., Middle Kingdom Egypt related to Canaanite city-states through princes who sought to imitate pharaonic styles in jewelry. Gezer’s Middle Bronze III tombs had many Egyptian-style faience and gemstone scarabs, some forming gold signet rings, as well as gold beads, crescent pendants, and “toggle-pins.” Jericho’s tombs of the period had similar jewelry items in contexts with provisions of food, furniture, garments with pins, and haircombs. Undoubtedly, the most remarkable jewelry find was from Tell el-ºAjjûl, ancient Gaza, from the Queen’s Cenotaph, evidently a commemorative tower and repository for her gold jewelry in the open Middle Bronze palace courtyard. The hoard included two sets of five numbered bangles in solid gold, scarab seal finger rings, larger rings with imported (Afghanistan?) lapis lazuli beads, small gold earrings ribbed perhaps to resemble graduated melon beads on a crescent, and two “togglepins.” This type of garment pin is significant because in the Levant examples can be classified by typological sequence and dated according to the shape and designs on the haft. The more ornate belong to the Bronze Ages, and the simpler ones with elongated heavy hafts and shorter pointed ends belong to the early Iron Age. Petrie first named the pin, but it did not function as a “toggle,” although the term has remained. The Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 b.c.e.) coincided with the beginning of the New Kingdom in Egypt, and Canaan flourished as a province of its empire. There is a great amount of elegant jewelry from this time from excavations such as Megiddo, Beth-shan, and Hazor, but none more spectacular than the treasures of Tell el-ºAjjûl. A jeweler’s hoard found in a pottery vessel, as well as rich graves and

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unstratified city loci, produced earrings with granulation, bull’s- and ram’s-head pendants with filigree and inlay, bracelets and belts with ornate clasps, diadems, foil rosettes, amethyst and gold beads, moon-crescent pendants, eight-pointed stars, delicate toggle-pins, amulets of flies (supposed Egyptian military medals), and especially triangular plaques. Most of these plaques, which have been classified into three design types, were worn in the pubic area by religious functionaries and are interpreted as having to do with the Canaanite fertility goddesses. There are elaborate publications of the Tell el-ºAjjûl jewelry by Negbi (1970) and Maxwell-Hyslop (1971), in addition to Petrie’s excavation reports on “Ancient Gaza” (see also Platt 1992 on the triangular plaques). Faience amulets appear in abundance, many in Egyptian style, as illustrated in the votive offerings of the temples at Lachish. An exemplary broad-collar necklace from the latest (13th century b.c.e.) temple had lotus finials with attached four strands of faience cylinder beads to space pendants of palmettes, grape clusters, promegranates, and fruits. The popular eye-of-Horus protective amulet occurred in this period and later in faience, carved semiprecious stones, and delicately crafted gold. The Late Bronze temple near the airport in Amman, Jordan, had gold beads, pendants, and toggle-pins. Because the legendary tomb jewelry of King Tutankamon can be dated around the traditional date of the biblical Exodus (ca. 1290 b.c.e.), and because from Canaan the abundant Late Bronze Egyptianizing pieces appear to copy pharaonic court styles, it may be possible to illustrate passages such as Exod 3:22, in which the Hebrew children are said to have had jewelry when they left Egypt. Guilds of professional jewelry smiths, who traveled internationally throughout the eastern Mediterranean—Syria, Canaan, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Aegean— probably crafted styles appropriate to their clients’ requirements and available materials. Gold was naturally easy to work with relatively few tools; silver and electrum (“white gold”) involved somewhat more complex skills. The use of bronze (that is, copper alloyed with more than 2% tin) in the “Bronze Ages” enabled jewelry design to be replicated for popular purposes, as was true for faience and clay. Small, hand-held, stone molds carved for combinations of earrings, rings, pendants, beads, and toggle-pins suggest portable equipment of mobile smiths.

The Iron Age Jewelry from the Iron Age (1200–540 b.c.e.) is of particular interest to students of the Bible. The metals of gold, silver, bronze, and iron came to have metaphorical associations as they were used in biblical passages. Well stratified and reported older excavation sites, such as Tell Beit Mirsim, Megiddo, Beth-shan, Beth-shemesh, Lachish, Hazor, Tell en-Nasbeh, and Samaria, have provided general categories and observations that have held true for recent finds. Basically, in this period there were two major groups: (1) the finely crafted items that had been characteristic of the Late Bronze Age and were symbols of prestige and high office; and (2) the utilitarian jewelry of everyday life. The precious items in the first group were made of gold, silver or electrum, semiprecious stones, and

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faience that exhibited jewelers’ skillful abilities in fashioning swivel signet rings, pendant and lunate earrings, frontlets and diadems, graceful toggle-pins, ornately strung bead necklaces, and a variety of pendants such as crescents, stardisks, plaques, and rosettes. They were found in hidden hoards, sacred areas, obvious treasuries of important buildings, and carefully designed tombs. The second group appeared more in loci of everyday life on the mounds, in cisterns, fills, humble graves, and mass burials. They were simple bangle bracelets and anklets in bronze, iron, and bone, similar rings and plain earrings, local stone, shell, bone and clay beads and pendants, the majority of toggle-pins, and the entire multitude of bronze and iron garment pins called “fibulae.” After the 8th century, fibulae replaced toggle-pins, which had developed typologically in bronze with clumsy, too-heavy hafts. The fibula bow developed typologically into a design resembling a human arm bent into a “V” with bracelet-and-armlet detail and bent fingers forming a clasp for the spring-coiled and pointed stave that could attach the pin at the shoulder, waist, hip, or elsewhere. The function was like that of a modern safety pin and enabled large pieces of textiles to be used as various kinds of garments and sacks for portable goods. This kind of artifact information supports the historical fact that the Iron Age in the Levant was a time of relative peace, isolation, and home government. The fewer numbers and types of distinctly political and cult insignia in the later periods would reflect the abolition of religious symbolism and imagery so prominent in biblical legislation and the sermons of the prophets. Although poorer in previous treasures of gold and silver, the Israelite society was also freer from the foreign styles of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean with their accompanying powers and could move toward more economic and social democratic idealism. Recent Iron Age excavations have produced an early period Sea Peoples’ (Sherden) fortress at Acco with a jewelry mold, a swivel scarab signet with an Egyptian motif of Hathor headdress, uraei, and gold ring base. The Philistine city of Ekron (Stratum IV), dated to the late 11th–early 10th century b.c.e., had a cache of objects in the styles of the Egyptian 21st Dynasty, including faience necklace pendants of Hathor heads and a stirrup-shaped ring with a figure for a stamp seal. From Tell el-Kheleifeh, near the Gulf of Elath (which Glueck had originally identified as Solomon’s Ezion Geber), came a 7th–6th-century signet seal of a horned ram and inscription “Belonging to ytm,” suggesting King Jotham of Judah, Uzziah’s successor. Because of the shapes of the metal wires, it was probably used as a pendant suspended from a thong. Similarly, from the citadel in Amman, the Adoni-nur Tomb produced gold, silver, and bronze jewelry and three inscribed seals. One seal ring has the name of “Adoni-nur, servant of ªAmminadab,” the Ammonite king, and is dated to approximately 650 b.c.e.

The Persian Period In the Persian Period (540–330 b.c.e.), Levantine fashion copied the palace style of the Achaemenid Empire, notable for its use of animal heads on finials of

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armlets and anklets and on earrings. Probably the ibex, sphinx, ram, gazelle, lion, bull, and other representations were a form of heraldry for families of nobility. The designs had widespread popularity throughout the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world, continuing even into the 2d century c.e. From Ashdod came a small gold earring with the head of an ibex, worn upside down on a hoop, and dated to the 4th century b.c.e. From Gezer we have a female skeleton with two silver anklets with ibex heads, dated to the late 6th/early 5th century. At Tell Goren, an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert, a Persian building from the 5th century yielded two glass pendants—one the head of a woman, and the other of a bearded man. From the Madaba Plains Project in Jordan over three dozen pendant-type seals and seal impressions have been found in Persian strata, from administrative structures related to the surrounding large agricultural estates. Some of the officials of the Persian province of Ammon are now known from Tell el-ºUmayri by their names, titles, and identifying symbols. Tell el-Mazar, in the mid-Jordan Valley, had 84 5th-century graves with skeletons and artifacts indicating male and female distinctions. The male bodies were in an extended position with arrow- and spearheads, swords, and daggers and with stamp and cylinder seals suspended on the chest or from belts around the waist. Female burials in a crouching position had cosmetic palettes and kohl sticks, bangles in pairs with decorated finials on ankles and wrists, lunate and penannular bronze rings on ears, bronze, iron, and silver finger rings and bead necklaces around the neck. Men and women both wore fibulae near the shoulders and at the waist.

The Hellenistic Period For the Hellenistic Period (330 b.c.e. to 63 b.c.e.), because settlement was continuous without major interruption in many of the cities of the Selucid Syria, with their elegant urban planning and architecture, jewelry most likely was treasured and kept or remade. Not much was left for the archaeologist; nevertheless, in the great museum collections (where provenience and date characteristically must be conjectured), motifs of “Classical” mythology, design, and technique could be mixed with “Oriental” influences from the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. These were (in gold) pendants such as crescents, “mulberries,” pomegranates, bovine animals, and plaques of frontal goddesses with hand-held symbols, Persian animal-finial bangles and earrings, then toggle-pins and Levantine fibulae. The British Museum in London, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts all have large, well-known Hellenistic holdings. Notable especially for magnificent, carved Hellenistic gemstones with Greek Classical scenes and figureheads reminiscent of the artistry of coinage is the Burton Y. Berry collection of the Indiana University Art Museum, which displays the results of brilliant acquisition and study during the donor’s diplomatic service in the Middle East (ca. 1920s–1960s). Berry’s collections include Roman period jewelry as well, emphasizing the known fact that there was no break in

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craft and production at the Hellenistic centers of Alexandria and Antioch, although some jewelers moved to welcoming imports from Rome after General Pompey’s victory in Palestine.

The Roman Period From the Roman Period (63 b.c.e. to ca. 330 c.e.), of striking note in the Indiana-Berry holdings are jewelry hoards with pieces that are matched in metal techniques and smooth, nonfaceted gemstones. Necklaces have accompanying hairpins, earrings, diadems, buttons, dress plaques, bracelets, anklets, broaches, and finger and toe rings. Because motifs in Hellenistic jewelry were embraced so wholeheartedly in this period in the Levant, the term Greco-Roman is appropriate. Jewelry from the Nabatean Kingdom (whose capital was Petra) is well represented. The Northern Cemetery Tombs, dated to the 1st and 2d centuries c.e., at Kurnub in the central Negev Desert, probably ancient Mampsis on the Madaba Map, produced many gold ornaments. Iconography of the Great Goddess Allat, whom Glueck identified as Nabatean Atargatis and who later became Aphrodite/Venus, was associated in art, especially sculpture and jewelry, with dolphins. A gold disc or convex shield with a central globule, perhaps a stylized breast, was affixed to an earring hoop and had a cylindrical dangle with a knotted-end wire. Comparatively, from Tell Hesban tombs of the Madaba Plains Project came several gold earrings with a hollow hemisphere and central globule indicating a stylized breast and an outstanding single earring with a cameo of Atargatis dated by context to the 2d–3d century c.e. A wreath of stamped foil fretwork framed the black and white cameo, and a bar below it had two dolphins with three suspended pendants of the cylinder type. Above the wreath was a small rosette with a cloison and stave that held a pearl. A chain, attached to the top of the rosette to position it over the ear tragus, went behind the ear, perhaps to be seen there with a certain brushed-back hairstyle. The body of the earring was suspended in the lobe by a conventional wire hoop. A general type of earring with a number of variations, none very elaborate, was found during this period in Syria–Palestine, particularly Palmyra, the caravan trade city that superseded Petra. Larger stylized, multiple-sphere earrings with globules, probably of a similar Late Roman date, were found in Qasrawet, in northwestern Sinai, in a temple complex dedicated to a Nabatean goddess and the main commercial center for the caravan kingdom. From Tell Hesban came two bold, bronze, cross-bow fibulae. Although dated to the mid-4th century c.e., a bit later than most Late Roman artifacts, these pins were part of the equipment of Roman military officers and civilian officials in Roman frontier provinces. Hesban also had a carved gemstone (see above, Berry collection) dated by context to the 3d century c.e. It was an oval carnelian intaglio depicting Zeus, Fortuna, and Hermes in a crowning scene. Hesban in the Roman period produced jewelry from everyday life, such as bangles in bone, bronze, glass, and iron; beads in glass, faience, and bronze; pendants in bone, bronze, clay, and glass; necklace chains and rings in bronze and iron.

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The Byzantine Period In the Byzantine period (beginning ca. 330 c.e.), after Christianity became the formal religion of the empire, Byzantine subjects and symbols were produced in jewelry. Generally, nevertheless, the jewelry items and techniques remained relatively the same, as can be illustrated with the jewelry of everyday life at Tell Hesban. More colors in glass and stone beads and inlays in elegant gold with cloisons resembled the characteristic mosaic tile artistry. Coin-like medallions called enkolpions now depicted scenes of the Annunciation and Jesus’ Baptism. Pectoral crosses with arms tapering toward the center and small disks on each corner were typical. Earrings had large crescents in chiseled-out fretwork (opus interrasile) and filigree. Designs were being influenced by the church and the court at Constantinople/Byzantium.

The Arab Periods In the Arab Periods (beginning in 640 c.e.), jewelry developed more toward styles familiar in bedouin tradition. It became the domain of women’s personal property, given to brides upon marriage, worn as a kind of bank account (not hoarded), and as amuletic protection from misfortune as well as to bring prosperity. Silver and iron were the metals prized most, and stones of reddish colors (carnelian and agate) and amber were associated with life, health, affection, and attractiveness. Chains with pendants, especially of discs and coins, were worn with textiles on the head and facial areas. Necklaces had crescents, stars, triangles, fish, lizards, toads, “cucumber amulets” (cylinder containers), pear-shaped pendants, and an array of smaller chains and coins. Religious phrases of praise, blessing, and protection, especially against the “evil eye” of envy, psychic and social negativity, were inscribed. Bangle bracelets were ornately decorated and widened to the clip and cuff styles, and rings were complimentary to them. The decorations were appropriate to the embroidery work on head and dress textiles. Silversmithing for this magnificent jewelry came virtually to an end in the 1960s (c.e.); it had been replaced by the mass-produced gold jewelry that developed in the 1940s and became popular in the second half of the 20th century.

Bibliography Bienkowski, P. (ed.) 1991 The Art of Jordan: Treasures from an Ancient Land. National Museums and Galleries of Merseyside. Stroud: Sutton. Maxwell–Hyslop, K. 1971 Western Asiatic Jewellery, c. 3000–612 b.c. London: Methuen. Negbi, O. 1970 The Hoards of Goldwork from Tell el-ºAjjul. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 25. Gothenburg: Åströms. Platt, E. 1992 Jewelry, Ancient Israelite. Pp. 823–34 in vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday.

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Rosenthal, R. 1973 Jewellery in Ancient Times. London: Cassell. Rudolph, W., and Rudolph, E. 1973 Ancient Jewelry from the Collection of Burton Y. Berry. Bloomington: Indiana University Art Museum. Stern, E. (ed.) 1993 New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. 4 vols. New York: Simon & Schuster. Stillman, Y. 1979 Palestinian Costume and Jewelry. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico. Yassine, K. 1984 Tell el Mazar. Vol. 1. Amman: University of Jordan.

Elizabeth E. Platt

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The Mosaics of Jordan The first mosaic floors of Jordan were accidentally discovered in Madaba after 1880 by the families who had settled among the abandoned ruins of the ancient city. Since then, mosaic floors have been excavated all over the region, with a concentration in the area north of Wadi Mujib. Recently, mosaics have been excavated at Ghor al-Safy (ancient Zoara) and Petra. However, the territory of Madaba and Jerash are still considered the main centers of mosaic execution. These mosaics cover a period from the 1st century b.c.e. to the 8th century c.e. They consist only of mosaic floors, although traces of wall mosaics have been found in Jordan. The oldest mosaic in Jordan dates to the last decades of the 1st century b.c.e., the Herodian era, and was found in the Machaerus fortress built by Herod the Great. Located on the border between Jewish Perea and the Nabatean Kingdom of Petra, the fortress contained a palace replete with baths, of which the apodyterium contained mosaic fragments. In 1907 a mosaic floor of the 2d–3d century c.e. was accidentally unearthed by one of the Circassian families who have settled amidst the ruins of Jerash, a city of the Decapolis. The mosaic was in a fairly good state of preservation. Its external border depicts busts of the Muses, portraits of famous Greek poets, and writers surrounded by a garland of fruit and flowers, supported by putti. The seasons are represented in the corners. The main motifs of the mosaic are dedicated to the cycle of Dionysus. Half of the mosaic is now conserved in the Staatliche Museum in Berlin and half in Texas. Byzantine mosaics with the same mythological themes dating to the 6th century c.e. have been found at Madaba. The Bacchic procession depicting Ariadne, Banche, and Satiros framed by square panels with geometric motifs is still in situ in the Madaba Archaeological Museum. Others include the mosaic of Achilles playing a zither between Patroclus and a young girl crowned by two erotes; the young Hercules strangling Nemeus the lion; and a mosaic of a woman reclining upon a bed, now lost, but observed in the last century. The most significant example of mythological subjects depicted in the mosaics of Jordan was found below the inner vestibule of the Church of the Virgin Mary at Madaba. It is the result of the classical renaissance promoted by Emperor Justinian during the first half of the 6th century. The mosaic decorates the pavement of a large hall (31 feet long by 24 feet wide). The composition is framed by a wide border of acanthus that encloses the central carpet. This field is divided into three rectangular panels. The scrolls of the border are animated with hunting and pastoral scenes. The seasons are depicted in the four corner scrolls: spring and autumn on the west side and summer and winter on the east side. Each season is represented half-length as Tyche wearing a turreted crown. The western panel of

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the carpet is decorated with nilotic motifs in a grid of flowers. The figurative motifs of the central and eastern panels are inspired by Euripides’ Hippolytus. In the central panel of the mosaic, the personages of the tragedy are accompanied by their respective names; the handmaidens assist Phaedra, while the wet nurse turns toward Hippolytus. He is accompanied by his ministers and by a servant holding the bridle of his mount. In a second figurative panel, the goddess Aphrodite is seated on a throne next to Adonis gesturing with a sandal. She is threatening a winged Eros being presented to her by a Grace (Charis). A second Eros supports Aphrodite’s bare foot, while a third looks on, and a fourth empties a basket full of flowers/beans. A second grace grasps the foot of another Eros, who takes refuge among the branches of a tree. A third grace runs after yet another Eros. The scene is observed by a peasant girl coming from the country. Birds and flowers decorate the intercolumnar spaces between the side pillars of the hall. In the eastern side of the hall, beyond the border, are three enthroned personifications as Tychai of the Christian cities of Rome, Gregoria, and Madaba. Each Tyche holds a cross on a long staff. These are near the entrance, which is decorated with sandals enclosed by a medallion. Mosaics inspired by mythological and classical motifs are the best evidence of a shared erudite cultural milieu that nurtured mosaicists decorating the contemporary churches of the region. The great majority of mosaics in Jordan are floors of churches, with the exception of the mosaics of the first sanctuary in the memorial of Moses on Mount Nebo, dated archaeologically to the end of the 4th century, and the mosaic of the lower church at Massuh, dated to the first half of the 5th century. The Massuh mosaic, a long narrow polychrome carpet, is decorated with an elaborate geometrical composition on a white ground. Its central medallion contains a rather schematic figure of a ram tied to a shrub. A number of mosaics belong to a transitional period between the end of the 5th century and the first three decades of the 6th century. These include the lower mosaic in the Glass Court of the cathedral of Jerash; the lower mosaic of the presbyterium of the north church at Hesban; the lower mosaic floor of the chapel of the priest at Khirbet al-Mukhayyat on Mt. Nebo (laid at the time of Bishop Fidus of Madaba); the lower mosaic of the church of Kayanus in the ªUyoun Musa Valley nearby (laid at the time of Bishop Cyrus); and the mosaic floor of the lower baptistery chapel found in the western courtyard of the cathedral complex at Madaba (laid at the time of the same Bishop Cyrus). The dated mosaics found in the territory of Madaba and in the churches of Jerash demonstrate a stylistic and technical change in mosaic technique. This occurred during the early years of Emperor Justinian. The best examples are the floor of the lower diakonikon in the Memorial of Moses on Mt. Nebo, dated to 530 c.e., and the floor of the Church of Saint George on the acropolis of Khirbet al-Mukhayyat, dated to 536 c.e. The diakonikon chapel was paved by the mosaicists Soelos, Kaiomos, and Elias during the time of Bishop Elias of Madaba. The composition includes pastoral and hunting scenes, borrowed from the classical scenes of the venationes. The

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mosaic floor of the small, three-nave Church of Saint George is unusually rich with hunting scenes and classical personifications of the four seasons and the earth. Visitors entering the main, northern, door were welcomed by a rectangular panel depicting harvest scenes and the portrait of a young man. He has been identified as John, son of Ammonius, the main benefactor of the church. The work was executed by a team of three mosaicists: Naum, Kiriakos, and Thomas. A technical innovation common to both churches is the rendering of human faces with small tesserae fragments, new in the region thus far. The mosaics of Jerash reflect those of Madaba and its history. There, archaeologists have excavated mosaics decorating the floors of five churches built between 526 and 533, the time of Bishop Paul. The novelty of the decorative motifs employed can be seen in the mosaic floors of the three joined churches: Saint John, Saint George, and Saints Cosmas and Damianus. They were built between 529 and 533 in the western quarter of the city. In the most northerly of the three, the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damianus, rich geometric designs alternate with animals, birds, fish, and floral motifs. In addition to a long dedicatory inscription, portraits of the main benefactors decorate the front of the chancel and the first row of the carpet. In the Church of Saint John, iconoclastic damage has not diminished the magnificence of this new art. Though little remains, it is enough to reconstruct the theme of the composition, which was based on a double series of walled city plans. These represent the Egyptian cities of the Nile Delta, with aquatic flora and fauna, as well as people traveling in between—in sum, a geographically focused nature genre depiction. The mosaics of Jordan, in the context of the revival of classical motifs, are characterized by architectural representations, nilotic scenes, personifications, and portraits of the benefactors. Within the current of classical taste are the scenes representing pastoralism, agriculture, the hunt, daily life, and also the isolated motifs of plants and animals that form part of the decorative composition. Among the best-preserved examples of this period are: the mosaic of the Church of Saints Lot and Procopius; the upper mosaic of the Chapel of Priest John at Khirbet al-Mukhayyat; the mosaic of the Church of Deacon Thomas in the ªUyoun Musa Valley; the Church of the Apostles in Madaba; and the Church of the Lions at Umm al-Rasas. Beside the Madaba map, which remains unique for its geographical and historical interest, mosaics decorated with walled cities, buildings, or architectural motifs have been found in the churches of Jerash at Mt. Nebo and in the Memorial of Moses and in the churches of Khirbet al-Mukhayyat, as well as those on the acropolis of Maºin, at Khirbet al-Samra, in the lower church of al-Quwaysmah, and in the churches of Umm al-Rasas. The mosaics of Jordan offer the opportunity to trace the evolution of this decorative motif from the first decades of the 6th century to the 8th century in the Umayyad period. The earliest work of this genre to date remains the walled city plans in the Church of Saint John in Jerash, completed in 531. The latest is a

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series of cities represented in the churches of Maºin and Umm al-Rasas in the 8th century. Four buildings decorate the central portion of an interlaced geometric motif on the floor of the south aisle in the lower church at al-Quwaysmah. The mosaic is dated to 717/718. The outer mosaic border of the church on the acropolis of Maºin is dated to 719/720. It is decorated with a series of buildings that alternate with trees. At the time of the excavation, eleven buildings remained in the mosaic, each representing a city. All had toponyms above them, and the inscriptions, even fragmentary ones, were easily identifiable. A double series of geographical representations in the Church of Saint Stephen at Umm al-Rasas, built in the Umayyad period, represents the major portion of mosaic remaining after the iconoclastic destruction of its figurative motifs. In the intercolumnar spaces of the north row, eight Palestinian cities are represented, while in the intercolumnar spaces of the south row seven Jordanian cities are depicted. At the east end of both aisles, two additional Jordanian cities are portrayed, each with portraits of benefactors as well as inscriptions. Ten more buildings, portraying cities of the Nile Delta, accompany the frame of the nave, which depicts a nilotic scene with fish, birds, water flowers, and putti fishing in boats. The historical relevance of a city plan is demonstrated in the double plan of Kastron Mefaa (Umm al-Rasas), found in the Church of Saint Stephen and duplicated in the Church of the Lion (6th century). The depiction of the walled castrum and the outer northern quarter point toward an urban inspiration. A personification frequently found in the mosaics of Jordan is that of Earth. She is identified by the Greek word beside her head and is portrayed as the bust of a woman crowned with fruit. Another personification decorates the central medallion of the nave in the Church of the Apostles. Sea, represented as the bust of a woman, emerges from the waves. The same idea is seen in the personification of the Abyss in the Church of Bishop Sergius at Umm al-Rasas. Time is personified as the four seasons and the months. The four rivers of paradise—Euphrates, Tigris, Gihon and Pishon—are found in the Chapel of Saint Theodore at Madaba. Each is represented as a half-naked figure holding a reed in one hand, and in the other a cornucopia from which water flows. Byzantine Jordan is a region poor in contemporary written sources. Thus, the inscriptions that accompany the mosaic floors are a valuable historical source. Generally the inscriptions are in Greek, the language known by the clergy and used by the Byzantine administration. However, a few inscriptions in Palestinian Aramaic remind us of the language spoken by the local people. These were found in the lower Church of Kayanus in the ªUyoun Musa Valley below Mt. Nebo; in the lower church at el-Quwaysamah; and in the chapel at Khirbet al-Kursi/Amman. It appears that in most churches mosaics with figurative motifs were deliberately disfigured. Portraits of benefactors, classical personifications, scenes of hunting, herding, and agriculture, and also the isolated animals and birds that filled the spaces of geometric compositions were all carefully removed, either totally or in part. Archaeological research has shown that this iconophobia occurred during the Umayyad period. We are led to this conclusion because no

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6th-century mosaic found beneath a later one was iconoclastically damaged. Mosaics with figurative scenes were executed right up to the Umayyad period with no traces of iconophobia. The crisis must have happened after the laying down of the last figurative mosaics dated to the Umayyad period, such as those at Quwaysmah and Umm al-Rasas. Some scholars put the blame on Yazid II (719–24). This idea is based on the evidence of the Priest John of Jerusalem, at the Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 787. It was upon an order of that caliph, incited by a Jew of Tiberias, that “the sacred icons and all other things of the same kind were destroyed in each province of his empire” (Mansi XIII.196–200). The Arabic sources, however, are completely silent about the order. Stranger still, contemporary Christian authors who were living in Palestine and participated in the theological discussions about images that were taking place in Constantinople (such as St. John of Damascus and his disciple Abu Qurra) make no reference to this order or to what had happened in the churches of the region. Four portraits of benefactors deserve special mention: the portrait of the Arab camel-driver in the upper mosaic of the Church of Kayanus at ªUyoun Musa, two portraits of a lady, and an ecclesiastic in the upper mosaic of the Priest John Chapel at Khirbet al-Mukhayyat. Recent excavations have unearthed mosaic floors in the Umayyad palaces at Qsar al-Hallabat, Qastal, and Qusayr ºAmr. The compositions include geometrical interlooped designs and figurative motifs. The higher technical quality of these mosaics parallels the contemporary mosaics found in churches. All together, the mosaics of churches and palaces in Jordan show an uninterrupted continuity with the mosaics of the Byzantine period generally. The mosaics of Jordan provide valuable historical and artistic evidence of the classical renaissance that flowered in the 6th century at the time of Emperor Justinian. Its cultural and ideological roots lay in the classical tradition of the Hellenistic-Roman period. The themes and decorative motifs used in both sacred and secular buildings continued in the mosaics of the churches, mosques, and palaces of the Umayyad epoch, the last works of an uninterrupted tradition.

Bibliography Avi-Yonah, M. 1954 The Madaba Mosaic Map. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Bagatti, B. 1957 Il significato dei mosaici della scoula di Madaba (Transgiordania). Pp. 139–60 in vol. 33 of Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, ed. T. Klauser et al. Stuttgart: Hiersemann. Piccirillo, M. 1993 The Mosaics of Jordan. Amman: American Center for Oriental Research. Piccirillo, M., and Alliata, E. (eds.) 1999 The Madaba Mosaic Map Centenary 1897–1997. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press.

Michele Piccirillo

Numismatics (Minting and Monetary Systems/Coinage) in the Levant The Levant has a long and virtually unbroken tradition of coinage production and use stretching back to the 5th century b.c.e. The function and purpose of the very earliest coins is still disputed. Were they introduced to facilitate trade, or did coins emerge as handy units of account for recording and storing bullion and to enable states to pay bullion to its servants or mercenary troops? Certainly by the time that the concept of coin production reached the Levant, coins were being used for commercial transactions in other parts of the Mediterranean. Coinage helped states to pay armies and civil servants and to collect taxes, but it also provided a medium of exchange for individuals. In the Levant, the fact that coinage was first issued in the mercantile Phoenician cities of the coast is a strong argument for an initial economic purpose. Until the 4th century b.c.e. most states issued the bulk of their coinage in silver, and the denominations ranged from large, thick units weighing tens of grams down to tiny subdivisions, often weighing a fraction of a gram. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the smaller silver fractions were replaced by cheaper (and larger) bronze units. Their weights conformed to recognized standards. Bronze coins were probably always a token currency, being worth more than their intrinsic value, and it is likely that gold and silver coins often had a premium over and above their metal content. Even so, what the state produced was not necessarily what the public wanted. The state might wish to discharge its large payments using coins of high denomination, but these might be less useful to the general public for use in the marketplace than low denominations.

Persian Period The tradition of coinage production reached the Levant from Greece, Cyprus, and Asia Minor in about the middle of the 5th century b.c.e., a comparatively late date in the development of coinage in the Mediterranean. Previously precious metal ingots or weighed scraps were used in transactions. Coinage from other Mediterranean states, particulary Athens, reached the Levant, and local imitations of these coins were produced. A Persian coinage in gold, struck in the western provinces in Asia Minor, circulated all over the Persian Empire, but some coins that arrived from the west were treated simply as bullion or scrap, being cut into pieces or melted down. The earliest coins to be produced in the Levant were of silver only. Two Phoenician cities Tyre and Sidon began to strike coins in ca. 450– 425 b.c.e., and other cities soon followed (fig. 35). Many of the designs used were purely Persian in inspiration, and certain designs may be linked to designs used on seals. In Pales-

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Numismatics in the Levant tine and surrounding regions, starting in about 400 b.c.e., small silver fractional denominations were issued bearing Persian and Greek designs; this coinage is generally known as “Philisto-Arabian” (fig. 36). At the religious center of Hierapolis in northern Syria, a silver coinage was issued at the very end of Persian control in the names of the High Priest Abd-Hadad and the Macedonian leaders Alexander the Great and Seleucus Nicator.

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Fig. 35. Phoenician double shekel, mint of Sidon. Fourth century b.c.e. Obverse: Galley. Reverse: Ruler (?) in a chariot.

Hellenistic Period When Alexander the Great (336–323 b.c.e.) conquered the Persian Empire, many mints adopted uniform types common throughout his empire, and some Levan- Fig. 36. “Philistotine cities produced this “Macedonian” imperial coin- Arabian” coinage, silver coin. Obverse: Bearded age. It was struck on a uniform “Attic” weight standard head wearing a laurel different from the standard used under Persian rule, al- wreath. Reverse: though certain mints continued to use old standards and Falcon. different types. The weight of the principal Macedonian silver denomination, the Attic tetradrachm, was about 17.3 grams, although it declined until by the 1st century b.c.e. it weighed about 16 grams (figs. 37, 38). The first bronze coinage in the Levant had been issued in the Persian period by Phoenician cities such as Aradus and Sidon, but it was only in the Fig. 37. “Alexander” coinage, Attic silver Hellenistic period that bronze coinage tetradrachm, struck at Damascus. Obverse: became plentiful. The Seleucids and Head of Heracles, wearing lion’s-skin headthe Ptolemies, who controlled most of dress. Reverse: Zeus seated on throne. the Levant after the end of the 4th century b.c.e., issued a coinage in three metals: gold, silver, and bronze. A wide variety of denominations, from very high to very low value, enabled coins to be used for both major state payments and everyday transactions. The Ptolemies and Seleucids produced their silver and bronze coins at various mints, particularly at the administrative capitals of Antioch and Ptolemais. Since they were generally royal coinages, most do not give any explicit indication

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Fig. 39. Bronze coin of the Seleucid king Antiochus VII, thought to have been struck at Jerusalem, dated 131–130 b.c.e. Obverse: Lily. Reverse: Anchor. Fig. 38. Silver tetradrachm of the Seleucid king Demetrius I, struck at Antioch and dated 155–154 b.c.e. Obverse: head of Demetrius. Reverse: Seated figure of Fortune.

of their place of origin, but under certain kings, particularly Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 b.c.e.) Fig. 40. Hasmonaean and Alexander I Balas (150–145 b.c.e.), many cities bronze coin of John Hyrproduced bronze coinages denoting the city in which canus (63–40 b.c.e.). they were struck. There is no question of the cities’ Obverse: Paleo-Hebrew being independent of the Seleucid Empire at this inscription in wreath: point, but with the disintegration of the Seleucid “Yehohanan the High realm in the second half of the 2d century and the Priest and the Council of the Jews.” Reverse: Pair of first half of the 1st century b.c.e., the tradition of incornucopias flanking dependent civic minting gathered momentum. poppy head. Several independent states emerged from the wreckage of the Seleucid realm, some of which struck their own coinages. City-states such as Aradus and Tyre issued copious amounts of silver and bronze (fig. 41), but many other cities managed a coinage in bronze only. The Ituraean rulers of the Chalcis and the Jewish Hasmonaeans also began to issue bronze coins (fig. 40). The Nabataeans, who had probably always maintained independence from the Ptolemies and Seleucids, struck their own coinage in silver and bronze from the 1st century b.c.e. to the early 2d century c.e., when the region was annexed to the Roman Empire (fig. 42). It is not possible to discern why certain states struck both silver and bronze and others issued bronze only, and often there is no apparent correlation be- Fig. 41. Tyrian silver shekel, dated 113–112 tween the size or wealth of these b.c.e. Obverse: Head of Tyrian god Melqart. states and issues of coins. Reverse: Eagle.

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The Roman annexation of Syria (64 b.c.e.) had little effect on the Fig. 42. Nabataean bronze Fig. 43. Bronze coin of coinages of the Levant, coin of King Aretas IV and Herod the Great of and the type of coinage Queen Shuqailat, dated 39/40 Judaea (37–4 b.c.e.). Obbeing produced by all c.e. Obverse: Heads of Aretas verse: Anchor. Reverse: mints continued unaland Shuqailat. Reverse: Pair Pair of cornucopias flanktered. The city-states and of cornucopias. ing wand of Mercury. kingdoms were absorbed into the Roman Empire, but this did not prevent them from continuing their coinage production traditions. The main centers for producing silver were Antioch and Tyre, but bronze coinage was produced by a wider array of cities and principalities. The early silver coinage fom the mint of Antioch, although under Roman control, bore the Fig. 44. Roman provincial silver tetraportrait, name, and titles of the Seleudrachm of Antioch, struck under Trebocid king Philip Philadelphus (ruled 93– nianus Gallus (251–253 c.e.). Obverse: head of Gallus. Reverse: Eagle. 83 b.c.e.). The Levantine mints were slow to adopt the imperial portrait as a standard device for the obverses of their coins, but by the middle of the 1st century c.e. this had become standard practice. For the first two centuries c.e. the currency system (or perhaps systems) of the Levant was not assimilated directly to the coinage produced at Rome. Fig. 45. Roman provincial bronze coin of Antioch, Apart from the silver denarii and struck under the emperor Nerva (96–98 c.e.) Obverse: Head of Nerva. Reverse: SC in laurel wreath. gold aurei struck at the mint of Rome, it is unlikely that any other type of coinage produced outside the Levantine provinces was acceptable as currency there. Antioch became the main provider of a silver coinage for the Levant, but this coinage did not circulate in other provinces. The main silver unit was the tetradrachm (fig. 44), as it had been in Hellenistic times. The relationship of the silver coinage to the bronze denominations is very uncertain, and few bronze coins bear any indication of

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Fig. 46. Roman provincial bronze coin of Philip II, son of the emperor Philip the Arab (244–249 c.e.), issued at Zeugma on the Euphrates. Obverse: head of Philip II. Reverse: Temple on a tall hill.

Fig. 48. Silver shekel of the first Jewish revolt against Rome, dated 68–69 c.e. Obverse: Chalice. Reverse: Three pomegranates on single stem.

Fig. 47. Roman provincial bronze coin of Diadumenian, son of the emperor Macrinus (217–218 c.e.), issued at Tyre. Obverse: Head of Diadumenian. Reverse: Asarte, goddess of Tyre, with military trophy, palm tree and figure of victory on column.

Fig. 49. Roman provincial silver drachm of the emperor Trajan (98–117 c.e.), struck for the province of Arabia in 111–112 c.e. Obverse: Head of Trajan. Reverse: Personification of Arabia.

their value (figs. 45, 46, 47). The cities continued to produce their own bronze coins, and by the 2d and early 3d centuries c.e. there were more mints striking coins than at any other time in the history of this region. Since these coins often carry designs depicting local gods and goddesses and monuments and buildings (figs. 46, 47), they are an invaluable source of information about the cities of this period. From the reign of Gordian III (238–244 c.e.) on, Antioch was developed as a branch mint of the mint at Rome, producing a coinage that would be acceptable throughout the empire. The provincial silver and bronze coinage of Antioch had come to an end by the beginning of the reign of Valerian I (253–260 c.e.), and by the end of his reign all other Levantine provincial coinages had died out as well. The reason for this change is not clear, but the currency of the entire Roman world underwent dramatic modifications in the 3d century, with new branch mints opening up to provide a standardized currency of low-value coins made of very debased silver (fig. 50), and throughout the empire bronze coinages are thought to have become uneconomical to produce. In this environment the tradition of civic coinage expired.

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Late Roman Period After the collapse of the old currency systems of the Levant in the mid–3d century c.e., the development of coinage in the eastern Roman provinces follow that of Roman coinage over the whole empire. The same designs and denominaFig. 50. Base silver antoninianus tions were issued concurrently by many mints. of Claudius II Gothicus (268–270 Although this meant that coins struck in Lonc.e.), struck at Antioch. Obverse: don or Trier could circulate alongside coins Head of Claudius. Reverse: The struck in Alexandria or Antioch, strong regiongoddess Isis standing. alization is still apparent, and coins from the nearest mint(s) tend to dominate in coins found at a specific site. The main mint of the Levant was Antioch, which now struck a coinage in gold, silver, and debased silver or bronze, usually bearing the mint-mark AN or ANT (figs. 51, 52). Fig. 51. Silver-bronze alloy coin of By the 5th century c.e., the bronze coinage Crispus, son of the emperor Conhad become virtually restricted to a tiny unit, stantine the Great, struck at Antithe nummus. Gold now formed the backbone of och 325–326 c.e. Obverse: Head of the state’s currency system, and silver was Crispus. Reverse: Camp gate. issued only in small quantities. The main provider of coinage was Constantinople, although the mint at Antioch continued intermittently. The principal gold unit was the solidus (fig. 52), a coin of about 4.4 grams; its relationship to the base metal coinages of the later 4th and 5th centuries is uncertain, although there must have been Fig. 52. Gold solidus of Julian (361–363 thousands of nummi to a solidus. c.e.), struck at Antioch. Obverse: Head of Julian. Reverse: Roman soldier leading barbarian captive.

Fig. 53. Bronze five nummi piece of Antioch, struck under Justin I (518– 527 c.e.). Obverse: head of Justin. Reverse: City goddess of Antioch, and valuemark E (= 5).

Byzantine Period

The coinage reform of the emperor Anastasius (498 c.e.) introduced a new set of bronze denominations throughout the empire, and this reform is traditionally considered to mark the beginning of “Byzantine,” as opposed to Roman, coinage. There was no change to the gold or silver coinage, however. The principal bronze unit was the follis, a coin equal to 40 nummi, with subdivisions of 20, 10, and 5 nummi. In the Levant, the principal mint was still Antioch, which after the disastrous earthquake under Justinian in the 6th century c.e. was renamed Theoupolis, marking its coins THEYP (fig. 54). The type-

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Fig. 54. Bronze follis of Justin II (565–578 c.e.), struck at Antioch in 571–572 c.e. Obverse: Seated figures of Justin II and the empress Sophia. Reverse: Value-mark M (= 40), with the mint-mark THEUP for Theoupolis.

Fig. 55. “Arab-Byzantine” bronze fals, struck at Heliopolis (Baalbek) circa 636–670 c.e., imitating a Byzantine follis of the emperor Heraclius (reigned 610–641 c.e.). Obverse: Standing figures of Heraclius and his son Heraclius Constantine with Christian symbols. Reverse: Value-mark M, with mint name in Greek either side and in Arabic at bottom.

content of this Byzantine coinage varied little from mint to mint, but Antioch did issue one unique type, a 5 nummi piece with the seated city goddess of Antioch on the reverse (fig. 53).

Early Islamic Period The first issues of coins after the Muslim conquest imitated contem- Fig. 56. Umayyad silver dirhem, struck at porary Byzantine issues and consisted Damascus in 708–709 c.e. Obverse: Arabic of a coinage in gold and bronze. The legend: “There is no god except Allah alone. weights and designs were similar to He has no partner,” surrounded by “In the those of contemporary Byzantine name of Allah this dirhem was struck at coins, although these “Arab-Byzantine” Damascus, year 90.” Reverse: Arabic legend: issues frequently bore both Greek and “Allah is one, Allah is eternal. He begets not, neither is He begotten,” surrounded by Arabic inscriptions (fig. 55). Many Le“Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah whom vantine cities issued this coinage, al- He sent with guidance and the Religion of though there was a notable shift of Truth that he may make it victorious over production centers away from the old every other religion.” Greek cities (Antioch, for example) to places like Damascus, Baalbek (Heliopolis), and Homs (Emesa). This coinage continued after the Umayyads had consolidated their power, but in about 697–99 c.e. the Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705 c.e.) introduced a new coinage in gold, silver, and bronze. The principal gold unit was the dinar (from the Roman denarius), valued at 20 silver dirhems (from the Greek drachmas). The size, shape, and thickness (though not the weight) of the dirhems seems to derive from Persian Sasanian coinage rather than the Roman/ Byzantine (fig. 56). Unlike in the Byzantine Empire, where silver coins were gener-

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ally quite rare, the dirhems were struck in large quantities at many mints in the Umayyad Empire. The standard for the gold dinar seems to have been based on the Byzantine solidus. The normal bronze unit was a fals or fulus, a name derived from the Byzantine follis. The inscriptions were entirely in Arabic, and on the gold and silver and most bronze issues the design consists of inscriptions rather than images. This new coinage represented a complete iconographic break with the earlier coinages and provides an appropriate point at which to terminate this survey.

Bibliography Augé, C. 1989

La monnaie en Syrie à l’époque hellénistique et romaine. Pp. 149–90 in vol. 2 of Archéologie et histoire de la Syrie, ed. J.-M. Dentzer and W. Orthmann. Saarbrücken: Saarbrücken Druckerei. Bates, M. L. 1986 History, Geography and Numismatics in the First Century of Islamic Coinage. Revue Suisse de Numismatique 65: 231–62. Betlyon, J. W. 1982 The Coinage and Mints of Phoenicia: The Pre-Alexandrine Period. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press. Butcher, K. 1988 Roman Provincial Coins: An Introduction to the Greek Imperials. London: Seaby. 1996 Coinage and Currency in Syria and Palestine to the Reign of Gallienus. Pp. 101– 12 in Coin Finds and Coin Use in the Roman World, ed. C. E. King and D. G. Wigg. Berlin: Mann. 2003 Coinage in Roman Syria: Northern Syria, 64 bc–ad 253. London: Royal Numismatic Society. Carradice, I., and Price, M. 1988 Coinage in the Greek World. London: Braintree, Essex: Seaby. Grierson, P. 1982 Byzantine Coins. Berkeley: University of California Press. Houghton, A., and Lorber, C. 2002 Seleucus I through Antiochus III. Vol. 1 of Seleucid Coins: A Comprehensive Catalogue. New York: American Numismatic Society / Lancaster: Classical Numismatic Group. Meshorer, Y. 1982 Ancient Jewish Coinage. Dix Hills, N.Y.: Amphora. Morrisson, C. 1989 La monnaie en Syrie byzantine. Pp. 191–204 in vol. 2 of Archéologie et histoire de la Syrie, ed. J.-M. Dentzer and W. Orthmann. Saarbrücken: Saarbrücken Druckerei. Qedar, S. 1988–89 Copper Coinage of Syria in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries. Israel Numismatic Journal 10: 27–39. Walker, J. 1956 A Catalogue of the Muhammadan Coins in the British Museum, II: Arab-Byzantine and Post-Reform Umaiyad Coins. London: British Museum.

Kevin Butcher

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Scarabs Scarabs in Egypt Scarabs are small beetles carved in a variety of stones and other materials, with an almost limitless repertoire of figurative and geometric designs engraved on the base. In origin, the scarab is a purely Egyptian object that had meaning only in an Egyptian religious context. The scarab-beetle itself is associated with the sun god Re and with Atum, the divine force of the primeval hill of creation, both deities being concerned with rebirth and resurrection. When the designs on the base of the earliest scarabs can be identified, they are generally concerned with these same ideas and with protection against the evils of the present life. While this original meaning of scarabs was maintained throughout their long history in Egypt, the significance of the scarab broadened with time. In the Middle Kingdom a new class of scarabs was inscribed with private names, sometimes used as personal seals. Another new class was inscribed with royal names, also used as seals, but more frequently considered amulets affording protection through the magic of a king’s name. In the New Kingdom many scarabs were engraved with pious mottoes and good luck wishes associated more with the present life. Figurative representations of gods and kings now began to appear with amuletic meaning. Scarabs also came to be used for royal announcements, such as the coronation of a new ruler, or to commemorate an important event. Royal-name scarabs were often souvenirs of visits to funerary temples of long-dead rulers by pilgrims who sought their help. Oversize scarabs, engraved with a text for reviving the heart, taken from the Book of the Dead, were used as substitute hearts in burials. Yet, however broad the significance of the scarab became in Egypt, the original amuletic character of the object was never forgotten; it was a talisman to ward off the evils of this life and to help gain the joys of the Egyptian paradise.

Scarabs in the Levant From the early Twelfth Dynasty to the end of pharaonic times, scarabs were exported in large numbers, especially to Canaan. Collections in the hundreds have been discovered at Jericho, Lachish, Tell ºAjjûl, Byblos, and elsewhere. There is hardly a site in Canaan without at least a few scarabs, which occur in all archaeological contexts from the Early Middle Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age. The high point of this trade in scarabs would appear to be the Middle Bronze III Age, approximately 1650–1550 b.c.e., which corresponds to a contemporary increase in production in Egypt. The popularity of the scarab spread from Canaan throughout the Mediterranean world. Large numbers have been found on Cyprus, especially in Late Bronze Age contexts. They are known in Greece and Crete from the Middle Bronze Age

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onward, with masses of locally-made scarabs from Iron Age levels at sites like Rhodes, Lindos, and Perachora. In the western Mediterranean they are found at almost every Iron Age site in the region. The spread of the scarab into all of these areas was largely due to the enterprise of the Phoenicians, who created their own scarab style, soon altered by Greek and Etruscan engravers into local styles of their own. By the Iron Age, then, outside Egypt the scarab had ceased to be a purely Egyptian object. It is now evident that the process of the adaptation of the scarab to nonEgyptian needs and beliefs was already underway in Canaan as early as the Middle Bronze Age. But here we must make a clear distinction between the carved beetle itself and the designs engraved on the base. Wherever the scarab was imported or manufactured locally, the object remained the same. The beetle form was always used; it is this that identifies a scarab. The Phoenicians preferred more stylized scarabs made of hard stones, and the Etruscans produced elaborately decorated scarabs, but the beetle is still a beetle and recognizable as one. It is the repertoire of designs that was altered. Phoenician motifs appear in the Phoenician scarab tradition; classical heroes and gods in the Greek and Etruscan styles. Thus, though the beetle form remained constant, the designs on the base were altered to accommodate local markets. The beginnings of this local adaptation of design can be seen in Canaan. It should be emphasized that the vast majority of the thousands of scarabs found in Canaanite towns and cemeteries are Egyptian. The typology of the object itself—the varieties of heads, backs, and sides—and the designs on the base are fully within the native Egyptian tradition, duplicating the typology and design repertoire of scarabs manufactured in Egypt and found in abundance there. The scarabs of Canaan thus arrived there primarily as the result of the Egyptian export trade. This raises the question of why the scarab should become so popular in Canaan and elsewhere. Most scarabs found in Canaan come from native cemeteries and belonged to the funerary equipment of local Canaanites. Even in the Late Bronze Age, when Canaan was under Egyptian rule, it is clear that Egyptian scarabs were desired by the Canaanites themselves. But the scarab-beetle was without meaning in a Canaanite religious context, which is true also of the Egyptian repertoire of designs with which most are engraved; the connections with Re, Atum, and the Egyptian paradise had no place in the religions of Canaan. Why, then, did so many foreigners in so many foreign places buy scarabs for their own use? There is no ready answer to this question, though it may have been nothing more than a desire for exotic jewelry, or at best the wish to possess amulets that worked in Egypt and just might work elsewhere. This is precisely why there was some adaptation to local needs, not in the beetle form, which remained the same, but in the designs. Local engraving techniques and designs indicate that already in the Middle Bronze Age there were several scarab types for which a Canaanite origin can be substantiated: (1) the “Omega-group,” named after the main symbol that resembles the Greek letter,

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Fig. 57. Levantine scarab in the Phoenician style, ca. 800 b.c.e. While the scarab form is retained, a local artist has added decorative details to the back and a characteristic Phoenician design that draws on numerous artistic traditions. These include an Assyrian winged sun-disc, Canaanite griffins with splayed wings, and a royal figure in a costume with both Egyptian and Syrian elements. The winged beetle, inspired by Hurrian four-winged figures, represents a Canaanite adaptation of the common Egyptian motif with two wings.

apparently represents Astarte, the Canaanite fertility goddess; (2) the “Jaspergroup,” made mostly of jasper and other hard stones, shows designs of nonEgyptian stick-figures and symbols from both the local and Egyptian artistic traditions; (3) a standing or enthroned male figure, cloaked in a Syrian fringed robe, represents local Canaanite kings; (4) a nude female shown frontally is evidently Astarte in a form that echoes the numerous little Canaanite “Astarteplaques.” The process of adaptation continued as long as scarabs were used in Canaan. In the early centuries of the first millennium b.c.e., a group of Hebrew seals was engraved with the motif of a four-winged cobra. While the two-winged cobra was a common symbol in Egyptian art, four-winged creatures seem to be originally a Hurrian concept that filtered into the art of the rest of western Asia. Again an Egyptian motif was adapted to a foreign artistic tradition (fig. 57). Caution is advisable in using scarabs as dating criteria, especially scarabs with royal names. A royal-name scarab found in a Canaanite context does not date that context but determines only that the context cannot be earlier than the reign of the king named. Nor is a scarab like this evidence of Egyptian domination at a Canaanite site. Scarabs were an item of trade, sent in casually assembled miscellaneous groups to foreign markets, so royal-name scarabs, as well as those of Egyptian officials, arrived in Canaan by chance. Contrary to widespread practice, such scarabs in themselves are of little use in dating foreign archaeological contexts or as historical documents. The value of scarabs as a chronological tool is best seen when groups of scarabs are found together and their collective typological makeup is measured against the general typological history of scarabs as a whole.

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Bibliography Ben-Tor, D. 1989 The Scarab: A Reflection of Ancient Egypt. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum. Hornung, E., and Staehelin, E. 1976 Skarabäen und andere Siegelamulette aus Basler Sammlungen. Mainz: von Zabern. Keel, O. (ed.) 1985–90 Studien zu den Stempelsiegelin aus Palastina/Israel. 3 vols. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Martin, G. T. 1985 Scarabs, Cylinders and Other Ancient Egyptian Seals: A Checklist of Publications. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Ward, W. A. 1969 The Four-Winged Serpent on Hebrew Seals. Rivista degli Studi Orientali 44: 135– 43. 1987 Scarab Typology and Archaeological Context. American Journal of Archaeology 91: 507–32. Ward, W. A.; Tufnell, O.; and Dever. W. G. 1978–94 Studies on Scarab Seals. Vols. 1–2, Warminster: Aris & Phillips; vol. 3, San Antonio: Van Siclen.

William A. Ward

GIS and Archaeological Survey Geographic information systems (GIS) are a combination of computer hardware and software designed to create electronic maps. At the center of these systems are digital databases that facilitate the storage, manipulation, creation, capture, and display of spatially referenced data. As such, they are natural companions to archaeological surveys that locate, analyze, and manage archaeological sites on a regional or national level. Like any set of maps, GIS allow for the storage of numerous kinds of spatial data, which can come from a number of sources. Digitized data from existing paper maps are still the most common source, but remotely sensed data, such as satellite images, aerial photography/ videography, and global positioning systems (GPS), are becoming more common. Combining these data with the archaeological database from a survey project allows researchers to place antiquity sites in their natural and cultural context, providing them with new opportunities for data analysis, management, display, and publication. Unlike paper maps, which store multiple data themes on a single sheet, GIS store data themes in individual layers: a layer for hydrography, a layer for topography, a layer for archaeological sites, etc. Referenced to a common coordinate system, these data themes can be electronically overlaid to create specialized maps displaying any combination of data required by the researcher. The advantages of this type of system are many. For example, task-specific maps can be quickly created for publication purposes and then easily revised for different articles, or as new data becomes available, without the expense or time requirements of traditional cartography. At a software level, GIS can be divided into two basic types, vector and raster. Because of the differences in how they manage spatial data, each has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. Vector GIS are well suited to resource management and the production of publication quality maps. To the human eye, vector systems appear much like paper maps, or CAD drawings, in that they store data as points, lines, or polygons. The advantage of a GIS over either CAD drawings or paper maps is that they can be linked to powerful databases. Thus, in a vector GIS, not only are there points marking the location of archaeological sites, but the survey database is linked digitally to these points. Like any database it can be queried and the selected data manipulated and placed into a new or previously existing map. Additionally, most vector systems allow for interactive queries of map elements. Typically this involves the use of a computer mouse to select an element, such as an archaeological site, and “pop-up” windows that display the database entries for this element. The advantages of this type of system to the

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management of cultural resources are numerous. Not only does it give a manager access to the data, but it also provides a spatial component to aid in the visualization of the data. For example, queries can be built to display all archaeological sites that will be affected by the construction of a new road. Based on this selection, an inventory of the features and periods represented by these sites can be taken from the database and decisions made regarding which sites require further survey or salvage excavation and which are too important to be destroyed. Vector GIS are also valued by archaeologists for their ability to create publication quality maps. Because they store data as points, lines, and polygons, maps created by a vector GIS are readily understood by anyone acquainted with traditional paper maps. Vector systems generally include cartographic components that allow for the combining of various data themes into map compositions. These compositions can then be sent to a wide variety of output devices, including pen plotters, laser printers, and electrostatic plotters, or to files that can be read by a publisher’s hardware and software. In contrast, a raster GIS has generally weaker links to databases and lesssophisticated cartographic tools, but has superior analytical capabilities. Similar to a computer spreadsheet, raster GIS store data as a grid of columns and rows that represent X and Y coordinates in the real world. The intersection of each column and row is known as a cell and represents a specific area in the real world. Each cell contains a number that can represent anything from elevation to archaeological sites. These numbers are generally displayed as colors on a computer monitor. In essence, a raster GIS is similar to a large sheet of numbers, and it is this structure that allows it to perform sophisticated analyses of archaeological data. One particular analytical advantage of raster GIS to survey archaeology is their ability to model continuous surfaces. For instance, elevation, which changes constantly across a surface, has traditionally been represented by contour lines on paper maps. In a raster GIS, the cell structure allows for the creation of a digital elevation model (DEM). The DEM represents continuous change by placing an elevation value in each cell across the surface of a map, even the cells that would typically lie between topographic contour lines. Additionally, since raster maps are essentially sheets of numbers, they can be subjected to complex mathematical and statistical manipulation. This allows for the derivation of new maps from existing maps and the creation of various kinds of models. For example, new environmental surfaces, such as slope or aspect, can be interpolated from a DEM. Groups of archaeological sites can then be queried against these data layers to discover an environmental signature for these sites. Based on this signature, models can be created that show the probability of finding a particular type of site at any given location on the map. The advantages of this type of modeling for archaeological survey projects are many. The discovery of environmental signatures often illuminates subsistence strategies for particular archaeological periods or site types. Additionally, probability models can guide archaeologists to focus resources on areas most likely to produce new sites, as well as delimiting regions where local or national governments may want to protect archaeological resources.

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Allen, K. M. S.; Green, S. W.; and Zubrow, E. B. W. (eds.) 1990 Interpreting Space: GIS and Archaeology. London: Taylor & Francis. Burrough, P. A. 1986 Principles of Geographical Information Systems for Land Resource Assessment. Oxford: Clarendon. Christopherson, G. L. 1997 Computer Mapping. Pp. 55–57 in vol. 2 of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, ed. E. M. Meyers. New York: Oxford University Press. Kvamme, K. L. 1992 A Predictive Site Location Model on the High Plains: An Example with an Independent Test. Plains Anthropologist 37: 19–50. Peuquet, D. J. 1984 A Conceptual Framework and Comparison of Spatial Data Models. Cartographica 21: 66–113.

Gary L. Christopherson

Computer Applications in Archaeology When archaeologists first began to apply computers to archaeology in the 1960s, it was primarily to organize large quantities of data, to classify artifacts, and to carry out statistical tests. More recently, computers have come to serve archaeologists in publishing, graphics, field recording, statistics, and data manipulation, as well as in modeling archaeological phenomena. Desktop, laptop, and hand-held computers have become common both in the field and in archaeological laboratories, and software is often “platform-independent,” meaning that it will run on any computer or is available in versions for different computers. Archaeologists do not need to worry as much about which computer they use as whether it meets their needs. One of the areas in which computers now have great impact is in the preparation and presentation of archaeological graphics. Archaeologists have adopted software originally developed for geographers, business people, and engineers to prepare maps, plans, graphs, and artifact illustrations. This software easily allows multiple copies of base maps to be modified to produce a series of distributions by time period or stratigraphic phase. Computerized templates can ensure consistency in appearance, scale, and labeling. It is also possible to scan existing drawings or photographs or to use images from digital cameras and then manipulate these images on the computer to produce publishable graphics or to incorporate views of sites and artifacts into electronic databases. The ability to take architectural plans, even of fragmentary buildings, and reconstruct threedimensional views of restored structures is also finding many archaeological applications. Many archaeologists now use digital cameras instead of film for their field photography. This presents the possibility of “tiling” excavation areas with hundreds of overlapping, overhead photographs that can be used to produce top plans of the excavations. Some archaeological projects now use laptops or hand-held computers to record data directly in the field. Hand-held computers allow us to enter data by tapping or writing on the screen with a stylus. Since keyboards’ tendency to collect dirt and dust had previously dissuaded many archaeologists from using computers on site, hand-held computers are a great boon to archaeologists who want their area supervisors to do data entry on the spot. Later the data can be uploaded from the hand-held units to a master database, usually on a desktop or laptop computer in the field project’s laboratory. In combination with GIS software (below), this can result in a spatially referenced database that records context in great detail. Relational databases with software that provides a query language remain one of the archaeologist’s most important computerized assets. No matter how archaeologists plan to publish their results, large relational databases provide the

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most effective means to record, sort, manipulate, and interpret the immense quantities of data that typically result from a major Near Eastern excavation. Good relational database software allows sophisticated links between related files (for example, artifacts linked to stratigraphic context), error-checking at the datainput stage, fast sorting, and searching by arguments that include several simultaneous criteria (for example, finding all contexts with red burnish and pottery count > 25 and deposit is not fill or disturbed). Many are now available that also make it easy to create customized on-screen forms and menus; provide password protection; facilitate networking and exchange of data with other databases, spreadsheets or statistical packages; and permit a person to include graphic fields as well as date fields, categories, ratio-scale measurements, dichotomous (“Y/N” or “present/absent”) observations, strings of fixed length, and text of varying length (Ribardiére 1990). The disadvantages of all this power are that a good database must be structured very thoughtfully, well before any data input occurs, to anticipate the needs of its users, and someone must manage the database and document any ongoing changes in its structure, field names, passwords, procedures, and so on. Some good relational database systems are Fourth DimensionTM and AccessTM. Spreadsheet programs, such as ExcelTM, have gradually acquired a few of the characteristics of relational databases but are less flexible and force data into a table-like format. Many archaeologists, however, are accustomed to this format, and spreadsheets are widespread in archaeology. Increasingly, archaeologists are using spatially referenced databases that will allow us to make spatial queries, such as “show all artifacts found within 2 meters of feature 16,” or “list all photographs that include the coordinates A16, 52, 03” (Ryan 1992; see GIS, below). Statistical software that has become widely available has made it much easier for archaeologists to summarize and search for patterns in large databases, as well as to test specific hypotheses concerning such problems as the correlation of stratified deposits, identifying the processes that produced the deposits, or discovering the functional relationships of artifacts and features found in various parts of an archaeological site. Some of the popular general statistics software packages include SPSSTM, SASTM, SYSTATTM, StatViewTM, and StatisticaTM. There are many others. Only a few software packages have been specifically designed for the interpretation of archaeological data. These include software that interprets the distributions of ceramic dates, measures diversity indices, groups data into artifact clusters, seriates artifacts or deposits into chronological order, creates stratigraphic Harris matrices, calibrates and helps interpret radiocarbon dates, and helps interpret rank-size distributions for settlement systems, among others. The Bonn Archaeological Statistics Package accomplishes a number of these tasks but is particularly noteworthy for its software for ordering stratigraphic units into a Harris matrix and flagging any inconsistencies it recognizes so that archaeologists can correct the stratigraphic problems (Scollar et al. 1997). Other tools for creating Harris matrices include ProlegTM and others. Keith Kintigh offers a statistical package for archaeologists called Tools for Quantitative

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Archaeology. It has many useful features, but it is noteworthy for its Monte Carlo simulations that correct for sample-size effects in rank-size distributions and diversity indices. Software for calibrating and interpreting radiocarbon dates is available on the World Wide Web and includes CALIB, OxCal, and BCal. Most of these provide useful tools for interpreting the groups of multiple dates with known stratigraphic relationships (e.g., Buck et al. 1996). During the late 1960s and the 1970s, there was much enthusiasm in some quarters over the possibility of using computers to produce “objective” artifact typologies (Doran and Hodson 1975; Hodson et al. 1971; Sokal and Sneath 1973). For the most part, these involved clustering methods that grouped artifacts at various levels of similarity or dissimilarity as measured on a large number of attributes. Although the methods do have some value, they disappointed those archaeologists who expected them to take subjectivity out of typology. There are still many subjective assumptions about how many and what kind of attributes to include, how to measure them, whether to weight them hierarchically and, if so, how to arrange this hierarchy. However, they do force archaeologists to make these assumptions explicit, and their results can be tested against an archaeological context. Consequently, these and similar methods are still useful as long as we remember, for example, that they do not discover the one “true” typology for a set of artifacts or other phenomena (Aldenderfer and Blashfield 1984). Simulation and modeling began to capture the attention of some archaeologists soon after computers began to become widely available. Because many North American archaeologists became interested in systems-theory in the late 1960s and early 1970s, computer simulation seemed the ideal way to try out some of the models that they were formulating for systems such as simulated villages on the threshold of the agricultural revolution; early agriculturists interacting with hunter-gatherers or pastoral nomads; or even the ancient city of Rome (Cribb 1984; Gregg 1988; Reynolds 1986). One of the problems that these attempts have encountered is that it is still necessary to simplify or estimate the terms of the models in order to simulate them on the computer. If the system being modeled is “nonlinear,” or very sensitive to initial conditions, however, it is possible that even small inaccuracies in the assumptions of the model could have drastic effects on the model’s trajectory. Nevertheless the ability to rerun models many times with slight changes to the initial conditions allows us to determine precisely which parameters behave in this way. The ease with which computers allowed models based on decision theory or “game theory” to be applied to archaeological problems attracted many archaeologists in the late 1970s and 1980s. This modeling involves a specific and relatively simple form of simulation that attempts to predict the “optimal” responses of individuals to sets of conditions and anticipated outcomes. Although the theory is based on the assumption that decision-makers make rational and wellinformed decisions and found its earliest practical applications in fields such as economics and agriculture, where costs and benefits of alternative strategies were relatively easy to measure, archaeologists have applied it most often to hunters

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and gatherers, borrowing the methodology principally from ecologists’ optimal foraging theory (Winterhalder and Smith 1981). Some archaeologists, however, have also applied it to simple agricultural and pastoral societies. Another application of computers is to determine the most likely relationships between individuals represented in tombs. M. Rimon (1979) wrote software to infer family trees on the basis of epigraphic, archaeological, and physical anthropological evidence. GIS (Geographical Information Systems) have rapidly gained interest among archaeologists as a spatial database and way of modeling spatial information (Aldenderfer and Maschner 1996; Lock and Stancic 1995). Archaeological applications of GIS involve digitizing a map of the study area and attaching to the pixels of the map the values of various attributes of interest. These could include, for example, attributes thought to have affected ancient peoples’ decisions to locate their sites, such as distance to water or agricultural land. Using knowledge of how a sample of sites is located relative to the spatial distribution of these attributes, the computer can statistically model the settlement system in such a way that it can predict where, on the map, sites of various types should and should not occur, if the model is correct. GIS can allow researchers to predict the location of tombs (Christopherson and Dabrowski 1997), to find the “least-cost” paths between sites, adjust topography for changes in sea level, determine what could have been seen (the “viewshed”) from an Iron Age tower, or even predict where an enemy would focus an attack on a fortified city. Because we can also attach archaeological information to pixels, GIS approaches can even provide new ways to record and interpret data from archaeological excavations. Archaeological context becomes attached to its spatial coordinates, along with any number of attributes, such as the number of sherds of a particular type, the sediment characteristics, or radiocarbon dates and stratigraphic information. The Tell Madaba Project is one example of an expedition in the southern Levant that uses GIS within a site. Computers have great importance in archaeological publishing. Traditional means for disseminating archaeological knowledge have become expensive at a time when archaeologists are recording more and more kinds of data that they would like to share with their colleagues. Archaeologists have embraced desktop publishing, which involves producing camera-ready copy or negative film through widely available software that combines typesetting and graphics functions (e.g., PageMakerTM or InDesignTM). In addition, rather than publishing lengthy lists or tables of data as printed appendixes on paper, some archaeologists are making their raw data available in the form of electronic databases. These can simply be digital versions of tables or spreadsheets, or archives of digital photos on CD or DVD. More ambitious projects can offer interactive archaeological publications that use “hypermedia” to present the full archive of data from an excavation or survey, with buttons that allow users to browse the archive, zoom in on maps or excavation plans, peel off stratigraphic layers, and switch easily between maps, field notes, artifact drawings, and even short video clips of artifacts being rotated or excavations in progress (Banning 1991, 1993; Rahtz, Hall, and Allen 1992). Such

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an interactive production can be published on CD or DVD or on the Internet. The latter has the advantage of allowing archaeological projects to update their information frequently. “Authoring” software of many kinds is available to help archaeologists develop hypermedia and websites, and websites in particular have become an important vehicle of rapid archaeological publication for such excavations as Ashkelon, Megiddo, and Tel Halif.

Bibliography Aldenderfer, M. S., and Blashfield, R. K. 1984 Cluster Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage. Aldenderfer, M. S., and Maschner, H. D. G. (eds.) 1996 Anthropology, Space, and Geographic Information Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Banning, E. B. 1991 The Wadi Ziqlab HyperCard Project. Society for American Archaeology Bulletin 9/5: 8–9. 1993 Hypermedia and Archaeological Publication: The Wadi Ziqlab Project. Pp. 441– 47 in Computing the Past: CAA 92, Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, ed. J. Andersen, T. Madsen, and I. Scollar. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press. Buck, C. E.; Cavanagh, W. G.; and Litton, C. D. 1996 Bayesian Approach to Interpreting Archaeological Data. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Christopherson, G. L., and Dabrowski, B. 1997 Using a Geographic Information System to Create Probability Models for Sites with Tombs from the al-ºUmayri Regional Survey. Pp. 39–45 in Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan VI, ed. G. Bisheh, M. Zaghloul, and I. Kehrberg. Amman: Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Cribb, R. L. 1984 Computer Simulation of Herding Systems as an Interpretive and Heuristic Device in the Study of Kill-Off Strategies. Pp. 161–70 in Animals and Archaeology 3: Early Herders and Their Flocks, ed. J. Clutton-Brock and C. Grigson. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 202. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Doran, J. E., and Hodson, F. R. 1975 Mathematics and Computers in Archaeology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gregg, S. A. 1988 Foragers and Farmers: Population Interaction and Agricultural Expansion in Prehistoric Europe. Prehistoric Archeology and Ecology Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hodson, F. R.; Kendall, D. G.; and Tautu, P. (eds.) 1971 Mathematics in the Archaeological and Historical Sciences. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lock, G., and Stancic, Z. (eds.) 1995 Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems: A European Perspective. London: Taylor & Francis.

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Rahtz, S. P. Q.; Hall, W.; and Allen, T. 1992 The Development of Dynamic Archaeological Publications. Pp. 360–83 in Reilly and Rahtz (eds.) 1992. Reilly, P., and Rahtz, S. P. Q. (eds.) 1992 Archaeology and the Information Age: A Global Perspective. London: Routledge. Ribardière, L. 1990 4th Dimension Design Reference. Cupertino, Calif.: ACIUS. Rimon, M. 1979 Design of a Computer Program: Establishing the Family Relations of Individuals Buried in the Jericho Tomb. BASOR 235: 71–73. Ryan, N. 1992 Beyond the Relational Database: Managing the Variety and Complexity of Archaeological Data. Pp. 1–6 in Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 1991, ed. G. Lock and J. Moffett. British Archaeological Reports, International Series S577. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum. Reynolds, R. G. 1986 An Adaptive Computer Model for the Evolution of Plant Collecting and Early Agriculture in the Eastern Valley of Oaxaca. Pp. 439–500 in Guila Naquitz, ed. K. V. Flannery. New York: Academic Press. Scollar, I., et al. 1997 The Bonn Archaeological Statistics Package, ver. 5.38. Remagen, Germany: Unkelbach Valley Software Works. Sokal, R., and Sneath, P. H. A. 1973 Numerical Taxonomy: The Principles and Practice of Numerical Classification. San Francisco: Freeman. Winterhalder, B., and Smith, E. A. (eds.) 1981 Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies: Ethnographic and Archaeological Analyses— Prehistoric Archaeology and Ecology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

E. B. Banning

The Paleolithic in Syria–Palestine The Levantine Lower and Middle Paleolithic The most profound changes in our knowledge of the paleolithic era of the Levant over the past decade have been sweeping conceptual ones, rather than ones arising from surveys or the excavation of single sites. The changes—how to divide up the paleolithic but, more significant, what things are important to look at in attempting to understand early forager adaptations—are partly a consequence of Levantine research, but they are mostly due to paradigmatic shifts that have affected the archaeology of early hominids in Europe and America. Major, post-1980 conceptual developments include (1) a deemphasis on traditional typological systematics (those concerned with the study of retouched stone tools); (2) an emphasis on technology (analysis of the characteristics of the débitage component of lithic assemblages), (3) the rise of archaeotaphonomy (the study of death assemblages), and (4) raw material procurement and processing (especially in relation to tracking mobility patterns and in monitoring the spatial extent and temporal duration of site occupations). The advent of thermoluminescence (TL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating methods in the middle 1980s has also completely changed our perceptions of the duration of the early paleolithic stages, and has all but obliterated the conventional boundary between the Lower and the Middle Paleolithic at approximately 100,000 years b.p. Levantine research is in the forefront of these developments, because the early paleolithic is exceptionally well represented there.

Typological Systematics Typological systematics were an early casualty of the conceptual changes that took place during the past ten years. This approach to the study of the paleolithic arose in France between 1880 and 1920 with the work of pioneers like Gabriel de Mortillet, Denis Peyrony, and Henri Breuil and was brought to its fullest development in the 1950s and 1960s by their intellectual progeny, workers such as François Bordes and, in the Levant, Dorothy Garrod, Jean Perrot, Réné Neuville, Jacques Tixier, and Francis Hours. It emphasized the study of retouched stone and bone/ antler tools to the near exclusion of anything else. The reasoning behind doing this, almost always implicit, was that retouched tool forms were thought to reflect ethnic, linguistic, and/or social boundaries of the kinds evident in recent European history. This cultural-historical paradigm, which dominated Old World paleolithic research for more than a century, has since the early 1980s come to be viewed as extremely limited in what it can tell us about past human behavior. Moreover, the logic of treating the formation processes of paleolithic archaeology as if they were analogous to the formation processes of history has been seriously questioned.

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Technological Systematics Technological studies have tended to gain equal status with, and in some cases to supplant, the traditional emphasis on typology. This is due in part to the loss of faith in the credibility of typological systematics just mentioned but also to the realization that the débitage component (usually more than 95% of most lithic assemblages) contains information about raw material accessibility, differential transport, patterns of site use, reduction strategies, and tool function. These in turn can sometimes be related to and explained by changes in generalized mobility strategies. Technology was usually deemphasized or ignored altogether by European-trained prehistorians, so stringent was their adherence to the typological paradigm. Most paleolithic archaeologists active in Levantine research between 1920 and 1975 were trained in Europe, which tended to look to France, with its strong natural science research tradition, for leadership. Since the mid-1970s, however, French dominance of the field is weakening in the face of increasing numbers of Anglo-American-trained workers and the rise of indigenous archaeologies characterized by an amalgam of different approaches.

Archaeotaphonomy The third major trend in recent paleolithic research is the appearance and rapid development of a subfield called archaeotaphonomy. Archaeotaphonomy is the study of the cultural and natural processes that contribute to the formation of an archaeological record and, more specifically, the processes involved in the accumulation of faunal remains, an area long neglected in traditional research designs. Most archaeotaphonomic research is very recent (it dates, at the earliest, to the early 1980s), and it has become really visible in the literature only in the past 10–15 years. While still in the pattern-searching stages, it has already called into question the human contribution to the formation of faunal assemblages at many “classic” Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites (e.g., Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Torralba and Ambrona in Spain, Swanscombe and Hoxne in England, Zhoukoudian in China, Grotta Guattari in Italy, Klasies River Mouth in South Africa, and practically all of the French Middle Paleolithic neandertal “burial” sites—Le Moustier, La Ferrassie, Le Regourdou, etc.). The general effect on paleolithic research has been to sharpen our perception of the complex series of natural processes that contribute to the formation of early archaeological sites, with the result that the human component in most of them can be shown to have been minimal. This in turn has “dehumanized” the early hominids involved, who increasingly appear to have exhibited a range of scavenging and foraging behaviors analogous in various ways to those of our closest primate relatives, the great apes, certain Old World monkeys (especially baboons, mandrils), and social carnivores such as hyenas and wolves. The fact that faunal remains associated with stone artifacts in these early sites can be attributed mainly to scavenging activities, rather than to human hunting, is a striking conclusion. It marks the demise of the ethnography-based “man-the-hunter” model dominant in the Anglo-American research traditions since the late 1960s.

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Raw-Material Procurement and Processing As an outgrowth of the new emphasis on technology, paleolithic archaeologists have been paying increased attention to the factors that govern raw material procurement and processing. This research, which originated with Harold Dibble’s work in the mid-1980s, showed that the conventional Middle Paleolithic artifact types (mainly sidescrapers) were the results of generalized reduction and resharpening sequences conditioned by the shape of the original blade or flake blank, rather than idealized tool forms held in the minds of their makers, as was widely believed in Europe up until that time. Since about 1987, these avenues of research have expanded to include studies of the size and shape characteristic of flakes, exterior scar morphology (which tells us something about the sequence of detachment), platform preparation attributes (an indication of the size of the original blank and the reduction strategy used to detach it), cortex percentages and patterning (which indicate when in a reduction sequence a particular flake was detached), breakage, and the factors that govern variation in the reduction of cores. Together with archaeotaphonomy, these new studies have shed considerable light on the duration and periodicity of human site use, stability (or lack thereof ) of mobility strategies and, on the intrasite level, activity variation (what particular groups of people were doing within sites). Issues relating to the maintenance, renewal, and curation of stone tools have been shown to underlie some of the most pronounced differences in the intensity of reduction among Lower and Middle Paleolithic archaeological assemblages.

Chronology Another major area of radical change has been chronology. Until the mid1980s, the chronological boundary between the Lower Paleolithic (equated in the Levant with the Acheulean and the Acheulo-Yabrudian—the hand axe industries) and the Middle Paleolithic (the flake- and blade-dominated Mousterian) was set by a kind of tacit consensus at about 90,000–100,000 years b.p. Since then, however, the widespread application of TL and ESR dating has more than doubled the time span allotted the Mousterian and rendered utterly meaningless the conventional chonostratigraphic division between the Lower and the Middle Paleolithic (fig. 54). Hand-axe-dominated assemblages can now be shown to have persisted long after 100,000 years b.p., and the Mousterian extends well back into the Middle Pleistocene (to ca. 250,000 years b.p.). What is probably the oldest site in the region, Ubeidiya in northern Israel near Lake Galilee, has recently been dated by its micromammal assemblages to 1,400,000 years ago. Figure 55 shows Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic sites that have been restudied, excavated or tested, or reexcavated since the mid-1970s. The map is noteworthy for the increased tempo of work in Jordan. Prior to the mid-1980s, paleolithic research in the Levant was heavily concentrated in Israel.

Modern Human Origins Finally, beginning in 1987 and continuing until the present, the Levant has become the major geographical focus of what has come to be known as “the

spread is 12 points long

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modern human origins controversy.” Sparked by the implications of the TL and ESR dates from the neandertal sites of Kebara and Tabun and the “modern human” sites of Qafzeh and Skhul (see figs. 58–59), the debate centers on two hypotheses offered to describe (and supposedly explain) the transition between archaic and modern humans. The first states that moderns appeared early in the Levant (prior to 100,000 years b.p.) and coexisted with neandertals, who arrived at a later date (ca. 65,000 years b.p.). The second states that moderns evolved in the Levant, as elsewhere, from the local archaic Homo sapiens stock. These two perspectives, which cannot be reconciled, are sometimes referred to as the “replacement” and “continuity” positions. While “replacement” advocates have claimed that Levantine neandertals are later immigrants from Europe and are thus unrelated to modern human origins in the Levant, the weight of the fossil and archaeological evidence, coupled with a much more sophisticated explanatory framework, clearly supports the view that modern humans evolved in situ in the Levant from their archaic Homo sapiens ancestors.

The Levantine Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic of the Levant is known almost exclusively from its lithic or stone tool assemblages and, to a lesser degree, from the settlement patterns associated with this time period (ca. 40,000–17,000 years b.p.). We now know that it only superficially resembles its European counterpart and does not coincide precisely with it in time. Understanding of the Levantine Upper Paleolithic has also changed dramatically in the decades since such pioneers as Dorothy Garrod and Réné Neuville first established an Upper Paleolithic sequence in the 1950s, using the traditional typological systematics of western Europe. The Upper Paleolithic is no longer perceived as a single, linear evolutionary development emanating from the Levantine Middle Paleolithic. Instead, current interpretations are focused on two largely contemporary but different “cultural traditions”—the Levantine Aurignacian and the Ahmarian. Upper Paleolithic research has also undergone important conceptual and methodological changes analogous to changes just discussed for the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. These changes include (1) the advent of intensive, systematic regional surveys outside the coastal Mediterranean “core” areas of the central and northern Levant; and (2) an increasing emphasis on technological approaches to the study of lithic assemblages that parallels similar developments in early Paleolithic research. Surveys in the more marginal, arid regions of the southern Levant have increasingly emphasized the larger, regional scale of paleolithic adaptive systems and the importance of open-air sites in these desert environments, in contrast to the historic emphasis on the caves and rock shelters found in the relatively humid central and northern Levant. The traditional importance placed on tool typologies has shifted to a more behavioral perspective, considered necessary for a better understanding of the human technologies that actually structured the production of stone tools.

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Fig. 58. Recent thermoluminescence (TL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) dates from major Levantine Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) sites. The dates show clearly that Mousterian assemblages extend back in time to more than 200,000 years b.p. (from Bar-Yosef et al. 1992, used with the authors’ permission and that of Current Anthropology).

The “classic” Upper Paleolithic sequence developed by Garrod and Neuville, with its “index fossil” tool types and numbered stages, has since the early 1980s been replaced by a “two-traditions” model consisting of Levantine Aurignacian and Ahmarian analytical units. These two “traditions” are associated, for the most part, with modal technological and typological differences, although there are disagreements about the behavioral implications and significance of assemblage differences and similarities. Sharp increases in the tempo and volume of Upper Paleolithic research during the last 20 years (especially in Israel and Jordan) have generated much new data and increasingly complex interpretive problems. International conferences in London (1987) and Lyon (1988) have focused on efforts to integrate these new data within evolving conceptual frameworks. The major issue confronting researchers today is whether a “two-traditions” model can adequately accommodate the variability apparent in the archaeological record for these time ranges across the entire Levant. Paradoxically, a major concern is the growing discrepancy between our increasing knowledge of the more recently-defined Ahmarian, and the historically-known but now rarer and more enigmatic Levantine Aurignacian. At present, there is some consensus

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Fig. 59. Major Levantine Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic sites restudied, excavated, tested or reexcavated since the mid-1970s. Many sites contain both Middle and Upper Paleolithic components.

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about temporal and geographical patterns in the distribution of Levantine Upper Paleolithic sites, but these may be more apparent than real if effects due to the intensity of recent research in the southern regions of the Levant are taken into account.

The Levantine Aurignacian The Levantine Aurignacian was the earliest Upper Paleolithic phase to be defined (by Garrod in the 1930s). It is characterized by a flake technology directed toward the production of flake debitage and tools, of which endscrapers and burins are the major retouched types. More recently, a relatively inferior or poorly-developed blade technology has been identified, suggesting that the Levantine Aurignacian may be more variable than originally thought. The Levantine Aurignacian is often found in cave and rock-shelter sites in the northern, coastal regions of the Levant, and it tends to be associated with relatively moist, Mediterranean climates. This contrasts sharply with the Ahmarian, known mainly from open-air sites in the arid, steppe-desert regions of the southern Levant. There are, however, a growing number of exceptions to this rather general geographical dichotomy. Levantine Aurignacian sites in Mediterranean phytogeographic zones include coastally-situated K’sar Akil (Levels VIII–VI) in Lebanon, Hayonim (Level D), and Kebara (Level D) caves in northern Israel, while Levantine Aurignacian sites in arid environments include the Erq el-Ahmar rock shelter (Level B) in the Judean Desert and Ein Aqev, an open-air site in the central Negev highlands (fig. 59).

The Ahmarian In contrast to the Levantine Aurignacian, there is greater consensus on the characteristics of the Ahmarian. It exhibits a well-developed blade technology, dominated by the production of blades and bladelets, many of which are backed, pointed, or otherwise retouched. Although the traditional Upper Paleolithic endscrapers and burins also occur in Ahmarian assemblages, they are often less frequent and usually occur on large blade blanks rather than on flakes. Early Ahmarian assemblages are characterized by high proportions of a distinctive artifact, the el-Wad point, invariably made on small blades and bladelets. These tend to be scarce or absent in the Late Ahmarian, which in turn exhibits high frequencies of equally distinctive Ouchtata bladelets. Ouchtata bladelets are made on very thin, narrow blanks that are typically produced with extremely fine, graded retouch, usually along the right, obverse side of the piece.

Chronology The Ahmarian is considered to be the earliest documented assemblage type of the Levantine Upper Paleolithic, with some of the oldest sites occurring in the central Negev highlands and in the Sinai Desert (fig. 59). The earliest dated Ahmarian site is Boker A in the Negev, with a radiocarbon determination of 38,000 years b.p. The Lagaman sites in northwestern Sinai date to approximately

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35,000–30,000 years b.p., while sites in the region of Qadesh Barnea are dated to about 33,000 years b.p. The Abu Noshra site group in the southern Sinai was occupied between 35,000 to 29,000 years b.p. In southern Jordan, Early Ahmarian assemblages are known from Tor Hamar ( J431, Layers F–G) and Tor Aeid ( J432). The Levantine Aurignacian does not appear to predate 32,000 years b.p. and is usually found after about 28,000 years b.p. in various sites from Lebanon to the Negev. At some sites, Levantine Aurignacian assemblages are stratified above, or are interstratified with, Ahmarian levels (for example, K’sar Akil, Erq el-Ahmar, Kebara, Boker BE). The latest known Aurignacian assemblage is at Ein Aqev in the central Negev, dated to approximately 17,000 years b.p. (and thus fully contemporaneous with sites of the epipaleolithic Kebaran).

Origins The Ahmarian appears to originate in the local Mousterian (which often has many blades) with the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition documented in the sequence of lithic assemblages at Boker Tachtit (Levels 4–1), in the central Negev. The origins of the Levantine Aurignacian are less clear. Its occurrence stratified above earlier Ahmarian assemblages has suggested to some that it developed out of an Ahmarian base, while others view it as intrusive to the northern Levant and possibly derived from southeastern Europe. The Late Ahmarian has been dated to about 20,000–17,000 years b.p. at Ein Aqev East in the Negev and to about 20,000 years b.p. in west-central Jordan’s Wadi Hasa, at Ain el-Buheira (WHS 618) and Yutil al-Hasa (WHS 784) (fig. 59).

Settlement Patterns At present, our understanding of the Levantine Upper Paleolithic stems largely from the interpretation of patterns in lithic assemblages but, with ongoing surveys and excavations, the data needed to test models of hunter-gatherer adaptations has been greatly expanded in recent years. Settlement-pattern data in the form of site size and placement, relative to resource distributions, is, however, still fairly “coarse grained” for the Levantine Upper Paleolithic in general. Hunter-gatherer groups in the Negev during this period have been characterized as small and highly mobile, in response to increasingly drier conditions, especially during the later Upper Paleolithic (ca. 30,000–17,000 years b.p.). The distribution of many small but similar Upper Paleolithic sites in the central Negev highlands and on the Har Harif plateau has been called a “circulating” pattern by Anthony Marks and David Freidel, describing a pattern of fairly continuous movement during a seasonal round, with the cyclical exploitation of a range of resources. Additional data on regional settlement patterns and resource distributions are needed to test the reality of the “circulating” model (and its Middle Paleolithic counterpart, the “radiating” model), in order to be able to identify the conditions that would have structured human organizational responses to particular sets of changing ecological circumstances. It seems increasingly unlikely that a single

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model will be able to describe adequately, much less explain, the complex patterns of regional and temporal variability that are becoming apparent. While we now know a great deal more about lithic technology than we did in 1980, there remains a need to integrate this knowledge with additional settlement and subsistence data in order to provide a more complete picture of hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies during the Upper Paleolithic in the Levant.

Bibliography Aurenche, O.; Cauvin, M.-C.; and P. Sanlaville (eds.) 1990 Préhistoire du Levant: Processus des Changements Culturels. Paris: Éditions du C.N.R.S. Bar-Yosef, O. 1989 Upper Pleistocene Cultural Stratigraphy in Southwest Asia. Pp. 154–80 in The Emergence of Modern Humans, ed. E. Trinkaus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bar-Yosef, O. et al. 1992 The Excavations in Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel. Current Anthropology 33/5: 497– 550. Bar-Yosef, O., and Meignen, L. 1992 Insights into Levantine Middle Paleolithic Cultural Variability. Pp. 163–81 in The Middle Paleolithic: Adaptation, Behavior and Variability, ed. H. Dibble and P. Mellars. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. Bergman, C. 1988 Synthèse: The Upper Paleolithic of the Levant. Paléorient 14/2: 223–27. Bergman, C. and Goring-Morris, A. N. 1987 Conference: The Levantine Aurignacian with Special Reference to K’sar Akil, Lebanon, March 27–28, 1987—Institute of Archaeology, University of London. Paléorient 13/1: 142– 47. Cauvin, J., and Sanlaville, P. (eds.) 1981 Préhistoire du Levant. Paris: Éditions du C.N.R.S. Clark, G.; Coinman, N.; and Neeley, M. 2001 The Paleolithic of Jordan in the Levantine Context. Pp. 49–68 in vol. 7 of Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, ed. G. Bisheh et al. Amman: Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Gilead, I. 1991 The Upper Paleolithic Period in the Levant. Journal of World Prehistory 5/2: 105–54. Marks, A. 1983 The Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition in the Levant. Advances in World Archaeology 2: 51–97. Marks, A., and Ferring, R. 1988 The Early Upper Paleolithic of the Levant. Pp. 43–72 in The Early Upper Paleolithic: Evidence from Europe and the Near East, ed. J. F. Hoffecker and C. Wolf. British Archaeological Reports International Series 437. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

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Ronen, A. (ed.) 1982 The Transition from the Lower to the Middle Paleolithic and the Origin of Modern Man. British Archaeological Reports International Series 151. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

Geoffrey A. Clark and Nancy R. Coinman

The Neolithic Period The Neolithic period was revolutionary in the sense that environmental constraints on human social organization could be eliminated. The seasonal availability and abundance of natural food sources limited population size and forced a condition of nearly constant mobility for societies that depended on hunting and gathering wild animals and plants. With the development of agriculture and animal domestication, both of these restrictions disappeared. The production of storable food, particularly domesticated cereals and legumes, permitted permanent settlements and population growth. The only limiting natural factors were sufficient rainfall for farming and permanent sources of water. The Neolithic was not, however, a sudden invention of new economic policies; it was an evolutionary development that lasted for at least 4,000 years, a time of trial, error, and correction to perfect a subsistence system that would essentially set the foundations for later great civilizations. The Neolithic period had its ultimate origins in the Natufian culture of the late Epipaleolithic period. By collecting wild wheat and barley, Natufians in the Levant could amass sufficient food resources to establish semipermanent villages in which they could live for most of the year. In the harvesting of the grain, the genetics of the wild cereals were subtly but consistently manipulated, although it is not clear whether this was intentional or unconscious on the part of the Natufians. As a consequence, new species were developed that depended on human society for propagation; cereals had become domesticated. Period

Dates b.c.e.

Pottery Neolithic Pre-Pottery Neolithic C/Final Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Natufian

5,500–4,500 6,000–5,500 6,500–6,000 7,200–6,500 7,600–7,200 8,500–7,600 10,500–8,500

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A The earliest detectable domesticated wheat and barley heralds the beginning of this period (PPNA; see table above). A growing number of village sites are known for this period in the Levant: Jericho, Gilgal I, Netiv Hagdud, Gesher, Hatula, and Nahal Oren (all in Israel); ºIraq ed-Dubb, Dhr⺠and Zahrat adh-Dhr⺠2 ( Jordan); and Mureybit (Layer II), Tell Aswad, Jerf Ajla, and Djaªde al Mughara (Syria). At this time the subsistence economy was based on domestic wheat, barley, peas, and lentils. Hunting was the sole source of meat, and gazelle was the

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principal game animal. Wild cattle, boar, ass, and small carnivores were also hunted, and birds and fish were also taken. Domestic architecture was similar throughout the Levant: round or oval shapes, some with internal subdivisions, with a maximum dimension of 10–20 feet. Walls were made of mud, mudbrick, or wattle-and-daub, and dirt floors were sometimes covered with woven reed mats. Only at Jericho is there any evidence of public architecture. The complex of a massive stone wall, ditch, and tower was interpreted by Kenyon as a defensive system against raids, although Bar-Yosef has suggested that in view of Jericho’s location, the wall and ditch may have served to protect the settlement against occasional flash floods. Three contemporaneous industries for this period suggest functional or cultural variability. Farming villages are associated with the Sultanian Industry, with few arrowheads and microliths but a broad range of tool types, including axes/ adzes made on blades, flakes, and cores. In the same region are temporary (?) camps (for example, Salibiya IX) that have the Khiamian Industry, with numerous arrowheads, and a more restricted range of tool types, in which the absence of axes/adzes is conspicuous. In the Negev Desert of Israel, the late ninth millennium Harifian Industry, rich in microliths, is associated with hunting and gathering camps. In terms of ritual, burials were characterized by the separation of the skull from the rest of the body, a practice that was rare in the Natufian period. At Jericho six skulls were arranged in a circle, all facing toward the center, and at another location nine skulls were arranged in three rows, all facing toward the west. Infants were normally buried with the skulls intact with the rest of the skeleton, although beneath one building there was a foundation deposit of five infant skulls. Stone and clay figurines of humans and animals were present in many sites. Human forms were principally of females and probably can be associated with fertility beliefs.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Most of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlements were abandoned by 7,600 b.c.e., possibly due to weather fluctuations, and never reoccupied. Jericho was deserted for an unknown period of time, but the new residents brought with them a very different culture, now referred to as Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). Only at Mureybit (Layer III) is there a clear transition from Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, although it is still not known what factors influenced the changes. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, which lasted for more than a millennium and a half, underwent several major developments, and the period can be subdivided into the Early, Middle, and Late phases. Several features stand out to distinguish this period from the former. First, a new technique for producing elongated blades, using bidirectional naviform cores, spread throughout the Levant. In contrast to the earlier period, long projectile points (of the tanged and shouldered Byblos type) were common in settlements.

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Fig. 60. West room of a two-room MPPNB house at ºAin Ghazal used for more than 400 years. Photo: Curt Blair.

Finally, architecture changed from curvilinear to rectilinear forms, a standard that characterized all settlements (with the exception of the earliest layers at Beidha). Only Mureybit and Tell Aswad in Syria and Cafer Hüyük and Çayönü in Anatolia have radiocarbon dates to document the presence of Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B occupation, but there are close typological similarities at several untested sites in Jordan and Israel. The Middle and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B phases might be considered to represent the “classic” Neolithic period, when population grew rapidly and culture became highly elaborated, particularly in the area of ritual. The rise in population can be explained in part by an expanded list of crops (chick-peas, as well as new varieties of wheat and barley) and the herding of animals. Goats were domesticated in highland Jordan and the Jordan Valley by the end of the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B; in northern Israel, on the other hand, there is no evidence of animal domestication until the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Cattle and sheep joined the domesticates in the southern Levant in the latter half of the seventh millennium b.c.e. There is no evidence of animal husbandry in Syria until the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, when sheep and cattle were eventually domesticated. Domestic dwellings throughout the region were rectangular in shape and relatively spacious in the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Beidha in southern Jordan was an exception in the earliest layers (Level VI), for Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B round semisubterranean houses invoke the style common to Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. At ºAin Ghazal, houses ranged from 100 to 150 square feet in area,

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usually divided into two or three rooms (fig. 60). Floors were made of lime plaster, as at many sites in Jordan and Israel, and interior walls also received a wash of pure lime. In the northern Levant, gypsum plaster was the common floor material, a substance that required little fuel to manufacture. Human burials reflect complex patterns of social organization. The “common” burial style was subfloor, semiflexed, and decapitated; similar courtyard burials were frequent alternatives. At ºAin Ghazal, about 25 percent of the adult burials occurred in rubbish piles, with the skull still attached to the skeleton, suggesting a status differentiation from the “normal” ºAin Ghazal residents. Children beneath the age of about 16 months were invariably buried with the skull intact, although the final resting place varied from trash heaps to foundation deposits. It is difficult to reach firm interpretations of these burial styles, since it is obvious that most of the dead must have been disposed of in some other fashion. At ºAin Ghazal eight burials and four isolated skulls were found beneath the floor of a house that remained inhabited for more than 400 years, for example; what happened to the other family members over these twenty generations? As was the case in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, some human skulls were simply reburied elsewhere, but other crania received special treatment. One partial skull from ºAin Ghazal bore traces of bitumen, and another was painted with red pigment. Between ten and twelve skulls from Jericho had the faces recreated with plaster, creating what Kenyon called “portraits” of the deceased, probably representing revered family members. Five such skulls have come from ºAin Ghazal, two from Beisamoun, four from Tell Ramad, and one from Kfar Hahoresh. It is interesting to note that, although decapitation was common throughout the Levant, plastered skulls have been found only in the central Levant. Animal figurines are relatively common in Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites, and it appears that wild cattle constituted the overwhelming majority of the objects. At least some of them apFig. 61. Female plaster statue and two pear to be associated with a magical cult, plaster busts from the 1983 MPPNB in view of the “haltered” and “killed” statuary cache at ºAin Ghazal. Photo: H. Debajah. specimens from ºAin Ghazal (fig. 61).

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Small clay human figurines are rarer, but they show, in part, a concern for fertility and the health of pregnant women. Other figurines of indeterminate sex may have been talismans. Lime plaster statues and busts from ºAin Ghazal and Jericho may have served as a means of social integration within and among communities in the central Levant. The similarities in facial structure and cosmetic treatment between the statuary and the plastered skulls indicate that the statues were also associated with ancestor veneration, perhaps as mythical founders of kinship groups or settlements. Fragments of lime plaster statues were also found in a small cave in the Nahal Hemar, not far from the southern end of the Dead Sea in Israel. Small painted human figurines made of bone, two painted stone masks, and six adult skulls adorned with a net-pattern of asphalt show that this cave was a cultic repository, although who participated in the ritual practices is not clear. The cave deposits also provided preserved wooden beads, other wooden artifacts, and a superb collection of cordage, textiles, and basketry, all dated to the Middle and Late PrePottery Neolithic B periods. Near the end of the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period in Israel and southern Jordan, settlement patterns appear to have undergone severe dislocation, although villages in highland Jordan and in Syria remained essentially stable. Jericho and Beidha were abandoned around 6500 b.c.e., for example, as were numerous other sites. This coincided with a sudden increase in the size of ºAin Ghazal. Several other settlements, such as Khirbet Sheikh ºAli in the Galilee and Beisamoun at the edge of the Huleh Depression, also grew to great sizes, possibly as the result of the relocation of populations from recently abandoned farming villages. The Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B was a time characterized by the growth of enormous settlements. Tell Abu Hureyra, in Syria; Basta, ºAin Ghazal (fig. 62), Wadi Shuºeib in Jordan; and Khirbet Sheikh ºAli and Beisamoun in Israel all expanded to between 25 and 35 acres in size. Little detailed information from this period is known except for Basta, which has produced two-storied houses with walls at least 12 feet high. The houses were complex arrangements of small (about 7 x 7 feet) storage rooms arranged around a large central room or courtyard, a pattern also suggested by badly damaged remnants at ºAin Ghazal. This was also a time when the effects of overgrazing by goats and the deforestation associated with lime manufacture in the southern Levant become clear in the faunal record. By the end of the period, natural habitats for wild animals had been destroyed in the vicinity of the settlements. At Middle PrePottery Neolithic B ºAin Ghazal, for example, more than 55 species of animals were recorded, including many associated with forests, parkland, and maquis vegetation zones. By the beginning of the sixth millennium the number of wild species had dropped to 12, all of them characteristic of degraded or steppe/ desert environments.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic C The situation in Syria appears to have remained relatively unchanged, and the early sixth-millennium Final Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cultural deposits show only

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Fig. 62. Late PPNB “temple” (center) from the East Field at ºAin Ghazal. Photo: Bilal Degedeh.

minor modifications of earlier Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B manifestations. In Israel and Jordan the situation was different, and responses to the damaged environment resulted in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C culture; so far this culture has been identified at Wadi Shuºeib, Khirbet Sheikh ºAli, and possibly at Atlit on the Mediterranean Coast near Haifa, but published details are known only from ºAin Ghazal. At this time lithic technology concentrated on flake production, and the use of the naviform blade technique was only half as frequent as in Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Human and animal figurines were rarely made. Burials invariably retained the skull intact with the rest of the skeleton, suggesting the demise of the skull cult, although bones of pigs were common inclusions in burial pits. Secondary burials were also characteristic, although there is a pattern to indicate that primary burials were associated with house courtyards and secondary burials with storage buildings. The architecture at ºAin Ghazal shows two different kinds of contemporaneous structures for the first time in the Neolithic. Small (about 50 square feet), dirt-floored, single-room houses opened onto a similar-sized courtyard, where cooking and other domestic activities took place. The second type of structure was a semisubterranean storage bunker about 30–40 square feet in area with small (about 4 x 3 feet) cells opening onto a narrow central corridor. It is possible that the populations had adopted a form of part-time pastoralism, in which a substantial portion of the settlement took their herds of goats and

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sheep to the unfarmable steppe and desert for prolonged periods, returning to the settlement and its resident core population during the dry seasons after the harvest had been completed. This would explain the differences in architecture, the distribution of primary and secondary burials, and the relative decrease in sickle blades and grinding stones (compared to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period).

Pottery Neolithic This period, of course, is signaled by the appearance of fired ceramic technology. Although there were brief essays of ceramic experimentation in the mid–seventh millennium (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) at Tell Assouad and Tell Damishliyya in Syria and ºAin Ghazal in Jordan, fired pottery did not become a traditional part of the cultural repertoire until the sixth millennium. An abundance of radiocarbon dates from the northern Levant permits a reliable assessment of developments during the Pottery Neolithic period in that region. Several schemes have been proposed (Amuq A–C. Byblos ancien and moyen, Balikh II–III, etc.), but in general one can view the ceramic Neolithic in terms of the Pre-Halafian and Halafian phases. The former lasts from about 6000 to 5200 and the latter from 5200 to 4500 b.c.e. In the Pre-Halafian phase, local variation in ceramic production is considerable, although in general one can characterize the pottery as consisting of mostly coarse wares, with heavy reliance on vegetal temper. Initially rarely decorated, burnishing, incised geometric designs, and crudely painted (red on white slip) pottery became popular in later parts of this phase. There was widespread settlement abandonment during this phase, particularly in northernmost Syria, and settlements also decreased in size. Overall, there appears to have been a drastic decrease in population living in permanent farming villages (reaching farmstead proportions in many cases), perhaps associated with a corresponding growth in the number of pastoral groups. During the Halafian phase, indicated by growing amounts of imported “true” Halaf pottery (and Samarra styles) as well as increasing production of local imitations, a virtual population explosion occurred, perhaps an indication of the development of small-scale irrigation along permanent water sources. In Jordan and Israel the Pottery Neolithic period began about 500 years later than in the north. There are very few radiocarbon dates from the region, but they point to a mid–sixth millennium date for the onset of traditional ceramic manufacture. There are at least two contemporaneous pottery traditions at the beginning of the ceramic Neolithic: the Yarmukian in northern highland Jordan and the Jordan Valley; and Pottery Neolithic A (PNA, sometimes referred to as “Jericho IX pottery”) in much of Israel, southern Jordan, and overlapping with the Yarmukian in the Jordan Valley. A third tradition, as yet undefined, may be present in southern highland Jordan at the sites of ºAin Jamam and ºAin abu Nekeileh. The paucity of C14 dates makes it extremely difficult to judge the tempo of change in ceramics and sociocultural developments in the southern Levant. The

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Fig. 63. Yarmoukian Pottery Neolithic “long house” at ºAin Ghazal. Photo: Bilal Degedeh.

Yarmukian tradition, for example, may last from the mid–sixth millennium until the beginning of the Chalcolithic period in highland Jordan (fig. 63). In the Jordan Valley and Wadi Arabah there is a complex interdigitation of Yarmukian and Pottery Neolithic A pottery layers, although sometime in the early fifth millennium, perhaps, both traditions were replaced by the Wadi Rabah/Pottery Neolithic B ( Jericho VIII) styles. It is clear that the Yarmukian tradition, at least, is a local development from Pre-Pottery Neolithic C underpinnings and not an importation from outside the area, as shown by stratigraphic and architectural evidence at ºAin Ghazal (fig. 64). At ºAin Ghazal, Wadi Shuºeib, and perhaps Basta in Jordan and Khirbet Sheikh ºAli in Israel, early Yarmukian farmers maintained the general agricultural patterns of the early sixth millennium, although the absence of storage bunkers at ºAin Ghazal suggests that the “tethered” pastoralism of Pre-Pottery Neolithic C had given way to full-time pastoral nomadism in the early Yarmukian period. This interpretation is supported to some degree by the numerous temporary camps that appear in the steppe and deserts of eastern Jordan during this time. Many new Yarmukian sites were founded, such as Shaºar Hagolan and Tell Abu Thawwab, characteristically small and located away from earlier large Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and C villages whose local landscapes had been so badly damaged by overgrazing and deforestation. Some former smaller villages, such as Munhata, were reoccupied by Yarmukians after a period of at least 500 years of post-PPNB

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Fig. 64. Walled LPPNB/PPNC staircase (bottom) and circular Yarmoukian pastoral tent (center) from ºAin Ghazal. Drawing: Ali Omari.

abandonment that apparently allowed for restabilization of the local ecological system. The origins of the Pottery Neolithic A / Jericho IX pottery tradition are speculative. No sites with continuous occupation from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B/C to the Pottery Neolithic A to the Pottery Neolithic B (Wadi Rabah) variants in pottery are documented. All Pottery Neolithic A sites appear to be small farming settlements, although the small area of excavations at some sites makes a confident conclusion impossible at some sites. Wadi Rabah sites in the Jordan Valley all seem to be farming hamlets, but some of the sites along the northern edge of the Negev Desert may have been either repeatedly occupied seasonal settlements or examples of the “core resident-seasonal pastoralism” sites in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C ºAin Ghazal model.

Bibliography Akkermans, P. 1990 Villages in the Steppe. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam, Faculteit der Ruimelijke Wetenschappen.

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Bar-Yosef, O. 1986 The Walls of Jericho: An Alternative Explanation. Current Anthropology 27: 157–62. 1991 The Early Neolithic of the Levant: Recent Advances. Review of Archaeology 12: 1–18. Bar-Yosef, O., and Schick, T. 1989 Early Neolithic Organic Remains from Nahal Hemar Cave. National Geographic Reports 5: 176–90. Bienert, H. 1991 Skull Cult in the Prehistoric Near East. Journal of Prehistoric Religion 5: 9–23. Flannery, K. 1970 The Origins of Agriculture. Annual Review of Anthropology 2: 271–310. Gebel, H. G. K. 2002 The Neolithic of the Near East: An Essay on a “Polycentric Evolution” and Other Current Research Problems. Pp. 313–25 in Material Culture and Mental Spheres: Rezeption Archäologischer Denkrichtungen in der Vorderasiatischen Altertumskunde, ed. A. Hausleiter, S. Kerner, and B. Müller-Neuhof. Berlin: Ex Oriente. Kenyon, K. 1979 Archaeology in the Holy Land. London: Benn. 1981 Excavations at Jericho, Vol. III. London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Kuijt, I. (ed.) 2000 Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation. New York: Kluwer / Plenum. Kuijt, I., and Goring-Morris, N. 2002 Foraging, Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis. Journal of World Prehistory 16/4: 361– 440. Rollefson, G. 1989 The Late Aceramic Neolithic of the Levant: A Synthesis. Paleorient 15: 168–73.

Gary O. Rollefson

Prehistoric Chipped-Stone Technology Human beings are an anomaly in the evolution of animals. We are mediumsized and therefore rather weak, slow, possessed of relatively little stamina, and have few natural physical features for defense or aggression against many other mammals who compete with us for survival. But human evolution has been successful for three reasons: the emergence of erect posture (which freed the forelimbs for object manipulation); the development of a social structure that emphasized cooperation in obtaining and sharing resources; and an enormous mental elaboration of brain functions that allowed conception of artificial alteration of natural resources to serve human needs. At the core of early human (“hominid”) success was lithic technology, the manufacture of durable tools of stone that compensated for the absence of fangs and claws to kill animals and to process both faunal and floral resources. Naturally occurring “tools” of sharp stone, wood, or other materials have always been available (and probably used on an ad hoc basis for millions of years), but such “tools” were rarely available on a predictable basis. Our hominid ancestors changed this by manufacturing tools at will, crudely at first, but with increasing sophistication over time. The earliest evidence for chipped-stone tool manufacture dates more than two million years ago in Africa. It was not until about 1.4 million years ago that the Levant was first occupied by hominids. Homo erectus emerged from its African homeland with the Acheulian Industry, including handaxes, cleavers, choppers, and flake tools that became increasingly sophisticated in terms of functional efficiency as the mental and physical acuity of H. erectus improved. The earliest stage (the Early Acheulian) relied exclusively on the hard hammer technique of manufacture. Characteristically, stone hammers produced large bulbs of percussion, and consequently the concavities left on the core edge were deep and resulted in an often jagged cutting edge. Secondary retouch of these edges could improve the utility of tool edges, but the edges generally remained manifestly sinuous in contour. The finest example of an Early Acheulian industry from the Levant is from ºUbeidiya, near the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. About 750,000 years ago the Middle Acheulian stage witnessed the addition of the “soft hammer technique” to the repertoire of tool manufacture, and the problem of zigzag cutting edges was greatly reduced. Hammers of bone, antler, or hardwood absorbed some of the force delivered to the core, resulting in flatter, more diffuse bulbs of percussion. With refined secondary retouch, the working edges of handaxes became much straighter and therefore much more efficient for butchering purposes. Flake tools such as scrapers and knives were also less bulky and more carefully formed. An extensive Middle Acheulian site was excavated at Latamne, in the Orontes Valley of Syria; and another example, with

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strong similarities to African sites, is Gesher Benot Yaºacob, just north of the Sea of Galilee. The transition from H. erectus to H. sapiens neandertalensis (or “Archaic Homo sapiens”) was well underway by 300,000–400,000 years ago, with concomitant changes in lithic technology. A set of related methods that began at this time were the Levallois or “prepared-core” techniques. Earlier methods produced random and unpredictable sizes and shapes of flakes from cores, and much waste might be produced before a suitable flake for a particular task was obtained. The Levallois techniques conserved both time and stone resources by preshaping the core before the intended flake was struck off, yielding round or subrectangular flakes (“Levallois flakes”), long parallel-sided flakes (“Levallois blades”), or triangular convergent pieces (“Levallois points”). Once produced, Levallois pieces needed only minimal reshaping. Although the Levallois techniques began during the final phases of the Middle Acheulian, they were improved and became increasingly popular during the Late Acheulian (from about 400,000 to 100,000 years ago). Flake tools became standardized to a greater degree in terms of shape and size (fig. 65). Neandertals also paid special attention to symmetry in many of their handaxes, introducing what appears to have been a pride of craftsmanship that extended beyond the needs of simple utility. Late Acheulian sites are numerous throughout the Near East, including the enormous open-air camps of Fjaje in Jordan and Maºayan Barukh in Palestine and Palestinian cave sites such as Umm Qatafa and Tabun. The Yabrudian Industry was contemporaneous with the Late Acheulian, but it was restricted in its distribution to the wooded highlands of southern Syria, Lebanon, and northern Palestine. Handaxes were generally smaller and cruder compared with Late Acheulian examples, and the flake tools were dominated by thick, well-made scrapers; Levallois techniques were rarely used. Included within some Yabrudian deposits were rich assemblages of the Amudian Industry: long, delicate, and finely made blades, often intentionally blunted along one edge to produce knives, contrasted sharply with the chunkier Yabrudian tools. Although conclusive evidence is lacking, the geographic and temporal isolation of the Yabrudian and Amudian Industries suggest that they are functionally specific expressions of the greater Late Acheulian Industry. The Middle Paleolithic (or Levantine Mousterian) period began about 100,000 years ago and lasted until about 40,000 b.c.e. Handaxes disappeared altogether, replaced by a suite of more specialized flake tools, and the use of Levallois techniques reached unprecedented proportions throughout the Near East (fig. 66). It is debatable when modern H. sapiens sapiens emerged as a definable population in the Near East, but the transition from Neandertaloid groups was well underway by the end of the Levantine Mousterian, as the numerous burials from Skhul and Qafzeh in northern Palestine demonstrate. By 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, there appeared a concomitant transition in tool production called the Emireh Industry. Grounded in a Levallois tradition, distinctive Emireh points and blades were made by removing the thick bulbs of percussion from Levallois

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Fig. 65. Late Acheulian bifaces from the Wadi el-Hasa Survey (cf. MacDonald 1988). Drawing: Brian Byrd.

points and blades, and Levallois flakes became increasingly rarer. By approximately 35,000 b.c.e., the use of Levallois techniques disappeared altogether. Fully modern humans occupied the Near East by 35,000 b.c.e., when the Middle Paleolithic gave way to the Upper Paleolithic period. Two Upper Paleolithic Industries existed concurrently: the Levantine Aurignacian in the northern Levant and the Ahmarian in the southern steppes and deserts. The former industry, which has ostensible antecedents in the Late Levantine Mousterian, is characterized by tools made on thick blades and flakes (particularly the latter), with end scrapers and burins dominating the tool kits. These tool types are rare in the Ahmarian, which is based on the production of numerous short (¯ 50 mm) narrow (¯ 10 mm) “bladelets,” which bear minimal retouch along the tips and/or one lateral edge. The origins of the Ahmarian are obscure, but there are suggestions that it came from North Africa.

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Fig. 66. Middle Paleolithic Levallois points (a–d), Levallois flake core (g), Late Acheulian biface (e) Late Prehistoric picks or chisels (f, h–i). Drawing: B. Byrd.

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A number of cultural features distinguish the Upper Paleolithic from the subsequent Epipaleolithic period, which began at about 17,000 b.c.e. and lasted until about 8500 b.c.e. The Epipaleolithic was a time of increased local and regional diversity in terms of lithic technology and typology. The Kebaran Industry was based on bladelets, although larger tools also played important roles. Significantly, grinding stones appeared for the first time, indicating that human groups exploited the environment more intensively than before. At about 12,500 b.c.e. small geometric microliths in the forms of triangles, rectangles, and trapezoids began to dominate lithic inventories, accounting for 60–85 percent of the Geometric Kebaran Industry. The minute size of so many of the geometrics (2.5 cm or less in length) indicates that they must have been used as multiple inserts in grooved shafts of wood or bone for use as arrows, harpoons, and sickles. A novel method for making the tiny geometrics, called the microburin technique, was widely adopted. First, one or two notches were created along the edge of bladelets to isolate sections of the prescribed length of the intended geometric tool. The notches were then struck, creating, in effect, “microburins” as a second stage. Finally, the small bladelet sections were formed into the desired shape. It must be emphasized that the technique was used to create geometric microliths and not “micro-burins.” The contemporaneous Mushabian and Negev Kebaran Industries in the Sinai and Negev Deserts differed from the Geometric Kebaran A principally in terms of specific tool types. Microlith production continued to be important in the following Natufian Industry (about 10,500–8000 b.c.e.), and the “lunate” is the hallmark of the period. But nonmicrolithic tools, particularly scrapers, burins, notches, and denticulates, regained near-parity in many sites, which perhaps reflects the increased degree of sedentism and the consequent expansion of the range of activities undertaken at particular settlements. The Neolithic period began at about 8500 b.c.e., and the Sultanian Industry (8500–7600 b.c.e.) of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) shows a marked decrease in the reliance on microlithic production and a preference for tools made on larger blades, flakes, and cores. “True” arrowheads first appear during this time, although at farming villages like Jericho and Hatoula they are relatively rare. In nonfarming sites in the Jordan Rift and northern Israel, one finds the coeval Khiamian Industry (8500–8200 b.c.e.), which also had largely abandoned microlith production. The small, lightweight Khiamian point, with opposed notches near the concave base, was typically found from the fringes of the Negev Desert to the Euphrates in northern Syria. In the Negev Desert proper, the Harifian Industry (8500–8000 b.c.e.) still focused on microlithic tools, and the lozenge-shaped Harifian point was commonly used by these desert hunters and gatherers. Near the middle of the eighth millennium b.c.e., a revolutionary change in blade production spread rapidly throughout Syria–Palestine, issuing in the

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Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period (7600–6000 b.c.e.). The “naviformcore” technique entailed the preparation of large, relatively thin nodules to produce two striking platforms on opposite ends of the core. By shifting from one platform to the other, this particular hard-hammer method produced consistently longer and more-standardized blades and resulted in a much more efficient use of flint resources. New projectile point types (fig. 67) were made on the new blades, particularly the long and robust Byblos point, with rounded shoulders and a retouched laminar tang, and they closely followed the spread of the naviform technique. Other new points included the leaf-shaped Amuq type and the barbed Jericho point, which was especially popular in the southern Levant. Pre-Pottery Neolithic B tool kits were often dominated by burins (25–40 percent), mostly transverse types, that were probably used for bone- and woodworking and for the processing of reeds for weaving mats and baskets (fig. 68). In the first half of the sixth millennium, lithic technology underwent little change in northern Syria’s Final Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, but south of Damascus, lithic manufacture changed its character greatly. During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (PPNC) (6000–5500 b.c.e.) in the southern Levant the ratio of blades-to-flakes dropped to 1:2 (compared with 1:1 in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), partly as a consequence of decreased reliance on the naviform method. Tools in general decreased in overall size (particularly noticeable among the projectile points). There was a perceptible decline in the production of burins, distributed roughly equally among simple, dihedral, and truncation types. Sickle blades were long and had little, if any, retouch. Bifacially retouched knives made on tabular flint appeared for the first time. The emphasis on flake technology continued with the advent of the Pottery Neolithic period at about 5500 b.c.e. Arrowheads were barbed, were relatively short (often less than 2 cm), and frequently bore complete bifacial retouch. Burins were dominated by concave truncation types, particularly in the desert “burin sits,” where this tool accounted for more than 30 percent of the tool kit in many cases. Pottery Neolithic sickle blades were short segments, often truncated and bifacially worked, with exaggerated denticulation along the cutting edges. The Chalcolithic period (about 4500–3200 b.c.e.) witnessed considerable technological variability from one site to another. It appears that there was a fundamental “domestic” technology that relied almost exclusively on flake production, while some localities specialized in blade manufacture for trade with local and more distant settlements. Infrequent large cortical “fan scrapers” may have been trade items as well. Arrowheads were very rare during the period, as were burins. Sickles were normally truncated segments with microdenticulation along the cutting edge. The presence of perforated flint discs, sometimes with prominent spikes along the periphery, are difficult to interpret in terms of function.

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Fig. 67. Middle PPNB projectile points from ºAin Ghazal. Drawing: B. Byrd.

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Fig. 68. Middle and Late PPNB arrowheads (a–e), Natufian lunate, MPPNB borers (g–i), MPPNB steep scraper (k), MPPNB sickles (j, l–m), MPPNB knife (n), MPPNB transverse burin (o) all from ºAin Ghazal. Drawing: Brian Byrd.

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Prehistoric Chipped-Stone Technology Bibliography

Bar-Yosef, O. 1981 The Epi-Paleolithic Complexes in the Southern Levant. Pp. 389– 408 in Prehistoire du Levant, ed. J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Paris: CNRS. 1989 The PPNA in the Levant: An Overview. Paleorient 15: 57–63. Bar-Yosef, O., and Goren-Inbar, N. 1993 The Lithic Assemblages of ºUbeidiya: A Lower Paleolithic Site in the Jordan Valley. Qedem Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 34. Jerusalem: Hebrew University. Goren, N. 1981 The Lower Paleolithic in Israel and Adjacent Countries. Pp. 193–205 in Prehistoire du Levant, ed. J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Paris: CNRS. Hours, F. 1981 La paleolithique inferieur de la Syrie et du Liban. Pp. 165–83 in Prehistoire du Levant, ed. J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Paris: CNRS. Jelinek, A. 1981 The Middle Paleolithic of the Levant: Synthesis. Pp. 299–302 in Prehistoire du Levant, ed. J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Paris: CNRS. Levy, T. 1986 The Chalcolithic Period. Biblical Archaeologist 49: 82–108. Marks, A. 1981 The Upper Paleolithic of the Levant: Synthesis. Pp. 369–72 in Prehistoire du Levant, ed. J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Paris: CNRS. Quintero, L., and Wilke, P. 1995 Evolution and Economic Significance of Naviform Core-and-Blade Technology in the Southern Levant. Paléorient 21/1: 17–34. Rollefson, G. O. 1989 The Late Aceramic Neolithic of the Levant: A Synthesis. Paleorient 15: 168–73. 1993 Prehistoric Time. Pp. 72–111 in The History of Ancient Palestine from the Paleolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest, G. Ahlström. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 146. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Rollefson, G. O., et al. 1997 ºAin Soda and ºAin Qasiya: New Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Sites in the Agsaq Shishan Area, Eastern Jordan. Pp. 45–58 in The Prehistory of Jordan II: Perspectives from 1997, ed. H. G. K. Gebel, Z. Kafafi, and G. O. Rollefson. Berlin: Ex Oriente.

Gary O. Rollefson

The Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant Introduction Sometime between 4500 and 4000 b.c.e., the Levant was characterized by a number of new and vibrant societies spread out over most of the geographical zones in the region. Unlike the previous Pottery Neolithic Cultures, which were located primarily in the Mediterranean zone and in areas rich in natural springs, for the first time, during the Chalcolithic period, extensive mixed farming communities expanded into the semiarid Iranian-Turanian environmental zones. It was in these marginal semiarad regions of the country that the foundations for the later Early Bronze Age fortified towns were laid in southern Palestine. The interrelationship of environment, population increase, and changes in technology and production systems during the Chalcolithic period help to explain the growth of more complex societies during the Chalcolithic period. Some of the new developments observed in the Chalcolithic that separate it from the preceding Pottery Neolithic include a marked growth in the human population of Palestine, the establishment of public sanctuaries and burial grounds, the emergence of craft specialization and metallurgy, and the division of sites into spatial hierarchies with settlement centers that coordinated social, economic, and religious activities. These changes in southern Palestine reflect the emergence of the first identifiable “chiefdom” organizations. These were societies that operated on the principle of rank—that is, differentiated social status that was still embedded in kinship relations. In Palestine, state-level societies may not have developed until the Iron Age. There is no scholarly agreement about whether fortified towns of Early Bronze II Palestine represent state-level organizations. In fact, the differences between local Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age social organization seem minimal—a relationship that needs to be systematically investigated in future research. The Chalcolithic period in Palestine can be interpreted as flowing with general directional changes that are related to ecological, demographic, technological, and economic factors. However, contrary to what would be expected in unilinear culture evolution, the end of the Chalcolithic period in Palestine is characterized by a collapse in the system, rather than a developmental trend toward even more complex societies. With the collapse of Chalcolithic societies in the Levant, culture change in the region becomes intimately and endlessly linked to the wider Near Eastern and Mediterranean Bronze Age world system.

Demographic Trends Today most field workers consider the emergence of Chalcolithic societies in Palestine to be the result of a local evolutionary process connected with the

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growth of human population in the Late Pottery Neolithic period. The two areas where this process has been suggested are along the Sinai-Negev coastal plain, where I. Gilead has shown the Qatifian Pottery Neolithic Culture to be a precursor to the Negev Chalcolithic societies, and in the lower Jordan Valley, where B. Hennessey and S. Bourke suggest that the Chalcolithic type site of Tuleilat Ghassul grew out of a local Late Neolithic tradition. The result of population increase at the end of the fifth millennium in Palestine was the growth of a number of Chalcolithic archaeological entities or “cultures” that developed across the country, occupying a wide range of environmental zones. These include the Golan Heights, the Hula Valley, the coastal plain, the Samarian hills and highlands, and the Jezreel/Beth-shan valleys in the north of the country. In the south a number of regional and subregional groups have been isolated. These include the Jordan Valley/Ammon plateau, the Judean Desert, the Negev/Sinai coastal plain, the Nahal Patish, the Nahal Gerar, and the Beersheva Valley. Most of the southern Chalcolithic culture areas are no greater than approximately 12– 15 mi in length and represent separate societies.

Settlement Patterns The most systematic published surveys of Chalcolithic sites in the region come from the coastal plain and the northern Negev. Based on these subregions, it is possible to define the major changes in settlement patterns during the Chalcolithic. While a number of Late Neolithic entities develop into possible “culture areas” and correspond to the Yarmukian and Wadi Rabah phases, Late Neolithic sites are best described as small autonomous village sites rarely larger than 7 acres. Surveys in the Beersheva Valley show for the first time in Palestine a two-tier settlement hierarchy characterized by village centers (ca. 25 acres in area) and smaller dependent satellite sites. The largest of these centers include: Zeªelim, Shiqmim, Bir es-Safadi, and Nevatim. In political terms, this settlement pattern represents chiefdoms and the emergence of centers that coordinated social, economic, and religious activities in the region, and it indicates a much higher degree of social integration than the previous Late Neolithic pattern, which was characterized by autonomous villages. A similar settlement process operated on the coastal plain and presumably in the lower Jordan Valley around Tuleilat Ghassul, the largest Chalcolithic site in Palestine (ca. 50 acres). In the last phases of development, Chalcolithic settlements in the lower Jordan Valley, such as Tuleilat Ghassul, and the Beersheva Valley are characterized by planned villages along the major drainages. Large-scale excavations in the Beersheva Valley at Abu Matar, Bir es-Safadi, and Shiqmim show a clear developmental settlement sequence spanning a period of approximately 700 years. The earliest settlement phases are characterized by subterranean rooms complexes, with the last occupation represented by planned open-air rectilinear villages (fig. 69). The function of these subterranean complexes has been intensely debated, with interpretations ranging from special architectural adaptations to a hot desert environment, storage facilities associated with open-air villages, and defense and

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storage systems established by the pioneer settlers in the Beersheva Valley. The long time span in which Chalcolithic cultures flourished in Palestine points to their stability and success as adaptive cultural systems in this part of the Near East.

Innovations and Technology Growing populations in the late fifth/early fourth millennium necessitated a reorganization in technologies associated with subsistence. With the expansion of Chalcolithic settlement into the major inland valleys of the northwest Negev and the arid lower Jordan Valley, new trends in agro-technology developed, some of which laid the foundations for subsistence systems in all of the following periods of human occupation in the region. In the northern Negev, Fig. 69. Underground room with roof removed the absence of widespread freshfrom Shiqmim (1989 season). The tunnel above water springs in the inland valleys the meter stick leads to another subterranean led to the introduction of check room complex. Photo by T. E. Levy. dams and floodwater farming, a phenomenon that has been documented in the Beersheva and Patish Valleys on archaeological and botanical grounds. In an innovating series of studies concerning ancient farming technologies, Arlene Rosen has shown a relationship between irrigation farming and silica skeleton (phytolith) formation in barley and wheat crops. Using independent botanical data, she has examined silicified epidermal tissue from the culms of wheat and barley found on a number of Chalcolithic sites in the Beersheva Valley and demonstrated that these crops were grown under floodwater farming or simple basin irrigation. Although hoe-based cultivation was still the main means of Chalcolithic farming, as shown by the still widespread use of large bifacial flint tools (axes, adzes, hoes, and chisels), the controlled addition of floodwater to field crops grown in the wide trough-shaped valley bottoms of the Negev produced the needed quantities of grain to support the newly emerging large sedentary populations of the northern Negev. A similar process probably occurred at Tuleilat Ghassul and other sites in the Jordan Valley, which depended on diverting the fresh-water springs for their crops. The discovery of carbonized olive (Olea europea) stones from Tuleilat Ghassul and the Cave of the Treasure provides some of the best

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indications of agricultural intensification during the Chalcolithic with the beginnings of fruit growing. Carbonized date stones (Phoenix dactylifera l.) were also found at these sites. M. Zohary and R. Spiegel-Roy suggested that olives from Tuleilat Ghassul were grown under irrigated conditions, similar to those of Jericho and Beth-shan today. Because fruit remains are rare or totally absent from Neolithic farming villages, they concluded that olives and dates apparently became integral elements of food production only during the Chalcolithic.

Pastoralism The largest faunal collections and most intensive archaeozoological research for this period have been carried out in the northern Negev, mostly by Caroline Grigson. The biological data provide us with a detailed picture of human/animal relations during this formative period on a scale unavailable for the previous Neolithic and later Early Bronze Age. The large-scale excavations in the Beersheva Valley at Shiqmim, Bir es-Safadi, Abu Matar, Horvat Betar, and other sites provide the data necessary for characterizing herding activities at this time. If Shiqmim is taken as a representative sample for the valley, sheep (Ovis aries) and goat (Capra hircus) make up over 90 percent of the faunal assemblage, with the remaining 10 percent consisting of cattle (Bos taurus brachyceros), dog, equid, and approximately 3.8 percent wild animals (gazelle, hartebeest, hippopotamus, lion, small cat, fox, hare, ostrich, bird, and fish). The virtual absence of arrowheads in Chalcolithic lithic assemblages, as shown by S. Rosen, highlights the dependence on domestic ungulates for the Chalcolithic subsistence system. There are a few cattle bones that exhibit marked protuberances, which Grigson suggests may indicate the presence of draft cattle and the use of plows as early as the Chalcolithic. Thus, cattle may have begun to replace or accompany hoe cultivation in the Levant in the early fourth millennium. In contrast to the more arid Beersheva Valley, the northern part of the country and the humid Negev coastal plain are characterized by settlements that contain faunal assemblages, with as much as 15 percent domestic pig (Sus scrofa palustris). Whether this relates to environmental factors and the availability of moist environments for pig-keeping in the humid areas or to cultural taboos against the raising and consumption of pork in the more desertic areas at this early period is still being investigated. Andrew Sherratt’s concept of the “Secondary Products Revolution,” when herd animals were first intensively exploited for milk, wool, hair, and traction, is most likely rooted in agro-technological change during the Chalcolithic period. This important process of economic change has been studied by T. E. Levy in the northern Negev and helps in understanding many of the cultural developments that occurred at this time. With the establishment of large permanent villages in the more arid inland valleys of the northwestern Negev plains, there was a new need to move herds (primarily sheep and goat) in search of pasture in accordance with the seasonal availability of pasture land. In Palestine, this developed form of pastoralism involved the use of a specialized population, namely herders, who

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took village animals on a transhumant cycle in search of seasonally available pasture. In the Jordan Valley, ca. 86 percent of the recorded Chalcolithic sites are small sherd scatters and probably reflect the remains of herder camps, similar to those recorded in the Negev by Goren and Gilead. In the Negev, herders would exploit the rich year-round grazing lands on the Negev coastal plain or inland dunal areas where ample spring pasturage was available. In the lower Jordan Valley, transhumance was probably the “normal” Mediterranean transhumance that F. Braudel describes, where people in the lowlands move their herds in the summer to the highlands—in this case the high plateaus of Gilead, Ammon, and Moab in Transjordan. These new developments in herding strategies mark the beginning of specialized transhumance, a subsistence strategy that has characterized the inhabitants of Palestine for the past 6,000 years. Finally, the recent exciting discovery of horse bones (Equus caballus) in sealed Chalcolithic deposits at Shiqmim indicates the introduction of these animals into the southern Levant as early as the late fifth/early fourth millennium. The large size of horse bones makes it possible to distinguish them from onagers (Equus hemionus), wild donkeys (Equus africanus), and domestic donkeys (Equus astinus). Previously, horse bones had been identified from the third-millennium northern Negev town site of Arad and from a number of second-millennium sites in Mesopotamia and Egypt. With the early introduction of horses in the region and their rarity in the archaeological record, it can be assumed that they were valued, perhaps as symbols of prestige. In terms of warfare, the possession of a horse would give any inhabitant of the Negev plains a marked advantage over potential adversaries.

Craft Specialization Innovations in craft specialization are some of the hallmarks of the Chalcolithic period in Palestine. Specialized workshops for ivory and copper metalworking have been found in the Beersheva Valley, as have highly specialized patterns of ceramic manufacture. Stone carving or sculpture reached a level of expertise rarely seen in the later cultures of Palestine. This is best evidenced in the manufacture of large basalt pillar figures found in the Golan Heights and the numerous thinly carved, violin-shaped figurines and beads that have been found in sites all over the country from Byblos in the north to the Sinai coast in the south. Other media such as Lambis shell from the Red Sea, Nile Valley shell, and Mediterranean sea shells are common to most sites. These shells were carved into a wide range of shapes and used as pendants and bracelets. In many of the cemeteries on the coastal plain and northern Negev, shell jewelry has been found as burial offerings.

Production and Metallurgy The beginnings of metallurgy in the Levant can be seen during this period, which has produced the most spectacular early metal objects for the region. The most notable examples come from the “Cave of the Treasure” in Nahal Mishmar on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where more than 400 cultic/prestige and

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other objects were found (fig. 70). In the Beersheva Valley, similarly shaped objects have also been found, which were manufactured with the sophisticated “lost wax” or cire perdue method, indicating an extremely sophisticated knowledge of metalworking. S. Shalev and P. Northover have demonstrated the existence of two technologies for metal production: (1) a simple method that involved casting pure copper into an open mold to manufacture “utilitarian” tools such as axes, adzes, and awls, as well as using annealing and hammering to produce the final shape and hardness of these objects; and (2) the “lost wax” or cire perdue method, which involves the use of arsenical copper, whose casting properties, hardness, and final appearance are superior to pure copper. More recently A. Gopher’s excavations in a Chalcolithic burial cave in Nahal Qana in western Samaria have produced the earliest gold artifacts to have been found in the Levant. These include eight exquisite gold rings, interpreted as ingots, in which the gold would have been melted at a temperature at or below the melting point of pure gold (1,064o C), a temperature well within the reach of Chalcolithic technology, and then poured into open, ring-shaped molds and hammered into their final shape. The gold rings are outstanding because of the rarity of the material, technological advance, and implications for reconstructing Chalcolithic social organization. There are no gold sources in Palestine, so Egypt is assumed by Gopher and his colleagues to be the origin of the raw material. Since ring-shaped metal valuables are well known from late Egyptian pictographic descriptions of imperial-controlled trade in gold ingots, the excavators suggest that trade in gold probably began as early as the fourth millennium b.c.e. Because goldworking requires additional metallurgical knowledge, three Chalcolithic metalworking technologies can now be identified for Chalcolithic Palestine. The absence of known arsenical ore sources in Palestine led researchers such as P. Bar-Adon, Kathleen Kenyon, and others to assume that these sophisticated objects could not have been produced locally but rather presumed ore sources far away from Palestine in Anatolia or Azerbaijan. A recent archaeometallurgical and petrographic examination of a prestige/cultic object (a macehead) from Shiqmim by Shalev, Y. Goren, Levy, and others shows conclusively that it was cast using a local Arabah Valley glaucaunitic chalk as a core. This important study demonstrates conclusively that, contrary to diffusionist theories of an Anatolian or Azerbaijan origin, both cultic/prestige copper objects and utilitarian metal tools were produced locally in Palestine. The precise location of the manufacture of prestige/ cult metal objects still awaits identification. The regional distribution of Chalcolithic sites with metal production debris (slags, crucibles, metalworking installations) and the distribution of metal objects focus on the Beersheva Valley, with more limited evidence from the Wadi Feinan in Jordan’s Arabah Valley. Archaeometallurgical investigations have shown that the copper ores smelted in the Beersheva Valley were imported from Feinan, a distance of over 90 miles away. The most intriguing aspect of Chalcolithic copper exploitation at Feinan is the paucity of evidence for smelting activities found there by A. Hauptmann. Thus, while some metalworking was done in the vicinity of Feinan (evidence of Chalcolithic metallurgy at Timna is inconclusive), the

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Fig. 70. Copper standards from the Cave of the Treasure. The longest standard shown here is 26.1 cm in height. Photo by David Harris.

bulk of our evidence for actual smelting comes from the Beersheva Valley. This suggests that the ores were imported, presumably by the newly domesticated donkey, to the Beersheva Valley settlement system, where they were smelted and cast under very tightly controlled circumstances and not shared with neighboring northern Negev societies.

Formal Cemeteries In the earlier prehistoric periods of the south Levantine archaeological record, the dead were usually buried within settlements, inside family houses, under floors, inside walls, and in other domestic contexts. With the formation of Chalacolithic society, Palestine was dotted with formal cemeteries separate from permanent settlement sites. In the two most intensively researched areas of Chalcolithic settlement, the northern Negev and the lower Jordan Valley, the most extensive evidence for formal cemeteries has come to light. At Adeimeh, located less than four miles southeast of Tuleilat Ghassul, an extensive Chalcolithic necropolis was found by M. Stekelis, with a wide range of burial monuments, including circular tumuli varying in diameter from approximately 12 feet to 30 feet associated with rectangular cist graves. In the northern Negev, a Chalcolithic cemetery was found near Shiqmim that extends for over half a mile along a ridge of Eocene chalk hills that borders the Beersheva Valley. To date, over 100

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burial structures have been excavated. Like Adeimeh, the Shiqmim cemetery has a variety of burial structures, including circular graves filled with burial offerings, cist graves, and small tumuli clustered in groups on a series of seven hilltops. In a preliminary study of the burial monuments at Shiqmim, Levy and Alon were able to identify a degree of social ranking in one part of the cemetery, based on energy expenditure in the building of burial monuments. More recently, Y. Goren and P. Fabian discovered a new Chalcolithic cemetery on the Negev coastal plain near Kissufim, and U. Avner found a small cemetery near Eilat. Numerous Chalcolithic cemeteries have been found along the Israeli littoral at sites such as Azor, Ben Shemen, Bnei Braq, Hadera, Givatayim, and other locales, apparently without any evidence of settlement sites. The coastal cemeteries usually consist of artificial caves dug into the kurkar ridges and are filled with ceramic ossuaries in a variety of rectangular, ovoid, and cylindrical shapes. Secondary burials were commonly placed inside ossuaries, which were then carefully placed in the caves. When Perrot carried out his excavations in the Beersheva Valley during the 1950s and found no evidence of a Chalcolithic cemetery, he suggested that the Beersheva Valley culture was primarily a pastoral society that buried its dead at these coastal cemeteries during the annual search for pasture. The detailed surveys by Ram Gophna have produced ample evidence that some coastal settlements are indeed associated with coastal cemeteries. When this data is coupled with the new evidence for Chalcolithic cemeteries in the northern Negev, Perrot’s pastoral model must be rejected.

Public Sanctuaries Three places in Palestine were witness to the establishment of the earliest permanent public sanctuaries in the region: Tuleilat Ghassul, ºEn-Gedi, and Gilat. Open-air sanctuaries characterized mostly by standing stones and wall features have been found by Avner throughout the southern Negev and Sinai, but these are of a more ephemeral character. In the lower Jordan Valley, at Tuleilat Ghassul, B. Hennessy and S. Bourke have excavated several sanctuaries. Although poorly published to date, Hennessy’s excavations in Area E indicate a sanctuary similar in layout to the one at ºEn-Gedi. Strong support for this comes from the early excavations at the site, when spectacular wall frescoes were found that depict ceremonial processions, mythical figures, and strange animals. Resurfacing of the frescoes, made with rich mineral paints, indicates that the buildings in Area E were used for a prolonged period. A series of eight superimposed wall-paintings were found in one building at the site. Southwest of Tuleilat Ghassul, high above the western bank of the Dead Sea, an isolated sanctuary was excavated at ºEn-Gedi. The ºEn-Gedi sanctuary consists of four separate structures, all connected by a stone fence that encloses a roughly rectangular courtyard. These include the main gatehouse, a postern or secondary gate, a lateral chamber, and the large sanctuary. The site is isolated; no settlement sites exist in the vicinity. D. Ussishkin suggests that the site was prob-

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Fig. 71. Corpus of Chalcolithic pottery from the Gilat sanctuary, Israel. Courtesy T. E. Levy; Photo by Z. Radovan.

ably a central temple serving a wide region and was a focus for pilgrimage connected with the ºEn-Gedi springs in the wadi below. The third Chalcolithic sanctuary is at Gilat in the northern Negev, along the interface of the coastal plain and inland foothill zone and excavated by D. Alon and T. Levy (fig. 71). Gilat’s location straddling the geographic border between these two important areas of settlement played an important role in the emergence of this site as the only northern Negev Chalcolithic sanctuary. A total of seven strata and substrata have been identified at the site and in two of these phrases (Stratum IIb and IIc), architecture related to cult was clearly identified. This includes complexes of rectilinear buildings associated with circular platforms, standing stones or maßßebôt, large well-built mudbrick silos, open-air basins, and other features. Although excavations at Gilat cover a relatively small area (ca. 1200 square m), an unusually rich assemblage of artefacts mobilier, or small portable artifacts related to cult, have been retrieved. These include over 200 fenestrated stands (“incense burners”) made of nonlocal basalt and pottery, some 60 violin-shaped figurines, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic statuettes, stone and clay “tokens,” and other finds. A large sample of these objects were found in a single room (Room A) at the site, which served as the main cult room during the Stratum IIc occupation, a kind of Devir or “Holy of Holies.” A number of contextual associations of artifacts indicate ritual activities that took place in the sanctuary. These include: (1) the earliest dog burial in Palestine (fig. 72) in its own individual plot associated with a grave offering; (2) a cache of

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four complete ostrich eggs set in a pit beneath a public courtyard; and (3) a mass burial in the Stratum IIb sanctuary complex consisting of a mudbrick circular burial monument with nine complete human skeletons. Physical anthropological observations by Patricia Smith indicate that all of the individuals died at approximately the same time and were buried on a layer of hundreds of animal bones, the residue of offerings that were thrown in the grave prior to the human burials. Near the monument, a small pit was found with a complete fenestrated stand and a collection of eight bone awls surrounded by ten gazelle horns. At the time of the mass burial, these objects were intentionally burned. These “events” shed light on important happenings related to cult at Gilat. Although altars, cemeteries, standFig. 72. Chalcolithic dog burial with jar ing stones, and other cult-related pheoffering, Gilat. Courtesy T. E. Levy. nomena have been found in other parts of the country, the artifacts associated with these features are all related mostly to one archaeological entity or culture. In the Negev, for example, the Shiqmim cemetery seems to have served Shiqmim and perhaps other contemporary sites in the valley settlement system, but nothing beyond. Gilat is unique in that material culture found in all of the strata comes from a wide range of Chalcolithic “provinces” in southern Palestine. Petrographic studies by Y. Goren show the presence of ceramics from at least nine of the eleven petrographic groups of the Negev and Judean Hills at the site. Additional evidence comes from the discovery of over 60 finely carved, violinshaped figurines at Gilat, the largest number of these objects to have been found at any one site in the region. These figurines are made of a wide range of nonlocal stone types, including granite, limestone with iron oxides, chlorite, and other minerals that indicate ties with Transjordan, the Judean mountains, Sinai, and other regions and are indications of contact and exchange with many different regions in southern Palestine.

Bibliography Alon, D., and Levy, T. E. 1989 The Archaeology of Cult and Chalcolithic Sanctuary at Gilat. Journal of Mediterranean Archeology 2: 163–221.

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Forthcoming Archaeology, Anthropology and Cult—The Sanctuary at Gilat (Israel). London: Leicester University Press (Continuum). Bar Adon, P. 1980 The Cave of the Treasure. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Bourke, S. 2001 The Chalcolithic Period. Pp. 107–62 in The Archaeology of Jordan, ed. B. MacDonald, R. B. Adams, and P. Bienkowski. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Bourke, S., et al. 2001 The Chronology of the Ghassulian Chalcolithic Period in the Southern Levant: New C-14 Determinations from Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan. Radiocarbon 43: 1217–22. Epstein, C. 1998 The Chalcolithic Culture of the Golan. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Gilead, I. 1988 The Chalcolithic Period in the Levant. Journal of World Prehistory 2: 397– 443. Gopher, A., and Tsuk, T. (eds.) 1996 The Nahal Qanah Cave: Earliest Gold in the Southern Levant. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press. Grigson, C. 1998 Plough and Pasture in the Early Economy of the Southern Levant. Pp. 245–68 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. Hauptmann, A. 2000 Zur frühen Metallurgie des Kupfers in Fenan. Vol. 11 of Der Anschnitt. Bochum. Hennessy, J. B. 1969 Preliminary Report on a First Season of Excavation at Teleilat Ghassul. Levant 1: 1–24. Levy, T. E. 1983 The Emergence of Specialized Pastoralism in the Southern Levant. World Archaeology 15: 15–36. Levy, T. E. (ed.) 1987 Shiqmim I: Studies Concerning Chalcolithic Societies in the Northern Negev Desert, Israel. British Archaeological Reports, International Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995 Cult, Metallurgy and Rank Societies: Chalcolithic Period (ca. 4500–3500 b.c.e.). Pp. 226– 43 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. 2003 Cult, Metallury and Rank Societies: Chalcolithic Period (ca. 4500–3500 bce). Pp. 226–44 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press (Continuum). Levy, T. E., and Shalev, S. 1989 Prehistoric Metalworking in the Southern Levant: Archaeometallurgy and Social Perspectives. World Archaeology 20: 353–72. Lovell, J. L. 2001 The Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods in the Southern Levant: New Data from the Site of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan. Monographs of the Sydney University Teleilat Ghassul Project 1. BAR International Series 974. Oxford: BAR. Tadmor, M., et al. 1995 The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert: Technology, Composition and Provenance. ºAtiqot 27: 95–148.

Thomas E. Levy

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The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert The Nahal Mishmar hoard (known also as “The Judean Desert Treasure”) was discovered in the “Cave of the Treasure” in 1961, during excavations conducted in the Judean Desert by a consortium of archaeological institutions in Israel, in the wake of the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries. The cave, measuring 46 by 40 feet and consisting of two halls, is situated on the northern bank of the Nahal (river) Mishmar canyon cliff, some 160 feet below its top, with a sheer drop of 800 feet, and is accessible these days only by a rope ladder. Two strata of occupation were distinguished in excavations: a sparse early Roman (Bar-Kokhba) stratum and a Chalcolithic one, with an intermediate accumulation layer between the two. Remains of habitation and five skeletons were found in the cave. Two adjacent caves with Chalcolithic habitation and burials, as well as a Chalcolithic enclosure on top of the cliff, were surveyed and partially excavated. The hoard of 429 objects was found in a natural side niche, blocked by a stone; the objects were piled on and partially wrapped in a reed (Cyperus) mat, measuring 32 by 48 inches. Six are ivory artifacts, six are made of hematite, one is of limestone, and the rest are metal objects. Comparative stylistic studies and recent C14 calibrations place the hoard in the Chalcolithic culture, best attested in the northern Negev. The hoard is now dated to the first part of the fourth millennium, not later than 3500 b.c.e.

Ivory Artifacts There is one object, a unique, large, elongated container made of elephant ivory, 15 inches long, 2!/2 pounds in weight. It is slightly curved, following the natural shape of the tusk and has a flat base; it was found with two large cracks along the base. Five objects are made of hippopotamus ivory (18 by 23 inches), of which only one was found complete and intact. They are curved like the tooth itself (“sickle”-shaped), flat and perforated; the large and densely spaced perforations are arranged in three rows over the entire surface. Most objects also have small holes at their wide ends; a piece of a linen thread was preserved in one of these holes. When carried on wooden poles, these objects may have been used as ceremonial standards. The large central perforations, which have raised walls, would then be used for mounting the objects on such poles and balancing them horizontally. Fragments of similar objects were found in the Chalcolithic Negev settlements and in several Judean Desert caves, often together with a metal mace-head or a mace. One fragment was discovered in the Nahal Qanah cave in the central hill country, in a Chalcolithic context comparable to the Nahal Mishmar assemblage. These ivory artifacts could only have been produced by competent ivory

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cutters who mastered the technique of carving and boring. The uniformity of shape, the amount of work invested in their production, and their wide distribution point to the fact that these objects were much in demand. The fact that even fragments were cherished indicates the value of ivory. Special significance and meaning must have been attributed to these unusually shaped objects.

Stone Objects All six hematite objects are plain mace-heads, globular or elongated, of a type most common among the metal mace-heads in the hoard. Similar hematite maceheads are common also in the Chalcolithic sites of the northern Negev, and they occur in contemporary assemblages in the Judean Desert caves and in the Nahal Qanah cave. Some were found in ossuary burials, and one was discovered in the Golan sites. The one limestone mace-head—the only “plebeian” object in the hoard—is typologically similar to the hematite ones. Similarly shaped stone mace-heads will be common in the following Early Bronze Age.

Metal Objects Mace-heads form the largest group among the metal artifacts, comprising well over half of all components. Most are roughly globular or elongated, devoid of any decoration; 11 are disk-shaped mace-heads, also plain. Maces (in the excavator’s nomenclature, “standards”) form the second-largest category. They usually have wide, horizontal rims, short necks, roughly globular or elongated heads (some have disk-shaped heads), long straight shafts, and splaying base rims. These maces, in their entirety, are made of metal. In contrast to the plain mace-heads of the first group, almost all the maces have decorated heads and shafts. All maces are hollow lengthwise, and the majority could be mounted on wooden poles. Remains of such poles were actually preserved in a few shafts, and a piece of cloth (used for securing the pole?) was found in one mace-head. The remaining groups of artifacts are smaller. There are 6 long, ornate scepters, each different in size, shape, and decoration. Unlike the maces, these scepters have solid shafts. There are also 10 large, open cylinders that became known as “crowns,” although their actual use is unknown. Three objects are horn-shaped, partly hollow, and decorated, each with two suspension holes beneath the rim; one still had a piece of twisted string threaded in the holes. Only 5 objects could serve as receptacles for liquids or solids: these are 3 small vessels with basket handles (“situlae”), one small vase without handles, and one deep open bowl. In the majority of the above-mentioned objects, the decoration is based on geometric elements: horizontal, vertical, or zig-zag lines, either raised or grooved, often forming a continuous, brocade-like design. Only the most outstanding objects contain figurative ornaments; these may be horned animals or animal heads mostly with bent grooved horns (of ibexes). Horns alone also occur, undoubtedly in a pars pro toto arrangement, symbolizing the complete animal. One standard is in the form of a vulture, and bird figures are superimposed on rims of a few objects. Floral motifs are exceptional. Only twice does an anthropomorphic head appear,

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once in a mace and once in a crown. Each head has round eyes and a prominent nose, modeled in typically local style, known from other contemporary art forms. All the artifacts mentioned above are commonly considered to have been ceremonial. This is inferred from the fact that, except for the few vessels, none has a practical shape that would suggest daily use; the objects are also lavishly decorated. Moreover, they are made of costly raw materials that had to be imported, employing complex technology that required considerable expertise. In addition to these objects, the hoard also contains a group of 19 tools: blades of axes and adzes, and one hammer. These objects are utilitarian in shape and devoid of decoration. Outstanding in this group are 3 socketed axes, among them one ax blade decorated with an intricate rope design and several long, thin blades. They too may have been designated for ceremonial rather than practical use. All of the metal objects were produced by casting. Except for the 6 scepters and most tools, all of the artifacts were cast over a core, in the “lost-wax” casting technique. The study of production techniques by means of nondestructive methods of radiography revealed that all of the objects were cast in one piece and in a single casting, with all the details of ornamentation existing already in the mold. The quality of casting varies, however; some objects are poorly cast, but with others the casting is excellent. Since no two objects are identical, each must have been cast in an individual mold. To retrieve the newly made product, each mold had to be broken when casting was completed. After casting, all objects were extensively smoothed and polished, obliterating exterior defects and obtaining smooth, shining surfaces. To date about 10 percent of all hoard objects have been analyzed; among them, 28 were subjected to chemical and neutron activation analyses as well as lead isotopy. The results show that the tools were invariably made of pure copper of a type that can be obtained in the copper mines of Feinan in the Arabah. One or 2 maces were also made of pure copper, but the decisive majority of the analyzed ceremonial objects are made of a complex antimony-arsenic copper, while a few were made of high–nickel arsenic copper. Both types of metal are nonexistent in the Arabah mines and can be found only in distant regions of the Caucasus, in Central Asia, or in the Iranian Plateau. The variety observed in elemental composition as well as in the quality of casting suggests that these objects were made by different hands, most likely in different workshops. But the fact that both the tools and the ceremonial object coexist in the hoard and in other local assemblages proves that, most likely, they were contemporary in manufacture and use. The Nahal Mishmar hoard is a unique find that produced decisive—indeed revolutionary—evidence for the existence of highly developed metallurgy in the Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant. It is outstanding in the large number of its components, in their shape and ornamentation, and in the use of imported luxurious raw materials: metals, ivory, and hematite. The use of these objects can only be conjectured, but it is assumed that except for the tools these objects were used in ceremony and in the cult. Several theories have been forwarded attempting to explain the location in the Judean Desert cave. It has been suggested that the hoard was originally the possession of the nearby ºEn-Gedi temple, removed

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in time of danger to the cave; that it was the possession of a tribe of trader-smiths who lived in the caves of the Judean Desert; and that it was buried in the cave in “ritual burial.” Similar artifacts, mostly tools and mace-heads, were found in private houses of Chalcolithic villages in the northern Negev, sometimes in association with small-scale metal working; a few were found in burials (in Palmachim). None has yet been found in a Chalcolithic temple. The hoard’s connection to the local Chalcolithic culture, foremost to the northern Negev settlements and to the Judean Desert cave-occupation, has been ascertained by numerous similar artifacts found there. It has been further confirmed by stylistic elements occurring in the hoard and common in other types of local Chalcolithic art. The fact that similar metal objects were found in the caves of Giveat Haªoranim and in the Nahal Qanah cave in the central hill country, as well as in the Peqiªn cave in upper Galilee, indicates that the use of such artifacts was not confined to the south but also occurred in other parts of the country. The Nahal Mishmar hoard also provides evidence for the existence of highly specialized local trades in the Chalcolithic period: ivory cutting and, first and foremost, advanced metallurgy, which prior to its discovery had been assumed to have been at an incipient stage of its development. On the one hand, the hoard bespeaks craft specialization in a society that comprised expert ivory cutters, as well as miners, smelters, and skilled smiths, capable of producing these exquisite metal objects. On the other hand, it testifies to the widespread use of these objects, possibly in temple and court ceremonies or in burial rites. Indirectly, it indicates the existence of regional and interregional connections and of traders who imported exotic raw materials from near or afar. The hoard also suggests the existence of ruling authorities capable of safeguarding a continuous supply of these materials when needed and coordinating the distribution of finished products.

Bibliography Bar-Adon, P. 1980 The Cave of Treasure: The Finds from the Caves in Nahal Mishmar. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Garfinkel, Y. 1994 Ritual Burial of Cultic Objects: The Earliest Evidence. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4: 159–88. Levy, T. E. (ed.) 1995 Cult, Metallurgy and Rank Societies: Chalcolithic Period (ca. 4500–3500 b.c.e.). Pp. 226– 43 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. Tadmor, M., et al. 1995 The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert: Technology, Composition and Provenance. ºAtiqot 27: 95–148. Ussishkin, D. 1971 The Ghassulian Temple in ºEin Gedi and the Origin of the Hoard from Nahal Mishmar. Biblical Archaeologist 34: 23–29.

Miriam Tadmor

spread one pica long

Negev The term Negev refers today to the southern administrative region of the state of Israel, which spans an area of about 7,200 square miles (fig. 73). In biblical sources, the term Negev refers to the general area of the Beersheva Valley, whereas the areas south of the valley that are part of the area currently referred to as the Negev were known as “the Desert of Zin” or the “Paran Desert.” The Negev, together with the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, constitutes a continuous desert area spanning some 42,000 square miles, surrounded by sedentary lands or by oceans. Except for the outer periphery of the Beersheva Valley and the northern and southern Sinai, the region is an arid desert with few water sources. The average annual rainfall ranges from approximately one to four inches, and there are frequent draughts. The potential for agricultural activity is extremely limited, and only small herds of sheep and goats can be raised. The area is sparsely populated by Bedouins, whose primary source of subsistence comes from occasional employment in permanent settlements. Despite the adverse environmental conditions in the Negev, there have been periods with relatively large settlement. Evidence for settlement has been found in various surveys conducted since the end of the 19th century. The most extensive information on the ancient use of this area was obtained in the Negev Emergency Project, conducted from 1979 to 1989. In this project, an area covering about 2,600 square miles was surveyed, 11,000 well-preserved ancient sites were recorded, and approximately 100 sites were excavated.

Periods of Settlement The history of settlement in the Negev can be characterized as waves of settlement with gaps between each wave. Despite differences in the material culture and settlement pattern of each period of settlement, two recurring components are evident. The distinction between these components may explain the geopolitical background and the economic basis for the growth of settlement in a desert area with poor resources. The first component consists of large, solidly constructed sites adjacent to a water source. Most of these sites contain cultural elements characteristic of the sedentary lands bordering the Negev. In general, these sites reflect permanent settlements established by external groups from the desert fringes who used them as stations along trade routes or in order to defend the frontier. The second component consists of small temporary sites with simple round structures. These sites do not necessarily exist in relationship to any water source and reflect seminomadic activity, such as seasonal movement of shepherds and farmers. More desert elements, such as cairn burials and “Negevite” desert pottery, are found in these sites than in permanent settlements. Some of the sites reflect a

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Fig. 73. A map of the Negev. The lines are a schematic depiction of the directions of trade routes and movement of the frontier during different settlement periods in the Negev: A–A = Early Bronze Age II; B–B = Early Bronze IV; C–C = Iron Age II; D–D = Nabatean Period; E–E = Byzantine Period; F–F = Early Islamic Period.

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seminomadic desert population that was drawn to the periphery of the permanent settlement from outside areas. Other sites reflect seasonal movement of this population from the permanent settlements. There is a close chronological and regional relationship between permanent and temporary sites. This relationship is evident in the distribution of temporary settlements, which are usually on the periphery of permanent ones. Moreover, no temporary settlements have been surveyed from periods when permanent settlements were not found in the near vicinity. Hence, seminomads seem to have been highly dependent on permanent settlers for their livelihood in desert areas such as the Negev and Sinai. This phenomenon is evident during all periods of settlement.

Early Bronze Age The settlement pattern in most of the Negev areas shows large settlements built close to a water source and small temporary sites located on the periphery, up to 18 miles away from the permanent settlements. Animal pens were found in most of the temporary sites, reflecting seasonal movement of herders from permanent settlements to the periphery. Based on the correlation between Arad and sites in the southern Sinai, most of the Negev sites have been dated to the Early Bronze Age II. This may indicate that the population of the southern Sinai, which had lived in a relatively favorable environment, dispersed northward to more arid areas. This movement may have been due to economic relations with the southern area of Palestine—for example, transport of copper to Palestine from the mines in the southern Sinai. Apparently, hundreds of sites could exist in arid areas as long as they maintained contact with sedentary areas. It can be reasonably assumed that when Arad declined during the beginning of the Early Bronze Age III, the inhabitants of the Negev were forced to leave the area.

Early Bronze IV The settlement distribution in the Negev and Sinai consists of two groups. The first group consists of seven large permanent settlements in the northern Negev highlands, such as Har Yeruham, ºEin Ziq, and Beªer Resisim. All of these settlements were built near a water source and have up to 200 structures. Copper bars used for commerce or utilitarian purposes were discovered in most of the sites, and numerous stone vessels and installations indicative of copper craftsmanship were found, all of which suggests that copper was a primary element of the economy. At the same time, finds indicating environmental exploitation, such as animal pens and sickle blades, are extremely rare. Since the pottery apparently originates from Jordan, it seems that the permanent settlements in the Negev linked sites in the Jordanian region of the Dead Sea with sites in the northern Sinai. These sites can be considered a southern variant of “Canaanite” culture, where the inhabitants specialized in transporting copper from the mines of Wadi Feinan to Egypt. The second group consists of hundreds of small temporary settlements dispersed south of the permanent ones in the central Sinai and the Negev. Most of

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these settlements contained animal pens, and some contained sickle blades, which reflect agriculture. The correlation between permanent and temporary sites is clearly evident. The farther south one moves from the permanent settlements the fewer temporary settlements there are, regardless of environmental factors. Thus, for example, there are hundreds of temporary sites in the central Sinai, which lacks water sources but is near the coast of the northern Sinai, where permanent sites exist. In contrast, the southern Sinai, which has abundant water sources, was not populated at all during this period. Apparently, the penetration of permanent settlements into the desert, where the livelihood of the inhabitants was based on transporting copper to Egypt, attracted the seminomadic population to their southern vicinity. It seems that their livelihood derived from the permanent settlements, whereas agriculture and sheep and goat husbandry constituted only secondary sources of income in the harsh environment. When the permanent settlements were abandoned due to the elimination of the geopolitical conditions that had enabled Canaanites to settle on the Egyptian borders, the nomads lost their main source of subsistence and were forced to leave the area.

Iron Age The distribution of sites in the Iron Age is limited to the Negev highlands and seems to be an extension of the southern area of Palestine. To date, 60 fortresses and 350 settlements are known. These settlements include numerous installations, such as silos, threshing floors, and animal pens, which are indicative of agriculture and herding. Eighty of the settlements have “four-room” houses or a variant of them. These dwelling structures, which were prevalent in Palestine during the Iron Age, all contain cisterns and can thus be considered permanent settlements. The rest are temporary sites that are not related to a water source and have simple round structures. As one continues south of the Beersheva Valley, the number of structures per site decreases, and there is a gradual transition from “four-room” houses to round structures. This decrease in structures is related to distance from sedentary lands and not to environmental factors. Settlements located in the vicinity of Sde Boqer, six miles away from a water source but closer to the Beersheva Valley, contained several “four-room” houses. Settlements located far to the south, including settlements close to water sources such as ºEin el-Gudeirat, contain very few structures, most of which are round. Even though the temporary sites reflect environmental exploitation for purposes of farming and herding, their distribution is limited to the area of fortresses that are built at the top of mountains with a broad strategic panorama. The type of settlement in the Negev, characterized by fortresses at the top of mountains and small settlements at the bottom, also typifies frontier areas to the north, on both sides of the Jordan River. In general, this type of settlement appeared at the end of the 11th century b.c.e. and lasted to the end of the Iron Age. The Negev sites have been dated to the 10th century b.c.e. Most of the evidence (for example, pottery and settlement type) reflects an Israelite orientation, but some reflects desert culture

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(for example, “Negbite” pottery and some cairn burials). It can be assumed that settlement in this arid region emerged out of the interests of the kingdom of Israel in the southern border, opposite Edom and Egypt. Such settlement existed as long as it was supported by the kingdom. After the division of the kingdom of Israel and Shishik’s campaign to Palestine around 925 b.c.e., the settlements in the Negev highlands were abandoned, and the border of the sedentary land moved back to the Beersheva Valley.

Nabatean Period The Nabatean activity in the Negev (3d–2d centuries b.c.e. to the 2d century c.e.) was related to commercial routes. Most of the Nabatean permanent settlements in the Negev are linked with the “Spice Road” leading from Petra to Gaza, whereas hundreds of other sites are temporary sites reflecting seasonal activity of seminomads. The distribution of temporary sites reflects relations with the “Spice Road.” Areas close to the road—even those located over six miles away from a water source—contained numerous temporary sites, whereas only a few sites were found near water sources, such as ºEin el-Gudeirat, far from the main road. The fact that the seminomads preferred to disperse in the vicinity of the “Spice Road,” even though it was not close to a water source, indicates that their main source of livelihood was connected with the road and its stations. Examination of the types of sites concentrated on the periphery of the “Spice Road” indicates that there was a transition from simple campsites (dating from 1st century b.c.e. to 1st–2d centuries c.e.) to architecturally designed temporary settlements and a few permanent settlements dating from the 2d–3d centuries c.e. This may reflect spontaneous settlement, similar to the process undergone by Bedouins who have lived on the periphery of permanent settlements for an extended period. The settlement system on the margins of the “Spice Road” could only have existed there while the road was in use first by the Nabateans and later by the Roman army. When the road was abandoned in the middle of the 3d century c.e., settlements on its margins were abandoned as well.

Byzantine Period During most of this period there were two distribution areas of settlement, with considerable differences. One area, located in the Negev lowlands and the northern Negev highlands on the Avdat-Shivta-Nizzana line, was inhabited by permanent settlers of cities and agricultural farms. This area was part of the Byzantine imperial frontier system and required considerable effort to develop. Even though most of the population was of Arab-Nabatean origin, their material culture was clearly Christian-Mediterranean. This indicates that the nomads of the Negev were totally assimilated into the dominant northern culture. The other area, located to the south and characterized by adverse environmental conditions, was inhabited by seminomads. The seminomadic area is linked with the southern periphery of the permanent settlements, and the relations between them, which fluctuated from friendship to hostility, have been ad-

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dressed in numerous scholarly studies. Of the simple temporary sites, hundreds contain round structures and animal pens, and some are linked with simple agricultural fields in wadi banks. Even though their ethnic background was similar to that of most of the permanent settlers in the Negev lowlands, the material culture of these peoples was completely different, as evidenced in cairn burials and ritual maßßebôt (“standing stones”).

Early Islamic Period This period was marked by the proliferation of permanent agricultural farms to the south, toward the area of the seminomads. Hundreds of surveyed farms are characterized by architectonic uniformity, and a massive investment was involved in terracing a huge network of wadis in order to produce agricultural land. Based on this evidence, it can be assumed that this large-scale enterprise was undertaken by the Umayyad government. The proliferation of settlements to the south also led to an increase in seminomadic settlements in the more adverse areas of the southern Negev. The farms of the Negev highlands and most of the permanent settlements to the north existed until the end of the Umayyad period, as in other parts of the Levant, and are part of an attempt made by the Umayyad rulers to cultivate areas of the wilderness beyond the former Byzantine desert frontier. During the Abbassid regime, when the Islamic capital moved from Damascus to Baghdad and the policy of support for the peripheral areas discontinued, the network began to crumble. The farms, which had penetrated the depths of the desert, could only survive as long as they were part of a network whose centers were in the sedentary lands. When the farms discontinued, the seminomads living on their southern periphery had to abandon the region as well.

Archaeology of Recent Bedouins Material remains have been collected from recently abandoned Bedouin encampments in the Sinai and the Negev. These include “Gaza” black pottery, tent contours, shallow walls, ovens, and iron and plastic tools. Most of the Bedouins living in the Negev migrated from the Arabian desert during the Ottoman period. Most of them lived north of the Beersheva Valley, close to the southern periphery of the settled area of Palestine at that time, along the Gaza–Ramle–Jerusalem road. Even though most of the Bedouins lived in a natural environment that allowed for permanent settlement, as long as the Ottomans neglected the periphery, they engaged exclusively in pastoralism and did not move to permanent settlements. This lifestyle did not change until the beginning of the 20th century, when the Ottomans began to develop the southern periphery of Palestine in order to counteract British interests in Egypt. At first, the Bedouins made a gradual transition to agriculture and spontaneous settlement, which has culminated in the past decade with the founding of several townlets. The Bedouin remains collected in the Negev highlands can be attributed to the Sarakhin, the most primitive of the southern Bedouin tribes. In the past, the tribe had 800 members

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scattered over an area of 1500 square miles in the harsh environment of the Negev highlands, which was equivalent to the living area of about 80 tribes in the vicinity of the Beersheva Valley. They relied on food supplies from the government, without which they would have been unable to survive. This shows how primitive the seminomadic population was, as they lived in the harsh desert and maintained minimal ties with permanent elements.

Gaps in Settlement The evidence indicates that there were gaps between the periods of settlement in the Negev. There are scholars who claim that these gaps were not settlement gaps—that although the permanent settlements were abandoned, the people stayed in the area as nomads, leaving no remains. This argument is not viable for two reasons: (1) there are clear indications that nomads do leave remains; and (2) it is unlikely that a nomadic population could have relied on herding and farming for their livelihood in a desert area such as the Negev, without maintaining economic relations with permanent settlers. Intensification of settlement followed construction of permanent sites in the desert by an external element. The sites served to defend the frontier or were used as stations along trade routes. This led to an accumulation of seminomadic populations on the peripheries of the permanent settlements. The seminomads could survive in these areas only as long as permanent settlements existed there. Hence, there must have been a decline, or a “gap period,” when the permanent settlers abandoned the desert as a consequence of geopolitical changes in the countries bordering the desert. The seminomadic population, which had maintained relations with the permanent settlements, thus abandoned the harsh area and followed the frontier of permanent settlement in order to survive. Wherever the new frontier was demarcated (even deep in the sedentary lands around the desert) temporary seminomadic settlements can be found. By the same token, most of the areas located far away from the new frontier, such as the Negev highlands, were abandoned.

Bibliography Amiran, R.; Beit-Arieh, I.; and Glass, J. 1973 The Interrelationship between Arad and Sites in the Southern Sinai in the Early Bronze Age II. Israel Exploration Journal 23: 193–97. Avner, U., and Carmi, I. 2001 Settlement Patterns in the Southern Levant Deserts during the 6th–3rd Millennia b.c.: A Revision Based on C14 Dating. Pp. 1203–10 in Proceedings of the 17th International C14 Conference, University of Arizona, ed. H. J. Bruins, I. Carmi, and E. Boaretto. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. Bar-Yosef, O., and Khazanov, A. (eds.) 1992 Pastoralism in the Levant. Madison: Prehistory Press.

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Beit-Arieh, I. 1986 Two Cultures in Southern Sinai in the Third Millennium B.C. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 63: 27–54. Cohen, R. 1982 New Light on the Date of the Petra–Gaza Road. Biblical Archaeologist. 1982/ Fall: 240–47. 1986 The Settlement of the Central Negev in Light of Archaeology and Literary Sources during the Fourth–First Millennia B.C.E. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [Hebrew with English summary] Finkelstein, I., and Pervolotsky, A. 1990 Processes of Sedentarization and Nomadization in the History of Sinai and the Negev. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 279: 67–88. Haiman, M. 1989 Preliminary Report of the Western Negev Highlands Emergency Survey. Israel Exploration Journal 39: 174–91. 1995 Agriculture and Nomad-State Relations in the Negev Desert in the Byzantine and Islamic Periods. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 297: 29–53. 1996 Early Bronze Age IV Settlement Pattern of the Negev and Sinai Deserts: View from Small, Marginal, Temporary Sites. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 303: 1–32. Mayerson, P. 1986 The Saracens and the Limes. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 262: 36– 47. Rothenberg, B. (ed.) 1979 Sinai. Brene: Kummerly and Frey.

Mordechai Haiman

The Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant Introduction By the reckoning of Old World chronology, the year 3500 b.c.e. marked a pivotal transition between the Stone Age (the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods) and the Bronze Age. The inexorable movement toward more complex societies—begun in the previous era—crystallized in the Early Bronze Age (3500– 2000 b.c.e.) with the emergence of the requisite sociopolitical and economic structures needed to undergird the newly evolved urban complex in the southern Levant. The term Bronze Age is a bit of a misnomer, since the advanced technology of smelting copper with tin to form the alloy bronze was virtually nonexistent in the region until the end of the Early Bronze Age (EB IV). The more advanced urban cultural complexes, for example, Syria-Mesopotamia, however, already possessed this technology. This lag in metallurgy between the two regions epitomizes the contrast in the Near East between “primary” or “core” civilizations (Syria-Mesopotamia and Egypt) and “secondary” or “peripheral” societies as found in the southern Levant (Palestine/Transjordan). The former owe to their geographical location astride great rivers their more rapid progress toward urbanization and “state”-level societies; the latter are non-riverine cultures and thus “secondary” societies in the sense that they were recipients rather than originators of most of the sociopolitical, economic, and technological advances spiraling the entire region on an evolutionary trajectory toward ultimate nation-state organization in the Iron Age. The traditional view of EBA culture sees a type of urbanism in the southern Levant that is on a smaller scale and of a different order of complexity than its cosmopolitan neighbors. Recently, scholarly discussion has reopened the debate on the appropriateness of the “city-state” (urban) model for the region vis-à-vis the criteria applied to urbanism elsewhere (Philip 2001). In our view, however, the stunning discoveries at Yarmouth (below) belie the view that questions an urban complex during the EBA, even given “scalar” differences when compared with “core” areas. For Early Bronze Age studies, the model of “center versus periphery” is particularly useful for attempting to explain the unique and idiosyncratic manner in which cultures in the eco-environmentally challenged southern Levant seem to oscillate between complex hierarchical social systems (urban) and relatively independent and self-sufficient (nonurban) polities. Clearly the waxing and waning of urbanism in the region was related to powerful (core) neighbors, in particular to Egypt in the south. This relationship will be addressed as we discuss the history of the Early Bronze Age from a preurban, rural EB I period into the urban EB II–III periods, and subsequently into the EB IV period, a period of deurbanization.

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Early Bronze I (ca. 3500–3100 b.c.e.) The debate over the nature of the transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze I period continues, although the trend to view the break as complete and the period as ushered in by a totally new population has waned. There are discernible continuities between the two that point to the assimilation of a Chalcolithic remnant, including (1) Late Chalcolithic sites reoccupied in EB I; (2) continuation of ceramic, lithic, and some metal types; (3) continuity in architectural types—the broadroom house; (4) continuity in temple type (below). Yet overall, the EB I population adopted a new constellation of cultural symbols, which, for the archaeologist, keenly demarcates culture change. Three of the more striking are religious practices; landscape and settlement plan; and economic systems. What is most striking is that the Chalcolithic population’s unique assemblage of cultic and ritualistic artifacts and accompanying iconographical traditions virtually disappears. Gone are the unique figurines, the temple paraphernalia of wands and crowns, all displaying the iconography of a nature religion; the ossuaries with similar themes; the unique ivory figurines and birds; and the ceramic churns, among other items. If, as seems likely, the latter assemblage equates the Chalcolithic peoples preponderantly with the cult of the Mediterranean Mother Goddess, then the iconographic universe of the EB I peoples (and the entire Early Bronze Age) reflects a change in religious practices although the Late Chalcolithic temple-type continues. The architectural temple-type in EB I (and throughout the EBA), as seen at Megiddo, St. XIX, remains essentially the broadroom house, modeled after the prototype at such Late Chalcolithic sites as ºEn-Gedi, Gilat, and Tuleilat Ghassul. This single-room structure with an entrance on the long side and an altar opposite the doorway, combined with courtyard within a temenos separating the sacred (and elite) from the secular, will symbolize the religious/political hierarchy throughout the Early Bronze Age. The attendant evidence for the cultus in the EB I period, although slight, arguably situates Palestine within the religious sphere (vegetation/fertility cults) of greater Syria-Mesopotamia. There, artifact and text witness an elite, male-dominated, priestly/royal leadership, likewise reflected in the patriarchal dominated myths and pantheon of gods related in the mythic texts (Frymer-Kensky 1992). In fact there seems little doubt that the EB I peoples shared cultural as well as religious (and probably ethnic and linguistic) affinities with neighbors to the north. Comparison of material cultural assemblages (ceramic, metals, cylinder seals) and domestic architectural styles (curvilinear and apsidal houses) links them with Byblos and other Syro-Mesopotamian sites, as well as Anatolia, and underscores the “northern” traditions of bearers of the new distinctiveness of EB I culture. Although the name Canaan is first attested by the discovery of paleographical remains in the Middle Bronze Age, the sum of the evidence suggests that the EB I period ushered in (proto-)Canaanite culture.

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An equally notable change is apparent in the EB I landscape, where new settlement and subsistence patterns predominate. There is a shift away from regional Chalcolithic polities in geo-climatically marginal areas (e.g., the arid fringes) to village sites in the more arable and agriculturally productive lowlands and intermontane valleys in the north and central regions, as well as along the coast. The rapid repopulation of the country may be inferred from the presence of EB I stratification on virtually every tell in the land. Coeval with this shift is the adoption of a new economy: the so-called Mediterranean regime of mixed farming/horticulture/animal husbandry. It is in particular the systematic development of vast areas of land for horticulture and viticulture that distinguishes EB I from the Chalcolithic period. With the cultivation of agricultural products such as wheat, lentils, beans, peas, and flax, and the increased reliance on sheep, goat, and cattle for meat, secondary products and, in the case of cattle, draught animals, and the cultivation of orchard crops such as the olive, grape, date, the EB I population built a broad-based agricultural system. This new agricultural regime was to become the foundation of the urban agro-technological complex of the EB II–III periods. It was far different from and less fragile than the highly specialized adaptive responses of the Chalcolithic peoples to arid lands, which included their extreme reliance on specialized trade in metals. The EB I economy supported an expanding population (attested by settlement patterns) including specialists (attested by arts/crafts, such as seal carving, metallurgy, cult) and a burgeoning elite (evidenced by the temples, for example, Megiddo; and public or status structures, for example, Erani, Tell el-Farºah, ºAi, Jawa) and allowed for the export of products such as grain and precious olive oil (witnessed by storage vessels in Egyptian contexts). Throughout EB I these developments served intraregionally to integrate the land socioeconomically and politically. Scholars generally seem agreed about the inner chronology of the period that there are two subphases. In EB Ia, the country is still in transition, as the evidence for competing pottery styles, regionalization, diverse burial customs (shaft tombs at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, caves elsewhere), and the widespread small village culture witnesses. In EB Ib, the elements that will characterize the mature Early Bronze Age become widespread: for example, rectangular houses, red-slipped and/or painted pottery, nucleated villages with developing hierarchical settlement patterns, and international trade and contacts with neighbors to the north, and especially with Egypt to the south. Excavations have demonstrated that there was an internal development from EB I village to substantial city complexes of EB II–III. It is clear that although there is a host of single occupation EB IA villages (e.g., Iftael, ºEin-shadud) in EB Ib, many sites such as Erani, ºAi, Bâb edh-Dhrâº, Tell es-Saªidiyya, Tell elFarºah (N), and numerous other centers evidence a development in social stratification from unwalled village to “cities,” possibly within EB Ib or at the transition to EB II, where we see the virtually universal practice of fortifying sites.

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Although the stratigraphy at the above-mentioned sites documents the dynamic of an indigenous urbanization process, the impetus for urbanization is still debated. The question remains whether or not the urbanization process was set in motion as a result of foreign relations with Egypt in EB I. An ancillary issue concerns the type of relationship of Egypt to Canaan, whether as trading partner, colonizer, or suzerain (EB I–II). Regarding the former issue, it is probably best to see interregional trade with Egypt and the concurrent growth of trading entrepots such as Erani, Arad, and ºEn-Besor as one of the numerous mechanisms accelerating the growth of complex institutions and, ultimately, EB II urbanism. The second issue continues to arouse debate because Egyptian local pottery, royal inscriptions, and material culture document that Egyptian merchants lived in southern Canaanite sites. The nature of this trading relationship remains to be fully understood, but there is a growing consensus to view Canaan (at least in the south) as a colony of Egypt in the EB I period. The date of 3100 b.c.e. for the transition from EB I to EB II (around the transition from Dynasty 0 to Dynasty I in Egypt) is supported by a number of inscribed serekhs (royal inscriptions) found in the latest EB I strata of Arad, ºErani, and Tell Halif. These pottery sherds contain the name of the Egyptian King Narmer. Besides the critical stratigraphic link to Egyptian chronology, these royal serekhs denote the importance of Canaan to Egypt in this period. Objects found in Egypt imply imports from Canaan of raw materials such as metals; bitumin; and finished agricultural products such as oil, foodstuffs, and so on. In southern Canaan, in particular at ºErani, ºEn Besor, Arad, and Halif Terrace, locally made Egyptian pottery, Egyptian-style architecture, and a host of Egyptian artifacts imply that Egyptians were living in the land. This implication has recently been confirmed by the discovery of an Egyptian-style tomb at Na˙al Tillah (Halif Terrace). It is the sum of all this evidence, but especially the royal serekhs, that has suggested to some scholars that Egypt may have dominated southern Canaan politically in the EB I period or at least colonized it. Others view the relationship as one of trading partners only, with the regional centers of Canaan controlling and coordinating the trade through the offices of Egyptian resident bureaucrats. A series of small forts and encampments has been traced along the Mediterranean coast between el-Arish and Suez, attesting to trade between south Canaan cities and Egypt in EB I predominantly.

Early Bronze II (ca. 3100–2700/2650 b.c.e.) The EB I sites mentioned above, as well as Yarmuth, Jericho, Megiddo, Hesi, and Beth-yerah, demonstrate that urbanism did not suddenly appear due to outside influences at the beginning of EB II; rather, these sites provide evidence for indigenous gradual evolution from EB I village to EB II city. In EB II there is a discernible new look to the landscape: a common material culture, common architectural and religious traditions, and, presumably, common ethnic and linguistic affiliations. The settlement pattern reflects what appears to be a system of firstand second-tier fortified sites surrounded by a rural, agriculturally producing

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third tier. Such a settlement plan generally equates with a hierarchical political system denoting a higher (more complex) form of political as well as cultural integration, i.e., the urban city-state; however, the extent of integration in the period needs further clarification. In EB II, settlement studies also demonstrate a renewed Canaanite interest in and return to the marginal regions of the country, the Negev and Sinai, for reasons that must be associated with one of the peak periods of use of the copper mines south of the Dead Sea at Feinan in the Wadi Arabah as well as at Timna in Sinai. Sites discovered in the Sinai, such as Nebi Salah and Sheikh Muhesein, share remarkable cultural similarities with Canaanite sites in the northern Negev: interconnected broadroom houses forming an oval defensive perimeter; and a material culture that has been shown through petrographic analysis to be linked to Arad and other Canaanite sites. Clearly metallurgy, mining, and trade form the basis for the economy at these sites in this agriculturally inhospitable territory. What we may infer from this Canannite presence in the Negev-Sinai is that in EB II the Egyptian presence in the land (and presumably influence as well) has diminished. Although trade continued between the two areas—quantities of redpolished “Abydos” jugs discovered in tombs at the southern Egyptian site of the same name—scholars generally believe that at this time Egypt was focused more on internal affairs at this critical transition to a highly centralized dynastic state. It is also possible that trade with Byblos by sea may have superseded the overland route through Palestine already in the EB II period. Whatever the reasons for diminishing influence from the “core,” including the apparent withdrawal of Egyptians from the land, urbanization in the southern Levant takes place contemporaneously. The city of Arad exemplifies the hierarchical organization equated with the power structure needed to rule and maintain a complex urban system, including the city, the redistribution of foodstuffs from the outlying regions, and especially the control over intraregional and international commerce—the backbone of a city’s survival, wealth, prestige, and power (for a different perspective, see Finkelstein 1995). The site is surrounded by defenses with an estimated 30 to 40 round towers set about 55 feet apart. There is clear evidence of town planning with a perimeter road from which radiating streets empty into a central depression in the public area, where a large reservoir was located. Though not situated on an acropolis, the sacred precinct and “palace” areas are at a high point at the north (note at Megiddo the palace and temple likewise are in close proximity). The power elite appears to include priests and secular officials, since symbolically the two precincts are contiguous and clearly parallel each other in space, building type, courtyard, and separation from domestic neighborhoods. This geographical separation by means of a teminos wall clearly symbolizes the separation of the elite power structure from the other population classes, as well as the segregation of the sacred from the profane. Notable distinctions in the industrial and domestic neighborhoods confirm social tiers among the population. The archaeological remains thus provide us with critical material cultural correlates to what

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equates to the complexity of urban city life in the southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age. The sacred compound at Arad includes the “twin-temples,” each being a broadroom with benches, on which votives were probably placed, or where elders sat. There was an altar across from the door, from which the cult statue could be clearly seen from the courtyard. Nearby a large basin (possibly a favissa for used cultic items, or maybe a libation pit) was found next to an outdoor altar or bamah. Although there is a dearth of cultic paraphernalia in EB II, near the temple a slab bearing a carving of two stick figures was found, possibly evidence for the cult of Dumuzi. This piece, plus churns in EB I and cultic vessels from ºAi, as well as the occasional female figurine and Sumerian mythical scenes on cylinder seals, may all be taken together to indicate that similar religious practices were concurrent throughout the north and west Semitic populations of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan. With very little variation we could easily interchange the names of sites like ºAi, Yarmuth, Megiddo, Tell el-Farºah (N), Tell es-Saªadiya, Beth-Yerah, and Jericho to demonstrate the urban nature and cultural uniformity of the southern Levant in EB II. At the end of the period a yet-to-be-fully-understood settlement shift occurred. Numerous EB II sites are abandoned and/or destroyed, including all of the Negev and Sinai sites. Once again we must view this oscillation of habitation with a view to “core-periphery” relations. Material culture changes and texts document that Egypt had now asserted its authority over the Sinai. Clearly the dramatic cessation of Canaanite settlement in this region (as well as in the Negev) must be a response to the establishment of the powerful 3d Dynasty in Egypt and its takeover of the copper and turquoise mines in Sinai.

Early Bronze III (ca. 2700/2650–2300 b.c.e.) The Canaanite city reached its zenith in the EB III period, if one uses sheer quantification measures in analyzing the evolving urbanized landscape. Virtually every city excavated shows a building campaign to strengthen, rebuild, and/or expand existing defensive structures. If political power is correlated with level of energy output expressed in the monumentality of the architectural remains, then one must infer a strong centralization of power by the ruling elites of the cities. It appears that large refortified regional cities now dot the landscape, and virtually no new cities are founded in this period. We may surmise population movements from abandoned or destroyed EB II sites and migrations from outlying regions to the relative safety of the massively fortified regional centers; much of the NegevSinai population may likely have withdrawn from sedentary to a more pastoral mode of subsistence. The city of Yarmuth, for example, illustrates the new urban reality in the land (see also Khirbet ez-Zeraqun and Bâb edh-Dhr⺠in Transjordan). Located southwest of Jerusalem, the site comprises a fortified acropolis and fortified lower city. As an illustration of the rebuilding mentioned above, Yarmuth’s EB II defenses were expanded by the addition of buttresses and an outer wall. The extraordinary

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fortifications measure approximately 110 feet at their widest point. A hallmark of an urban center, a public complex was uncovered that included a well-constructed broadroom sanctuary (the White Building), as well as a spectacular palatial complex covering some 1.5 acres. Within the complex, excavators have discovered some 40 rooms, various corridors and courtyards, storerooms filled with vessels, and even a monumental entrance and a hypostyle hall. In this highly complex environment, differential modes of occupation are discernible: industrial installations in certain neighborhoods and private houses grouped in insulae elsewhere. As alluded to in the introduction, the site of Yarmuth stunningly witnesses to the presence of probable “city-states” in the Early Bronze Age and belies the view that questions the urban complex in the southern Levant. One similarity among the cities excavated is the continued tradition of a sacred complex whose enceinte or temenos clearly demarcates the separation of the sacred and the profane. We have already mentioned the White Building at Yarmuth. At ºAi the most monumental structure was a broadroom temple, sacred temenos, and courtyard that dominated the acropolis. At Khirbet ez-Zeraqun, within a temenos near the gate, a cultic complex included temple structures and an outdoor altar. The sacred precinct at Megiddo in EB IIIA lay in an area close to the palace, and both were walled off from their neighbors. Additionally, an exceedingly large outdoor altar had been built within the enceinte. The complex at Megiddo evolved to the point where twin temples within their own enceinte superseded the original temple plus outdoor altar. Notably, the Megiddo temple shows an adaptation to newer temple types: the megaron or temple in antis, that is, a temple whose side walls extend to form a porch-like anteroom to the temple proper; both rooms include two pillars as roof supports. This type is a forerunner of the multiroomed temple that has a porch, an inner sanctuary, and a holy of holies, as known from the second and first millennia. The EB IIIB relocation at ºAi of the sanctuary from the Acropolis Temple to a three-roomed structure built against the fortifications also reflects the tendency at the end of the EB III for the supersedence of the simple broadroom temple-type by new and multivariate traditions. These changes in temple type notably compare with Syro-Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and Aegean traditions. Irrespective of the latter developments, the symbolism of the broadroom house continued to be pervasive in the Early Bronze III, whether in domestic, public, or religious architecture. Its symbolism even served to interconnect cultural concepts of life and death as seen so clearly at the site of Bâb edh-Dhrâº. Thus far unique in the Early Bronze Age, the cemetery at the latter site included broadroom charnel houses filled with multiple interments and great quantities of grave goods. More typically, at Jericho, Megiddo, and other sites, one finds the practice of caves being used for burials of extended families. These burial practices of the EB II–III period reflect a different type of social organization from the custom of interring usually single, but sometimes multiple, either primary or disarticulated secondary burials in shaft tombs cut into the limestone hillsides as found in Transjordan in EB I and throughout the land in EB

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IV. In EB II–III, large caves/charnal houses filled with primary burials, often pushed aside to make room for new interments, correlate with nucleated populations typical of an urban age. Typical gifts included with the burials are: pottery vessels, probably containing food and drink originally; metal weapons in association with males; and beads and amulets found with women. The fact that the cave would symbolize a gathering of the family to one place is perhaps illuminated by patriarchal traditions of “being gathered with the ancestors.” Unfortunately, excavation has not uncovered a wealth of high-quality objects or evidence for the elite power structure that would necessarily go hand in hand with the level of socioeconomic and political complexity evinced by the cities. Several metal hoards have come to light, one at Tel Hesi that includes a crescent battle axe, daggers, and spearheads; and one at Kfar Monash that includes unusual long swords, daggers, and armor, variously dated to EB I, EB II, or EB III. To this list must be added a half dozen or so limestone bull’s heads; there are ivory tubes, a ceramic votive bed, figurines, a few pieces of gold jewelry, several cosmetic palettes, and a corpus of cylinder seals in excess of 100 examples. Virtually no Egyptian artifacts have been uncovered, revealing a dramatic reversal of the EB I–II periods, at which time a significant mercantile arrangement existed between the two lands. Textual and other evidence in the Near East demonstrates that Egypt was trading by sea now, bypassing Canaan for direct trade with the coast of Syria: Byblos and Ugarit. A result of the seemingly complete lack of trade with Egypt, Canaan in EB III demonstrates an increased body of materials and influences that disseminated from its northern neighbors—Syria, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia—as mentioned above. It suffices to say that the megaron Temples at Megiddo, the beehiveshaped granary at Beth-Yerah, the new pottery tradition of “Khirbet Kerak Ware,” and the increase in cylinder seals and sealings, to name a few, reflect a strengthened relationship with northern cultures in the EB III period, the prosperity of Syria at this time being epitomized by the site of Ebla, its well-known palace compound, and archive. The new alignment of expanded and refortified sites in EB III implies shifting political exigencies in the southern Levant. The rise of the powerful Egyptian Old Kingdom (the Pyramid Age) altered the political balance of power in the region. For Canaan, the closest neighbor on Egypt’s northern border, the shifting political vicissitudes of Egypt would always have an impact on its own sociopolitical and economic stability, although the Canaanite cities reached their maximum defensive posture in EB III, and although the level of trade, material culture, and craftsmanship was high, one begins to note the gradual abandonment and/or destruction of virtually every site in the southern Levant, so that by the end of EB III a transition to a deurbanized milieu ensues. Although the nature of Egypt’s military role in this process is still debated, the rationale for population movements and massive refortifying of cities implicitly reflects a turbulent period of political instability and heightened warfare; Egyptian texts likewise describe raids and military maneuvers. Incontrovertible data, however, reveals an abandonment

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of many of the most strongly fortified sites, including Yarmuth, and this must temper our conclusions concerning Egyptian warfare. In the absence of definitive evidence, we can only surmise that a combination of factors such as climate change, overcrowded cities, abandonment of satellite sites (and thus loss of accompanying agricultural lands), disrupted trade routes (possibly by nomadic incursions), as well as warfare were all possible elements causing the demise of cities at the end of EB III.

EB IV (ca. 2300–2000 b.c.e.) As discussed above, the study of the EBA is very much the discernment of shifting settlement patterns: the marginal arid lands oscillate between rural habitation and virtual abandonment; the political landscape shifts between decentralized, nonurban polities (EB I) to a hierarchical (urban) organization (EB II– III). And the influence of that “core” giant to the south—Egypt—continually affects the “periphery’s” stability. At the end of the Early Bronze Age (EB IV), an oscillation back to a decentralized, nonurban regime occurs. This period of urban regression is as dramatic and controversial as that of the Canaanite/Early Israelite oscillation at the Late Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in the 13th century b.c.e. The EB IV period has long been called a “nomadic interlude,” an “Intermediate Period,” or a “Dark Age,” because excavation in the past had uncovered primarily cemetery sites and also because Kathleen Kenyon had described the period as nomadic and as discontinuous from both the preceding Early Bronze and later Middle Bronze Age cultures. Some scholars of the British and Israeli schools prefer to use a version of Kenyon’s terminology, “Intermediate Early Bronze–Middle Bronze Period,” since it accentuates cultural break rather than cultural continuity. Because the evidence for continuity and for sedentary habitation continues to mount, however, the term Early Bronze IV is now more universally used; it essentially reflects G. Ernest Wright’s original perception of the period as “the last gasp” of the Early Bronze Age civilization. A combination of enigmatic abandonment/destruction of EB III sites, compounded by the EB IV withdrawal to a more ruralized settlement pattern and landscape, has influenced scholars, in my opinion, to overemphasize the break at the expense of significant evidence for cultural continuity. Landscape studies and surveys do indeed document a generally nonnucleated pattern of occupation in the land, with a few large sites, a number of regional centers, an explosion of seemingly self-sufficient villages and hamlets, and a proliferation of cemetery sites, many of which appear isolated from neighboring settlements. In the view presented here, however, this settlement pattern change reflects the fluidity (oscillation) along the urban/nonurban continuum that recurs throughout the history of the southern Levant. It witnesses cultural readaptation to a lesscomplex, less-specialized economy and sociopolitical organization following the demise of the EB II–III hierarchically ordered and centralized sociopolitical organization. The material culture correlates with antecedent Early Bronze Age civilization and culture support this perspective on the late-third-millennium

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Fig. 74. Khirbet Iskander: Early Bronze IV domestic structure with mortar and grinding table to left. Photo: D. Herrmann.

b.c.e. transition. A case in point is the evidence from the site of Khirbet Iskander, in southern Jordan. In 1981–82, when excavations began at the site of Khirbet Iskander, it was immediately clear that in EB IV there existed: (a) permanent, multiphased agricultural settlements (fig. 74); (b) vestiges of antecedent urban characteristics (social complexity), for example, fortifications, intrasite differentiation, monumental architecture, public complexes, and possible evidences for elites, and (c) important material culture continuities with the preceding EB III and (d) extensive cemeteries nearby (fig. 75). These astonishing representations of social complexity suggested strongly that the heretofore universally applied model of “pastoral nomadism” for the period was not adequate to comprehend the totality of the adaptive responses that existed in the EB IV. Permanent sedentary agricultural communities suggested strongly that the shift at the EB III/EB IV transition was one of urban withdrawal or reorganization, rather than a complete sociocultural break. Excavations at Khirbet Iskander since then have only served to strengthen the conceptualization that the post–EB III period indeed belongs to the Early Bronze Age tradition. The growing number of excavated EB IV settlement sites (below) has affirmed the thesis that sedentism as well as pastoral nomadism were important adaptive responses accompanying the deurbanization process at the end of

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Fig. 75. Khirbet Iskander:Early Bronze IV shaft-tomb burial with disarticulated burial and grave goods. Photo: E. Skinner.

EB III. It is clear that a more self-sufficient, mixed farming/pastoral subsistence regime was the available economic alternative in the absence of a highly specialized and complex multitiered political organization. This reevaluation of the period has generally become accepted, although it appears a bit precipitous to relegate the term Dark Age to the dustbin of history. Numerous outstanding issues, questions, and controversies still permeate the scholarly literature, for example, disparity between: (a) settlements west and east of the Jordan River; (b) previously occupied tells versus new sites; (c) Early Bronze continuity and nonindigenous elements in the material cultural record; (d) cemetery sites proximate and not proximate to settlements; and (e) chronology versus regionalism. Regarding the seeming disparity between well-established, permanent settlements in Transjordan and Israel/Palestine, it is presumed that the builders of massive foundations for Middle Bronze Age fortifications and monumental buildings destroyed much of a kindred type of evidence at such tells in Israel as Jericho, Megiddo, Tell Beit Mirsim, Dan, Beth-Yerah, and Beth-shan; note the virtual destruction of all EB IV occupational remains at the small Transjordanian site of Tell el-Óayyat, due to the construction of a Middle Bronze temple. Even given this probable factor, evidence has been mounting in support of our suggested posturban reorganizational trajectories, especially in Transjordan, although settlement plans are known from Israel as well, for example, at Har Yeroham, Shaºar HaGolan, and Na˙al Rephaim. A look at just a few sites indicates both the continuity with urban traditions as well as the variability of reorganizational responses, stretching across the continuum from pastoral-nomadic to village, town, and “urban-like” regional centers, such as Khirbet Iskander. Evidence from Bâb edhDhrâº, Beªer Resisim, Tell Iktanu, Umm-Hammad, Tell el-Óayyat, Abû en-Niâj, as well as Khirbet Iskander, illuminates the range of settlement types and the continuation of antecedent cultural traditions in the period.

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Fig. 76. Khirbet Iskander: Area C “gateway,” with steps in foreground leading to a benchlined passageway. Photo: D. Herrmann.

At Bâb edh-Dhrâº, there was a permanent settlement of typical Early Bronze structures, as well as clear evidence for elites in the layout of the settlement, but especially in the evidence for the cult (structure and altar). Other evidence for the cult exists at Ader, and possibly at Megiddo (reuse of sacred complex) and at Khirbet Iskander (public structure and cultic paraphernalia). The sites of Iktanu and Tell um-Hammad likewise were large, permanently settled, agriculturally based regional centers evidencing organization in their street and neighborhood layouts. The above sites were previously occupied Early Bronze Age sites; indeed, survey has revealed a 60 percent reoccupation of Early Bronze tells in Transjordan. There are new settlements as well, such as Tell el-Óayyat and Tell Abû en-Niâj in the Jordan Valley. At the latter, at least five major phases of significant agriculturally-based occupation have been uncovered. Neutron activation analysis of ceramics shows intraregional exchange between en-Niâj and neighboring sites. Comparison of en-Niâj with a nearby EB IV–MBIIA site, Tell el-Óayyat, informs us of some continuities between the two periods that heretofore had not been recognized. Conversely, representing the less well-established communities is the site of Beªer Resisim, where a small village of nonnucleated, round stone huts characterizes the settlement. The economy reflects a mixed-farming regime. But does it represent pastoral nomadic clans subsisting on pastoralism and semiseasonal sedentism, as has generally been assumed, or in light of recent discoveries were

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Fig. 77. Khirbet Iskander: two phases of Early Bronze Age fortifications. Photo: K. Klein.

these communities “colonies” set up for highly specialized metallurgical activities connected with essential resources and trade? Yet another phenomenon in the EB IV, as alluded to earlier, is the existence of cemeteries seemingly isolated from any settlement, except perhaps occupied caves. An example would be Jebel Qaªaqir, where a vast cemetery of the typical shaft-tomb burials of the period was excavated near a group of caves that were clearly utilized for domestic purposes. Such evidence would appear to complement the seasonal migrations of pastoral nomads. The site of Khirbet Iskander, with its fortified town, monumental architecture, public buildings, gateway (fig. 76), and several major cemetery areas, provides the best evidence for the urban reorganizational trajectories alluded to above. It is now clear, in light of recent excavations, that the fortifications were founded earlier (fig. 77); however, it is likewise evident that the EB IV population rebuilt and reused them. Connected with them is a large structure that included a storeroom in which a fiery destruction had preserved over a hundred vessels from the period (Richard 2000; and see fig. 78). The building included a good deal of evidence of cultic material (favissae; miniature pottery). Analysis of the ceramic corpus raises questions about the seriation of EB IV ceramics on the basis of regional “families.” The accumulating evidence, at least from Transjordanian sites, for two (Iktanu, ªArôªer) or three or more (Iskander, Niâj, Um Hammad, Bâb edhDhrâº) stratified phases and accompanying ceramic typology strongly suggests that 2–3 subphases in the period exist (EB IV A–B or EB IV A–C).

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Fig. 78. Khirbet Iskander: Early Bronze IV pottery in situ on Phase B floor of Storeroom. Photo: E. Skinner.

In addition to the continuities in occupation between EB III–IV detailed above, there are links with the EB II settlement pattern, where once again we encounter renewed settlement in the Negev/Sinai, hundreds of sites representing the reclamation of these desolate areas for habitation. The appearance of these sites has been explained generally as the result of a burgeoning pastoral nomadic population; yet the nature of the evidence (settlement, house structure, material culture) suggests sedentary practices, whether former nomads forced into a mixed farming/pastoral regime or former urbanites shifting to a self-sufficient subsistence regime in the absence of urban centers. It is quite possible that the Negev/Sinai settlements may simply reflect a response to renewed dependence on the metals trade in view of the continued exploitation of the copper mines in the Wadi Feinan in the EB IV. Indeed, the quantities of metal, ingots, and finished products discovered thus far recall the heavy reliance on and the special adaptation to the metals trade in the Chalcolithic Period. The periodic expansion into the marginal regions is more comprehensible to scholars today in the light of highly significant discoveries of the peak periods of use and occupation relative to the raw sources for metals recently and currently being documented in excavation and survey work in the Wadi Arabah and Sinai. The apparent Canaanite control once again over the marginal regions of the Negev and Sinai correlates with a diminished Egyptian

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presence, as that country suffered its own internal sociopolitical instability during the “Intermediate Age” at the end of the Old Kingdom Pyramid Age, approximately 2200–2000 b.c.e. This outline of a decentralized, economically self-sufficient political and economic landscape aptly describes the EB IV polities and is reflected in the material correlates of discernible regionalization of material culture, as well as dispersed settlement pattern throughout the land. This understanding of the nature of the Early Bronze IV in terms of its lack of system-wide integrative specialization (yet remnants of antecedent indigenous culture and institutions) suggests a reorganizational trajectory spinning off from the preceding EB III urban-rural-pastoral complex. This understanding of the EB IV period resonates well with the contextualization of the entire Early Bronze Age as one of continuous indigenous oscillations along a continuum of higher to lower levels of complexity or from systemic specialization to despecialization (see Long, pp. 308ff. in this volume). In this view, EB IV is a period of despecialization, because it is essentially at the site and household level only where one sees specialized activities taking place. Aside from some intraregional trade (as attested by exchange of vessels) and interregional trade (attested by imports from Syria), it appears that the only integrative specialization in the EB IV may have been the exploitation of the copper mines and the attendant metallurgical trade. The Early Bronze Age, as understood in this work, is a study in the “rise and collapse” of urbanism, although perhaps the “evolution and devolution” of urbanism would more aptly reflect both the indigenous cultural continuity and the waxing and waning of specialization (= complexity) in the system as a whole. This urbanocentric view of oscillating periods of social complexity has been criticized recently as a perspective that overlooks the role of the hinterland in long-term models of Palestinian history (Falconer 1993). In the latter view, the role of village communities (e.g., Óayyat, Niâj) in complex societies suggests that the ruralized countryside that was the backbone of Canaanite culture and urbanization in the Early Bronze Age was the exception to the rule of ruralism in Palestine. Yet this view is not incompatible with the stress here on oscillations between specialized urban hierarchies and despecialized nonurban regimes in the Early Bronze Age. Using the model of indigenous behaviors and adaptations along a continuum allows us to posit the rise and collapse of urbanism as primarily a gradually evolving internal phenomenon. The changing emphases in political, social, and economic trajectories manifest themselves in both change and continuity between EB I/II and EB III/IV.

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Amiran, R., et al. 1978 Early Arad: The Chalcolithic Settlement and Early Bronze Age City 1: First–Fifth Seasons of Excavations 1962–1966. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Amiran, R., and Ornit, Ilan 1996 Early Arad II: The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze IB Settlements and the Early Bronze II City: Architecture and Town Planning—Sixth to Eighteenth Seasons of Excavations, 1971–1978, 1980–1984. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum and Israel Exploration Society. Ben-Tor, A. 1992 The Early Bronze Age. Pp. 81–125 in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. A. Ben-Tor, trans. R. Greenberg. New Haven and London: Yale University Press and The Open University of Israel. Dever, W. G. 1995 Social Structure in the Early Bronze IV Period in Palestine. Pp. 281–96 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. Levy. New York: Facts on File. Falconer, S. E. 1993 The Development and Decline of Bronze Age Civilisation in the Southern Levant: A Reassessment of Urbanism and Ruralism. Pp. 305–33 in Development and Decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age, ed. C. Mathers and S. Stoddart. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Falconer, S. E., and Magness-Gardiner, B. 1989 Bronze Age Village Life in the Jordan Valley: Excavations at Tell el-Hayyat and Tell Abu en-Niªaj. National Geographic Research 5: 335– 47. Finkelstein, I. 1995 Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Frymer-Kensky. T. 1992 In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Fawcett Columbine. Gophna, R. 1995 Early Bronze Age Canaan: Some Spatial and Demographic Observations. Pp. 269–80 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Thomas E. Levy. New York: Facts on File. Joffee, A. H. 1993 Settlement and Society in the Early Bronze I and II Southern Levant: Complementarity and Contradiction in a Small-Scale Complex Society. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Kenyon, K.; Bottéro, J.; and Posener, G. 1971 Syria and Palestine c. 2160–1780 b.c. Pp. 532–94 in Early History of the Middle East. Rev. ed. Vol. 1/2 in Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazar, A. 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000–586 b.c.e. New York: Doubleday. Miroschedji, P. de 1999 Yarmuth: The Dawn of City-States in Southern Canaan. Near Eastern Archaeology 62: 2–21. Najjar, M., et al. 1995 The Early Bronze Age at Faynan/Wadi ºArabah: A Period of New Technology in Copper Production. Pp. 519–21 in Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan V. Amman: Department of Antiquities.

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Palumbo, G. 1990 The Early Bronze Age IV in the Southern Levant: Settlement Patterns, Economy, and Material Culture of a “Dark Age.” Rome: University of Rome. 2001 The Early Bronze Age IV. Pp. 233-69 in The Archaeology of Jordan, ed. B. MacDonald, R. Adams, and P. Bienkowski. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Philip, G. 2001 The Early Bronze I–III Ages. Pp. 163-232 in The Archaeology of Jordan, ed. B. MacDonald, R. Adams, and P. Bienkowski. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Prag, K. 1974 The Intermediate Early Bronze–Middle Bronze Age: An Interpretation of the Evidence from Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon. Levant 6: 69–116. Richard, S. 1987 The Early Bronze Age: The Rise and Collapse of Urbanism. Biblical Archaeologist 50/1: 22– 43. 1989 Khirbet Iskander and the Early Bronze IV: Fourth Preliminary Report, 1987 Season. Pp. 33–58 in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Supplement 26, ed. W. E. Rast. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns for the American Schools of Oriental Research. 2000 Chronology versus Regionalism in the Early Bronze IV: An Assemblage of Whole and Restored Vessels from the Public Building at Khirbet Iskander. Pp. 399–417 in The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of James A. Sauer, ed. L. E. Stager, J. A. Greene, and M. D. Coogan. Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant 1. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Richard, S., and Boraas, R. S. 1984 Preliminary Report of the 1981–82 Seasons of the Expedition to Khirbet Iskander and Its Vicinity. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 254: 63–87. Richard, S., and Long, J. 1995 Archaeological Expedition to Khirbet Iskander, 1994. Annual of the Department of Antiquities, Jordan 39: 81–92. Stager, L. E. 1992 The Periodization of Palestine from Neolithic through Early Bronze Time. Pp. 22– 41 in Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, ed. R. W. Ehrich. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wright, G. E. 1937 The Pottery of Palestine from the Earliest Times to the End of the Early Bronze Age. New Haven, Conn.: American Schools of Oriental Research.

Suzanne Richard

Southern Sinai in the Early Bronze Age II Introduction During excavations carried out in Sinai in 1967–82, evidence was discovered testifying to human activity and settlement in this region beginning in the epipaleolithic era (15,000 b.c.e.) and continuing into the present. This activity was not continuous over the entire period, so as far as we know, but since not every part of this great peninsula has yet been investigated in adequate detail, this conclusion is still tentative. The settlement remains and structures exposed in the archaeological investigations indicate that most of the sites in the region were from single periods, representing in a random manner different archaeological eras that together form a chronological sequence that is, however, not complete. The most thorough archaeological investigation conducted so far in the Sinai has been in the south-central highland region, where a series of excavations was undertaken during 1971–1979 by an expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, under my direction and under the name, “The Ophir Expedition.” The first site in this series to be excavated was near the tomb of Nebi Salah. The pottery finds there clearly pointed to an affinity with the Early Bronze II culture of Canaan (ca. 2850–2650 b.c.e.). Thereafter, the scope of the investigation was extended, and a thorough survey of the highland and outlying regions was carried out, embracing an area of approximately 1500 sq. m. Following the survey, five more sites from the same period were excavated: three of them near the Watiya Pass (Sheikh Muhsin, site 1046/7; Wadi umm Tumur, site 1014; Watiya North, site 1042), one near the tomb of Sheikh Awad (site 1118), and one site above the eastern entrance to the Feiran oasis (site 1150), some 70 Km (42 miles) west of the settlement complex near the Watiya Pass.

Description of Sites and their Distribution The excavated sites, as well as other dwelling sites discovered in the surveys that were not excavated, were established either on sedimental fans in the wadi beds, on plateaus along the margins of the wadi beds, or on moderate mountain slopes. All of the settlements were based near water sources and in the vicinity of major tracks passing along the main wadis. The sites consist of detached dwelling units, sometimes separated from each other by a considerable distance. A few of the sites consisted only of a single large unit. All of the units were built according to a uniform plan: dwelling rooms share common walls, and smaller compartment rooms were arranged in a circle around a large central courtyard (fig. 79). The units differ considerably in size, from those with a single dwelling room and courtyard enclosed by a stone fence, to units with as many as 22 different dwelling and compartment rooms.

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Fig. 79. Unit C of Early Bronze II site near Sheikh ºAwad, southern Sinai.

A typical composite dwelling room is about 3 x 5 m in size, with an opening in the long side facing the courtyard (a “broad-room”). The walls are not particularly straight, and the corners are rounded. The floor is about 0.4 m below the courtyard level, with as many as four to six steps leading down to it. At the entrance on the left side is a socket stone to take the door pivot. In the center of the room, opposite the entrance, is a stone pillar, evidently a roof support. Alternatively, flat stone slabs, apparently bases for wooden roof supports, may be found on the floor. Along the walls are fixed stone benches. One or more corners of the room are formed into small compartments by means of stone slabs set upright on their narrow, long sides. Compartment rooms, which apparently served as work and storages spaces, are smaller than dwelling rooms. Typically they are rounded or rectangular, with slab-paved floors at the same level as the courtyard or even higher. There are no signs of an entrance doorway, and the walls were evidently quite low—two or three courses of stone only. Many are subdivided into smaller enclosures by means of slabs set upright in the floor. The dwelling rooms in the Sinai are strikingly similar to the “broadroom” houses found in Canaan during the Early Bronze II period, most extensively in Canaanite Arad. Although the rooms in “urban” Arad show a higher level of

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workmanship than rooms of “rural” Sinai, the overall similarity extends to the interior arrangements and fittings, such as the sunken floors, benches along the walls, stone pillars, and small compartments in the corners. This similarity is a manifest indication of a building tradition that doubtless originated in the culture of Canaan. There exist two main concentrations of sites in the region surveyed: one at Wadi e-Sheikh, near Watiya Pass; and the other at the eastern entrance of the Feiran Oasis. Elsewhere in the region there are only isolated sites: the southernmost are in Wadi Hebran, which connects the central area with the southern coast of the Sinai Peninsula; the northernmost are in the area south of Serabit elKhadem that links the highland with the northwestern section of the Sinai.

The Pottery A large and extremely varied amount of pottery was found in the excavated sites, including complete vessels. Almost all of the pottery consisted of types that were widespread in Canaan during the Early Bronze II period. The most numerous parallels for this pottery, often the only ones of their kind, were found in Arad II–I and also date to the Early Bronze II period. The pottery included holemouth vessels, jugs and juglets, some of them red-slipped and burnished, platters, small cup-bowls, and various-sized cooking pots and jars. Petrographic examination of similar holemouth cooking pots from Sinai sites and from Canaanite Arad showed that their clays included granitic elements originating from Sinai. Similar tests on the juglets and bowls showed that their clays originated from Arad and its vicinity. Only a tiny percentage of the pottery is of Egyptian origin.

Lithic Implements Most flint implements were made of tabular flint, mostly various types of scrapers, but there was also a small number of blades and arrowheads. Identical types of tabular flints are known from other Early Bronze II sites in Canaan such as Arad, Tell Farºah (North), and Tel Esdar (Negev), and others. The large amount of flint implements found at sites in south Sinai can be explained, among other reasons, by the proximity of natural flint deposits in Wadi Feiran, Wadi Mukatab, Wadi Zalaka, and on the Tih plateau. In addition, the large quantity found suggests that some of the tools were intended for trading purposes. Also found were stone axes, which are widespread throughout the Near East, the grindstones made of local rock.

Copper Implements and Copper Production At all of the sites excavated, copper implements were found, including axeheads, awls, and chisels. However, in addition to the finished tools there was also evidence testifying to the production of copper from ore. In fact, remnants representing all of the stages of copper production were found, including copper, ore, crucibles, casting moulds, and small lumps of melted copper. At three sites discovered in the survey there were also remnants of smelting ovens, along with clay nozzles for bellows and slag. Chemical analysis of the copper remnants

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showed that mines in the Wadi Riqita were the sources of the copper ore. Given the great value of copper in the ancient world, the mines in south Sinai must have been one of the major reasons for the settlement of the Canaanite population in this region. The demonstrated connection with Arad suggests the direction in which the copper was transported from its place of manufacture.

Floral and Faunal Remains Most of the wood excavated was identified as terebinth, which still grows in the highland today. There were also small amounts of palm tree and tamarisk. The faunal remains consisted mostly of bones and seashells, the majority of the former being of domesticated goats, but there were also some wild goat and gazelle remains. The large quantity of goat bones is a clear indication that this species was reared for domestic purposes. It may be assumed that the species involved was the dwarf desert goat, which still roams the region today. The ability of these animals to go for days without water and to thrive on the low-nutrient fodder of the desert gives them an extraordinary capacity for surviving in extreme conditions.

Conclusion There is no doubt that the Canaanite population that was centered in south Sinai, whatever its extent, created for itself a distinctive settlement pattern in the area. The accommodation of these settlements to the desert environment and their apparently successful integration into a specific economic and ecological system were clearly evident in the archaeological investigations. Nevertheless, there was still need for this population to maintain contacts with other population centers in Canaan or Egypt. It should be noted that the most significant Egyptian intervention in Canaan proper, according to the archaeological evidence, occurred at a slightly earlier period than the Canaanite settlement in south Sinai—that is, in Early Bronze 1b— whereas during the actual period of this settlement in the Early Bronze II there were practically no contacts between Egypt and Canaan. This circumstance may be attributed to the expansion of Canaanite occupation into south Sinai. Egyptian penetration of Sinai began only a century later, during the third dynasty, for the purpose of mining turquoise in the western edge. In point of fact, the central parts of this region were never penetrated by the Egyptians. There are three possible explanations for the Canaanite character of the settlements in south Sinai: 1. Expansion of the population of southern Canaan and its colonization of south central Sinai while retaining contacts with Canaan. 2. Trade relations between Canaan and a Sinaitic population. 3. Expansion of a population from south Sinai by way of the Negev highlands into south Canaan. My own preference is for the first of these explanations, taking note, however, of the fact that others prefer the second (Stager) or the third possibility (Finkelstein).

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Fig. 80. Map showing Early Bronze Age II sites in the Negev and Sinai.

Bibliography Beit-Arieh, I. 1981a An Early Bronze Age II Site near Sheikh ºAwad in Southern Sinai. Tel Aviv 8: 95–127. 1981b A Pattern of Settlement in Southern Sinai and Southern Canaan in the Third Millennium bc. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 243: 31–55. 1983 Central Southern Sinai in the Early Bronze Age II and Its Relationship with Palestine. Levant 15: 39– 48. 1984 New Evidence on the Relations between Canaan and Egypt during the ProtoDynastic Period. Israel Exploration Journal 34: 20–23. Forthcoming Archaeology in Sinai: The Ophir Expedition. Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University 21. Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology. Finkelstein, I. and Pervolotsky, A. 1990 Processes of Sedentarization and Nomadization in the History of Sinai and the Negev. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 279: 67–88. Stager, L. E. 1992 The Periodization of Palestine from Neolithic through Early Bronze Times. Pp. 22– 41 in Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, ed. R. W. Ehrich, 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Itzak Beit-Arieh

Theory in Archaeology: Culture Change at the End of the Early Bronze Age Introduction The scholarly debate regarding the period of deurbanization at the end of the third millennium b.c.e. in Palestine stands out as an example of how changes in archaeological theory have impacted interpretation. As a time of culture change, the Early Bronze IV period (approximately 2350–2000 b.c.e.; see below on terminology) has been the subject of intense interest and varied interpretations that mirror significant developments in theory in archaeology during the last half-century. The change from urban Early Bronze II/III to nonurban Early Bronze IV in Palestine is reflected in a decentralized settlement regime with sites that display less evidence of the specialized economies of the preceding era. Nevertheless, the material remains in EB IV also show many continuities with the antecedent urban culture, for example in ceramic forms that can be traced from early in the Early Bronze Age through the millennium. While the challenge for interpreters is to explain both the culture change and the continuities from EB II/III to EB IV, most scholars have dealt especially with the significant change evidenced in the material record of the Early Bronze IV period. Early interpreters, shaped by traditional views of culture change, saw the period as a pastoral nomadic interlude between the two urban periods of the Early Bronze and Middle Bronze Ages. As developments in method and theory evolved, the transition from urban to nonurban appeared to be more nuanced than the traditional view. Dominating the field in the 1970s and 1980s, the scientific, processual approach of the New Archaeology recognized the complex nature of this period of culture change yet saw the significant transformation from EB II/III to EB IV primarily in terms of mechanistic adaptations to environmental fluctuations. More recently, postmodern influences in Syro-Palestinian archaeology have called for postprocessual approaches that recognize the important role of context in interpretation and that allow for the creative and independent nature of the human response to environmental factors. In particular, recent trends have inaugurated the era of “social archaeology.” This essay will present a representative outline of interpretations of the Early Bronze IV period within the framework of these significant changes in theory. It will then describe a contextual approach to the period that I have suggested for the expedition to Khirbet Iskander, Jordan (Long 1996) 1—a construct that is consistent with newer emphases in archaeological theory (see figs. 81–84). 1. Since the completion for publication of my 1996 paper, other discussions of the EB IV have appeared that reinforce the framework of this article. Limitations of space preclude amending the presentation for a more-recent analysis of EB IV; see Palumbo 2001.

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Fig. 81. Khirbet Iskander site looking to the north. Photo: K. Klein.

Culture-Historical Approaches Early interpretations of the deurbanization at the end of the Early Bronze Age were governed by traditional, 19th-century views of history that saw culture change as the outcome of external forces. Significant change was usually construed as a result of migration or conquest. Emerging as a period of significant change following the first urban period in Palestine, the interpretation was advanced that the Early Bronze IV can best be explained in terms of an invasion of nomads who destroyed the existing urban culture. Since these nomads were associated with Amorites from the Syrian steppes mentioned in Akkadian texts, this theory became known as the “Amorite hypothesis.” Kathleen Kenyon (1971) perhaps best represented this view in her description of the period in the Cambridge Ancient History. Her interpretation was based to a large degree upon excavations at Jericho (1952–58). As at other sites in Palestine, tell occupation in EB IV at Jericho appeared to be ephemeral, representing for her the seminomadic nature of the period. A move away from migration/conquest explanations was made in 1974 with Kay Prag’s comparative study of EB IV material remains. Prag set the stratigraphic data from her excavations at Iktanu in Transjordan into the cultural

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context of the larger region. She concluded that EB IV settlements reflected a subsistence regime that included both agriculture and pastoralism and that the population was well within an Early Bronze tradition from Palestine. Her stress on the local Early Bronze and sedentary aspects of the culture was, according to Dever (1980: 56), a “welcome balance” to extreme interpretations of the Amorite hypothesis. Later, Prag (1985: 85) took a less helpful “middle course between invasion and indigenous continuity” when she argued for the migration and assimilation during EB IV of a seminomadic population from the Syrian steppes. However, with Prag (1974) there was already an indication of a move away from traditional culturehistorical approaches to what would blossom into more scientific ways of explaining EB IV.

Processual Approaches The realization that the end of the third millennium b.c.e. was more complex than the rather simplistic interpretations of culture-historical approaches ushered in a “new age” of scientific analysis of the period. During the 1970s and 1980s especially, this Fig. 82. Map of central Transjordan with phase saw the application of anthropo- Khirbet Iskander situated along the logical theory to the Early Bronze Age. “King’s Highway.” The “New Archaeology” of the American Southwest, in particular, introduced interdisciplinary methodologies, environmental/ecological approaches, ethnographic studies, and settlement pattern analyses into the vocabulary of archaeologists working in the southern Levant. This led to many advances, especially in terms of considering social and behavioral questions not often addressed in traditional archaeology. At the heart of this way of thinking about archaeology—and underlying the various models in the outline below—is a reliance on a strictly scientific approach that looks for a “covering law” or universal meaning (although not always explicitly stated) to make sense out of the material record. These approaches are

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Fig. 83. Photo of an EB IV multiple-roomed building at Khirbet Iskander, where a “kitchen” was discovered. Photo: S. Rempel.

processual because culture is viewed as existing in a closed ecosystem, where environmental fluctuations have a direct, causal impact on human response. There is little room in this attitude toward the past for human creativity and conscious choice. Interpretation, then, is more about defining the processes (especially the adaptive processes) that were at work in an ancient ecosystem. Also, culture change is generally viewed as having indigenous causes, often resulting from environmental fluctuations and an inability to adapt to societal or environmental changes (Hodder 1991). In the following outline, this perspective culminated in the application of systems theory to Early Bronze IV. Appealing directly to anthropological theory, William G. Dever in 1980 (see also his reappraisal, 1995: 289–90) proposed a model of pastoral nomadism for the “EB IV Hebron hills–Negev complex” that he said would also be useful for interpreting the Early Bronze IV period as a whole. Underlying Dever’s thesis was the notion that ancient Near Eastern society is fundamentally “dimorphic,” composed

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Fig. 84. Close-up view of a kitchen (see fig. 83), showing a tabun or cooking oven, a mortar, and a preparation platform at the lower left. Photo: S. Rempel.

of nomadic and sedentary elements that interact with each other in a symbiotic way. In contrast to the 19th-century bedouin-raider concept of nomadism inherent in the Amorite hypothesis, this view saw pastoralism in a dynamic relationship with sedentary adaptive strategies and stressed continuity with earlier Early Bronze Age traditions. Reacting to the Amorite hypothesis, Dever emphasized “the role of indigenous, socio-economic factors” in the “radical change” that characterized the period (1995: 289). With this approach, Dever (1980) authored the first real attempt to address, from a theoretical framework, issues of social organization in Palestine for the end of the Early Bronze Age. Suzanne Richard (1980) also examined social organization and argued for an internal development within Palestine from EB II/III to EB IV without any appeal to theories of invasion, migration, or population movement from Syria. However, she went beyond Dever by raising questions about the pastoral nomadic model, stressing the important role that sedentism also played during EB IV. In 1986, I suggested the model of “specialization-despecialization” as a way of explaining the devolution in Palestine at the end of the third millennium b.c.e. An expanded database indicated that the settlement range (with nomadic, seminomadic, and sedentary components) was more varied than indicated in Dever’s pastoral nomadic model. This view described the change from urban EB II/III to nonurban EB IV as a move from a more-specialized to a less-specialized econ-

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omy, based on mixed subsistence strategies and brought on by the collapse of Early Bronze Age urbanism. Borrowed from Daniel G. Bates and Susan H. Lees (1977), the specialization model was first applied to EB IV by Long (1986, 1988) and then was expanded by Richard and Long (1989). Bates and Lees (1977: 827–29) highlight “exchange” between agriculturists and pastoralists as a mechanism for maintaining specialization in these respective modes of production. They argue that, when conditions are “unfavorable” for the specialization of agriculture, they are also “unfavorable” for the specialization of pastoralism and vice versa. During periods of drought, for example, both subsistence strategies should be negatively affected. When this happens, “specialization in the system at large declines, with the result that fewer people specialize in either mode of production.” Movement is not from dependence on one form of specialization to another (for example, agriculture to pastoralism), but from more specialization to less specialization (or vice versa), as adaptive strategies become more varied to cope with environmental changes. This model, in contrast to pastoral nomadism, better explains the variety of settlement types in Early Bronze IV as well as the drastic change from and continuities with the preceding urban period. Israel Finkelstein (1989) also saw the interpretive value of specializationdespecialization and applied the model to Early Bronze IV. He recognized that this approach helps explain an apparent tendency in EB IV toward mixed subsistence strategies. Gaetano Palumbo (1990: 30) preferred “diversified levels of specialization,” which in his vew better described the variety of adaptive responses in the period. Dever (1992: 88) updated his pastoral nomadic model and suggested a “modified pastoral nomadic model, making way now for the ‘ruralism’ being increasingly documented in the more fertile central areas of EB IV Palestine.” He argued that this view “accounts for the more sedentary villages we now have in some areas, without, however, diminishing the relative importance of the complementary socioeconomic strategy of pastoralism” and added that it allows us to “appreciate a handful of truly ‘urban’ sites like Khirbet Iskander” (1992: 88). In proposing this model, Dever mirrors a trend away from a traditional emphasis on urbanism. Steven Falconer (1994), in particular, has challenged the accepted view of Early Bronze Age society that emphasized urbanism and called attention to the rural component of Early Bronze Age society. He argues that the “urban,” fortified features emphasized in characterizations of the period were in reality superimposed over a “ruralized landscape” (see also Palumbo 1990). Douglas Esse in 1991 presented a helpful diachronic analysis of changes in settlement patterns in the Jezreel, one of the methodological contributions of the New Archaeology. In this work, he demonstrates that throughout the Early Bronze Age a range of subsistence strategies was employed, spanning a continuum from urbanism to pastoralism, with pastoralism dominating in the EB IV. However, Palumbo (1990: 48–49), who also relied heavily on settlement pattern data for his interpretation of EB IV, cautioned that it is difficult to characterize settlement types in the Early Bronze Age on the basis of settlement patterns.

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The results of our 1997 and 2000 seasons at Khirbet Iskander also caution against an overemphasis on settlement pattern data. Palumbo (1990: 45) reported that (excluding the Negev and Sinai) 30 percent of EB II/III sites in Palestine were reoccupied in EB IV; 50 percent of EB III sites were reoccupied in EB IV. Until the 1997 season, there was no reason at Iskander to posit other than EB I and EB IV occupation on the mound. However, our excavation in 1997 and 2000 uncovered stratified material that dates the massive tower on the northwest corner of the site to EB II/III. Since Palumbo’s breakdown of settlement patterns predates our discovery of EB II/III material, Khirbet Iskander would not appear in his presentation of EB II/III sites that were reoccupied in EB IV, thus skewing his data. While working hypotheses can be developed from such data, settlement patterns must be used critically and in dialogue with stratified remains from excavated sites. Dever (1989) has also proposed a systems theory model with an emphasis on theories of “collapse” (see also Dever 1995) to explain Early Bronze IV Palestine. His application of systems theory emphasizes the interconnectedness of subsystems, including settlement types and distribution patterns, subsistence systems, social structure, and political organization (1989: 241–42). He stresses the dynamic nature of systems and the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In contrast to other models, this means a “multifactor analysis,” recognizing the complex nature of the decline at the end of the Early Bronze Age. He suggests that “this discontinuity can be best explained as collapse, the ‘breakdown of the system,’ i.e., the end result of a gradual, progressive maladaptation, a profound ‘disequilibrium’ ” (1989: 235).

A Postprocessual Approach The preceding overview of research on the Early Bronze IV period lays out many advances from the scientific analysis of the period. This phase fostered interpretation of the period from perspectives not imagined in culture-historical approaches. As one example, settlement pattern analysis (recognizing its limitations) stands out as research that encouraged investigation, on both diachronic and synchronic levels, of various sociocultural dimensions of Early Bronze Age society. For instance, settlement patterns further clarified the decentralization in the sociocultural change that occurred in the decline at the end of the third millennium b.c.e. and enabled more emphasis on the rural component of Early Bronze Age society, one of the more important recent trends in interpretations of the period. Nevertheless, processual approaches are flawed. Following Hodder (1991), several shortcomings of this overly scientific way of thinking have emerged. Perhaps most important, processual archaeology has generally had little appreciation for the complexity of human behavior. With its emphasis on covering laws and the dynamic interaction of various environmental-cultural systems and subsystems, it has not been able to deal adequately with the uniqueness of human responses to a

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myriad of environmental and social situations. Cultural attitudes that are so important to understanding the significance of material objects cannot be deduced from anthropological theory. The symbolic dimension of social interaction, related as it is to cultural attitudes, has also been generally overlooked. In addition, there has been little concern for the place of the individual in describing the historical past, since most discussions move toward broad generalizations consistent with this or that theoretical model. As a result, material objects may be taken out of context and explained in terms of beliefs about cross-cultural human behavior. Processual approaches, then, are in practice fundamentally deterministic, since conclusions are often influenced more by the particular theoretical model applied to a database. It follows that the resulting view of the past may represent a more Western world view—mediated by “science”—than the sociocultural reality of the past (for a critique of processual archaeology, see especially Hodder 1991: xiii–xiv, 1–34). In light of the problems with processual approaches and in concert with the current emphasis on context in archaeology, I proposed in 1996 a contextual approach for the expedition to Khirbet Iskander, Jordan. By “contextual” I mean an interpretive frame of reference that forces us to consider the various contexts of Early Bronze IV society and constrains us to interpret the material remains at Iskander in their original context(s), rather than as a component of a particular theoretical model. There is a place for theory in archaeology and for model building, but the data must be understood in their immediate and larger sociohistorical contexts. As Hodder (1991: 154) emphasizes, there must be a closer relationship between theory and data. Our approach is also informed by Levy (1995), who posits that a contextual approach should be interdisciplinary. By this he means recognizing the role that various disciplines ought to play in archaeological interpretation (for example, anthropology, history, geosciences, archaeometry, and environmental archaeology; from Levy’s “model for a contextual archaeology of the Holy Land,” 1995: xii–xiii). But Levy argues further that the key to this approach is in analyzing the change in the elements that are of concern to all of the participants in the interdisciplinary endeavor. He identifies space, scale, complexity, interaction, and stability as the properties of archaeological material that must be analyzed. Of importance here is that he frames this point as “the ability to measure change in the underlying properties” (p. xii). Measuring the change (or determining relevant similarities and differences; Hodder 1991: 128ff.) in an archaeological property is essential to determining context and, therefore, meaning in archaeology. This is especially true in diachronic analyses, but also in synchronic studies where differentiating one context from another (for example, activity areas) is essential to valid results. As Hodder (1991: 123) has stated, “archaeology is defined by its concern with context. . . . To reaffirm the importance of context thus includes reaffirming the importance of archaeology as archaeology” (for a more detailed discussion of context in archaeology, see Hodder 1991: 121–55).

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Also helpful in Levy’s proposal (1995: xiii–xiv) is spatial analysis on the macro (within a region), meso (within a site), and micro (within and between structures) levels. Our immediate concern at Iskander is at the meso and micro levels. However, we must then place our findings into a larger regional context. These spatial dimensions should also be examined temporally, with a synchronic analysis of Early Bronze IV society and a diachronic investigation of the decline from EB II/ III to EB IV. While basic in terms of conceptualization, some of the disagreement among scholars concerning the nature of the deurbanization at the end of the Early Bronze Age may be related to this differentiation. When the Early Bronze Age is viewed diachronically, and at the macro level, the significant culture change from EB III to EB IV is striking. However, when the micro level (that is, the material objects, activity areas, etc.) is viewed diachronically, there appears to be significant continuity. Scholars advocating the term EB IV for the period under discussion have generally understood the strong links with Early Bronze III tradition to mean that—culture change notwithstanding—the period belongs to the millennium-long Early Bronze Age cultural tradition. Implicit in this view is a stress on the indigenous character of the populations’ customs, attitudes, and behavioral patterns (determined especially at the meso and micro levels). Those who prefer the term Intermediate Bronze Age (IBA) or Intermediate Early Bronze– Middle Bronze Age (EB–MB), though they agree that cultural links exist between EB IV and Early Bronze Age tradition, concentrate on the dramatic change that is evident especially at the macro level of analysis. The challenge for interpreters is to balance both the change and the continuity in the decline at the end of the millennium, as they are reflected in these spatial dimensions. As we move at Iskander toward integrating our work into the larger framework of Early Bronze Age studies, we must recognize the sociohistorical traditions of the urban EB II/ III that continue in EB IV as we try to explain the significant change. One might frame this task as a question: “How did Early Bronze Age culture reproduce itself in the devolution at the end of the third millennium b.c.e.?” (see Hodder 1991: 14–15). Recognizing the spatial and temporal dimensions of our contextual analysis of Khirbet Iskander and the Early Bronze Age also allows us to apply our model of specialization-despecialization in this time of transition. While a product of processual ways of thinking about the period, this model is inherently contextual in nature (see Hodder 1991: 29). By definition, specialization-despecialization allows for an almost infinite variety of subsistence choices and gives us a frame for describing both culture change and continuity at the end of the Early Bronze Age. We can describe EB IV on the macro level as a time of despecialization on the aggregate. On a micro level, however, we can also visualize individual households with a high level of specialization, perhaps even continuing Early Bronze Age urban traditions. Because specialization-despecialization is contextual, and not in any way prescriptive, we also believe that it will allow us to consider other dimensions of Early Bronze Age society and factor in the sociohistorical trajectories that were alive through the end of the period. In other words, and again,

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we will be able to describe both the change and the continuity in the devolution from EB II/III to EB IV. Finally, this approach allows us to acknowledge our own contexts for interpretation. We are now more aware of our sociocultural contexts (Hodder 1991: especially pp. 165–81), raising the issue of commensurability. Are the questions that we are putting to the data commensurate with the realities of ancient Palestine (i.e., the classic emic versus etic dilemma)? Do the very questions we ask not skew our understanding of antiquity, reflecting our own view of reality? For example, is the urban-rural dichotomy appropriate to an Early Bronze Age world view (see Falconer 1994)? While there is no completely satisfactory way of escaping this dilemma, we may be able to minimize the danger of re-creating our world view and concerns in the Early Bronze Age record. A contextual approach demands that we try to construct our explanations so that they are consistent with Early Bronze Age perceptions and realities. This abbreviated outline of interpretations of the Early Bronze IV, as they have been framed by changes in archaeological theory, has laid a foundation for a contextual approach to our work at Khirbet Iskander. Since the deurbanization from EB II/III to EB IV involves both change and continuity, this approach will still allow us to utilize the model of specialization-despecialization. In moving to a postprocessual stance, however, we are aware of the many positive contributions of processual archaeology to Early Bronze Age studies. This move is not a call to jettison scientific approaches but simply an effort to put science in a more appropriate balance with sociohistorical methods of investigation. At its heart, this is a realization of the complexities of human existence and a commitment to social archaeology, a goal that is achieved primarily by considering context in interpretation.

References Bates, D. G., and Lees, S. H. 1977 The Role of Exchange in Productive Specialization. American Archaeologist 79: 824– 41. Dever, W. G. 1980 New Vistas on the EB IV (“MB I”) Horizon in Syria–Palestine. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 237: 35–64. 1989 The Collapse of the Urban Early Bronze Age in Palestine. Pp. 225– 46 in L’urbanisation de la Palestine à l’âge du Bronze ancien: Bilan et perspectives des recherches acuelles, ed. P. de Miroschedji. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 527. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. 1992 Pastoralism and the End of the Urban Early Bronze Age in Palestine. Pp. 83–92 in Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspective, ed. O. Bar-Yosef and A. Khazanov. Madison: Prehistory Press. 1995 Social Structure in the Early Bronze IV Period in Palestine. Pp. 282–96 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. New York: Facts on File. Esse, D. L. 1991 Subsistence, Trade, and Social Change in Early Bronze Age Palestine. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

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Falconer, S. E. 1994 Village Economy and Society in the Jordan Valley: A Study of Bronze Age Rural Complexity. Pp. 121– 42 in Archaeological Views from the Countryside: Village Communities in Early Complex Societies, ed. G. M. Schwartz and S. E. Falconer. Washington: Smithsonian. Finkelstein, I. 1989 Further Observations on the Socio-demographic Structure of the Intermediate Bronze Age. Levant 21: 129– 40. Hodder, I. 1991 Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kenyon, K. 1971 Syria and Palestine c. 2160–1780 b.c.: Archaeological Evidence from Palestine. Pp. 567–94 in Early History of the Middle East. 3d rev. ed. Vol. 1/2 of Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levy, T. E. 1995 Preface. Pp. x–xiv in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. New York: Facts on File. Long, J. C., Jr. 1986 Sedentism in Early Bronze IV Palestine–Transjordan: An Analysis of Sociocultural Variability in the Late Third Millennium b.c. Unpublished Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Atlanta, Georgia. 1988 Sedentary Adaptations at the End of the Third Millennium b.c.: Khirbet Iskander and the Excavated Settlement Sites of Early Bronze IV Palestine–Transjordan. Ph.D. dissertation, Drew University. 1996 Khirbet Iskander and the “Next Generation”: A Contextual Approach to Early Bronze IV Palestine–Transjordan. Unpublished Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, New Orleans, Louisiana. Palumbo, G. 1990 The Early Bronze Age IV in the Southern Levant: Settlement Patterns, Economy, and Material Culture of a “Dark Age.” Rome: University of Rome. 2001 The Early Bronze IV. Pp. 233–69 in The Archaeology of Jordan, ed. B. MacDonald, R. Adams, and P. Bienkowski. Levantine Archaeology 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Prag, K. 1974 The Intermediate Early Bronze–Middle Bronze Age: An Interpretation of the Evidence from Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon. Levant 6: 69–116. 1985 Ancient and Modern Pastoral Migration in the Levant. Levant 17: 81–88. Richard, S. 1980 Toward a Consensus of Opinion on the End of the Early Bronze Age in Palestine–Transjordan. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 237: 6–12. Richard, S., and Long, J. C., Jr. 1989 Specialization-Despecialization: A Model to Explain Culture Change and Continuity at the End of the Early Bronze Age, ca. 2350–2000 b.c. Unpublished Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Anaheim, California.

Jesse C. Long, Jr.

Archaeology of the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan Geography and Geology The isolated flatland along the southeastern side of the Dead Sea in the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has in recent years begun to yield some of the secrets of its fascinating archaeological history (fig. 84). The area encompasses a stretch of lowland between the Dead Sea shoreline on the west and the Transjordanian mountain range on the east. The northern border of this plain is roughly equal to the north tip of the Lisan Peninsula, while on the south the plain terminates some nine miles south of the southern shoreline of the Dead Sea, which is in almost constant fluctuation depending on the amount of flow into the sea, rates of evaporation, and extraction of minerals such as potash by means of modern commercial exploitation. The Arabic term Ghôr that designates this region is the same as the term used for the Rift Valley north of the Dead Sea, except that here the term refers to several alluvial fans extending from the mouths of the wadis on this side of the sea (such as Ghôr el-Mazraºa, Ghôr en-Numeira, Ghôr eß-Íafi, and Ghôr el-Feifa). These alluvial fans are crucial in the settlement history of the region, since it was in connection with them that early occupation took place. The landscape of the southeastern plain is extremely diverse. Besides a climate determined by the fact that the plain is part of the lowest area on the earth’s surface, the natural features are the outcome of an extremely lengthy history of sudden and gradual geomorphic change, including the tectonic movements that produced the Rift Valley of which the Dead Sea is a part. Along the weathered mountains at the eastern edge of the plain, it is possible to observe ancient shorelines of the Dead Sea high upon the scarp, indicating the impact that high lake levels had at different times on the formation of this area. The main geologic facies from upper to lower are a massive Cretaceous limestone formation with numerous amounts of chert, below which is the strikingly beautiful Nubian sandstone exposed at Numeira, providing a setting very much like Petra. Pre-Cambrian rock also turns up occasionally in Wadi el-Óasa. Over the millennia, erosion has brought down shattered remnants of these strata, so that at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, for example, natural chert is found all over the area, which greatly facilitated its use in tool-making for agriculture and other technologies. The settlement activity in the southeastern plain over the millennia has been determined in a special way by the effect that the ingress of the seas preceding the modern Dead Sea had on this area. When the entire area was under water about 100,000 years ago, great amounts of marl were deposited, which dried out as this Pleistocene sea receded. Today, after millennia of erosion, these marls have taken on curious shapes, often in the form of buttes, as can be seen in some places along the Jordan Valley near Jericho, near Qumran where the Dead Sea

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Fig. 85. Early Bronze sites in the southeastern Dead Sea area.

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Scrolls were found, and at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠in the southeastern plain. The Lisan (‘tongue’ in Arabic; Hebrew ha-lashon) extending into the east side of the Dead Sea is made up in large part of this marl, a fact that has given rise to the term Lisan marl, commonly used to describe this deposit. The southeastern plain receives some of its water from winter rains that fall on the mountains from December through February. During the rainy season, torrential streams come flooding through the wadis of the southern Ghôr, moving soils, heaps of rocks, and even massive boulders into the outwash fans of these wadis. Since the amount of rainfall in the valley is negligible (about six inches per year), ancient and recent settlement in the region has been and continues to be dependent on the management of this winter runoff, together with the water that discharges from perennial springs in Wadi Ibn Hammad near Haditha, Wadi Kerak at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, and Wadi el-Óasa at eß-Íafi. A major modern project of water management in the area begun by the Jordan Valley Authority (Southern Ghôr Section) in the late 1970s is the most recent example of dealing with the hydrology of the region. The remains of aqueducts dating to Islamic, Byzantine, and Roman times in several of the wadis give evidence of the same kind of effort, and archaeological data prove that even as early as the Early Bronze Age occupants of the valley manipulated the water supplies for irrigation.

The Exploration of the Southeastern Dead Sea Plain The extraordinary geomorphic features along the southeastern side of the sea, along with its tantalizing remoteness, attracted a number of 18th- and 19thcentury explorers such as de Saulcy, Seetzen, and Tristram, who recorded their observations of the unusual landscape, the different types of trees and vegetation, and the striking fertility during the winter months. An American naval explorer, William Lynch, was the first to apply scientific methods to the problem of the depth of the Dead Sea, and in the course of his work in the mid–19th century he took time to explore areas adjacent to the shoreline of the southeast plain. One of the sites he recorded that has become important subsequently in the archaeological history of the area is Bâb edh-Dhrâº. The archaeological exploration of the southeastern Dead Sea plain, however, really began with a survey in late winter of 1924, led by the renowned Near Eastern scholar W. F. Albright. The principal result of this survey was the discovery of the Early Bronze Age site of Bâb edh-Dhrâº, dating from around 3300 to 2000 b.c.e. The survey also explored areas of the plain further to the south, the most important discoveries being made around the Ghôr eß-Íafi. Subsequent trips through the Dead Sea plain were made by N. Glueck in 1934, and by the German explorer F. Frank in 1932. Apart from a small excavation conducted at eß-Íafi during the 1924 survey, no other excavation in the region was undertaken until 1965, at which time P. W. Lapp began three seasons at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, two during 1965 and a third in 1967. Following his death, the work at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠was pursued by two of his students and colleagues, R. T. Schaub and W. E. Rast. Under their direction the

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Approximate Dates of the Early Bronze Age Early Bronze IA Early Bronze IB Early Bronze II Early Bronze III Early Bronze IV

3300–3200 b.c.e. 3200–3000 b.c.e. 3000–2750 b.c.e. 2750–2350 b.c.e. 2350–2000 b.c.e.

Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain was organized, with seasons devoted to excavation and survey conducted in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, and 1989–90. A turning point in the investigation of the southeastern plain occurred in the late spring of 1973, when Schaub and Rast conducted the first intensive survey in the region since the survey of 1924. The major discovery of the 1973 survey was the Early Bronze site of Numeira, located approximately eight miles south of Bâb edh-Dhrâº. In addition, the survey found a large Early Bronze Age cemetery at eß-Íafi, following up on observations made in this area by Frank in 1932. It also discovered remains of Early Bronze cemeteries and burials at Feifa and Khanazir in the southernmost part of the plain. Other explorations in the region since 1977 have been led by McCreery, Mittmann, King, Jacobs, and MacDonald, all of which have added to the picture of occupation in the southeastern plain.

Excavations Apart from a small excavation conducted by C. Bennett at the Neolithic site of Dhrâ east of Bâb edh-Dhrâº, at Deir ºAin ªAbata by K. Politis, the clearing of a few Chalcolithic tombs by McCreery and Clark, and an earlier sounding at a Byzantine site in Ghôr eß-Íafi by the 1924 survey, the most extensive work in the southern Ghôr has centered on the Early Bronze Age, first by Lapp at Bâb edhDhr⺠during 1965 to 1967, and then by the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, Numeira, Feifa, and Khanazir beginning in 1975. Excavation and survey of the southeastern plain have shown that the Early Bronze Age was a time of intense occupation in the southeastern plain. The only other period to rival it was Byzantine times, when a number of settlements such as those at eß-Íafi, the Mazraºa Junction, Khirbet es-Sikkin, a monastery on the Lisan Peninsula, and the monastery and church at Deir ºAin ªAbata were established. Only the last of these has been excavated. The considerable amount of Early Bronze Age data in the southern Ghôr thus makes it a definitive area for this period. The key site is Bâb edh-Dhrâº, with additional evidence coming from Numeira, eß-Íafi, Feifa, and Khanazir. When the 1924 survey came across Bâb edh-Dhrâº, the conclusion was drawn that the large stone wall, which is still partly visible on the surface, defined an enclosure rather than a city or town. It was assumed that people could congregate within the wall as the need arose, although the feeling was that the site was not

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Fig. 86. Early Bronze IA Tomb A 6E looking northeast.

occupied permanently. The theory was also advanced that the enclosure may have been built for special religious rites observed by people dwelling farther down in the plain. These ideas show the limitations of conclusions resting on data from the surface. Albright, however, established that Bâb edh-Dhr⺠was an Early Bronze Age urban site, based on his study of the pottery sherds that had been gathered at the site. The excavations directed by Lapp threw an entirely new light on Bâb edhDhrâº, proving that the walled area was an Early Bronze Age town of the same general type known throughout Palestine during Early Bronze II and III. His excavations thus began the investigation of the origins of Early Bronze Age urbanization in the southern Ghôr that has subsequently been furthered by the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain. Lapp’s excavations also made a major contribution to the examination of the extensive Early Bronze Age cemetery at Bâb edh-Dhrâº. Through three seasons of excavation in the cemetery, Lapp was able to establish that burials and tombs had been cut or built into the cemetery area during every phase of the Early Bronze Age. Thus a complete history of the Early Bronze Age burial traditions could be obtained from the rich funerary material available at this site. Lapp’s premature death cut his work short before he could develop a full picture from his results, and the investigation was carried on by the later Expedition

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to the Dead Sea Plain. The new expedition made Bâb edh-Dhr⺠a regional priority, viewing it as the major site of the various Early Bronze Age sites of the southern Ghôr. The objective of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain included investigating the entire region by means of survey and excavation, using an interdisciplinary staff to study evidence related to environment, technology, and hydrology. Important also for the expedition’s work was examining all of the Early Bronze Age sites in the southern Ghôr in relation to each other, along with tracing changes in their social structures, settlement patterns, architecture, burial traditions, and technologies during the course of the late fourth and third millenniums. Environmental data were collected for the purpose of detecting shifts in climate or rainfall that had an impact on settlement. The results of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain show a movement through five stages in the settlement history of the Early Bronze Age. In the earliest phase (Early Bronze IA) the population followed a pastoralist way of life, returning to the site regularly for the secondary burial of the skeletal remains of their deceased members that had died and had previously been buried in primary fashion elsewhere. The Early Bronze IA society was egalitarian in its structure, as was evident from the many shaft tombs they cut for the burial of their dead (fig. 86). In the chambers of these shaft tombs the remains of the deceased were clustered in piles of bones and lines of skulls. These occupants left very little behind in the way of settlement remains outside of remnants of their apparently seasonal camping episodes at the site. Several maceheads made of alabaster, along with bracelets or anklets made from shells of Red Sea mollusks, both found in the tombs, suggest that these pastoralists traveled in the direction of the Sinai and Egypt. During the following stage, what were probably the descendants of the earlier population began to settle at the site more permanently. During Early Bronze IB a village spreading over much of the site came into being. Mudbrick houses were the common structure built during this phase, while potters produced a type of vessel decorated with groups of painted lines (line-group painted wares), well known from other Early Bronze IB sites. A new kind of tomb appeared in the round charnel houses made of mudbrick, a considerable departure from the shaft tomb, although showing some continuity in basic conception. Burials also evidence a significant change because during this period the dead were placed in the tombs as primary burials in contrast to the secondary burials in bone piles of the preceding phase. This practice of primary burial, which also involved pushing back older burials that had skeletonized to make room for later entries, complements the data indicating permanent settlement in the village during the Early Bronze IB phase. The work of the expedition to the Dead Sea Plain at two other sites with Early Bronze IB remains showed that village life did not arise at either of these sites as it did at Bâb edh-Dhrâº. Early Bronze IB burials in cist tombs were found in large cemeteries at both eß-Íafi and Feifa, but no evidence of settlement remains appeared at either site, suggesting that here the pastoralist life-style remained intact and was not transformed as at Bâb edh-Dhrâº.

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During the following two stags of Early Bronze II and III, Bâb edh-Dhr⺠found itself drawn into the emerging urbanism of the period. Lapp’s expedition had already identified a part of a substantial mudbrick fortification wall on the east end of the site dating to Early Bronze II. The newer expedition has not discovered any other sections of this wall, probably because they were robbed when the later wall of Early Bronze III was built over the earlier one. The later work has shown, however, that a substantial town had emerged at the site during Early Bronze II. Among the many structures made of mudbrick was a building whose upper part was mudbrick but whose well-built foundation was of stone. Discovered on the second highest location of the site, the building was identified as a sanctuary. Its shape was rectangular, with the entry on the long side. Within the building were five pillar bases, on four of which the lower parts of wooden columns were still resting upon excavation. A change was introduced in the burial customs during Early Bronze II. The practice of constructing mudbrick charnel houses that began in the preceding phase continued, but the houses were now long, rectangular constructions rather than circular. One Early Bronze II charnel house was discovered that was still round in shape (Tomb A 56), and notably it dated to the very beginning of this phase. The size of the rectangular houses made it possible to deposit many more bodies than in the earlier houses. This shift in burial practice also indicates more intense settlement due to population growth during Early Bronze II. At the same time, no other Early Bronze II remains have been found at any of the other sites of the southern Ghôr, indicating that Bâb edh-Dhr⺠alone was occupied during this phase. The climax of Early Bronze Age settlement in the southern Ghôr was reached during the Early Bronze III phase, when the full size of the walled town was reached at about 12 acres. It is the ruins of this town that can be seen on the surface today, with the majority of the thousands of sherds strewn over the site dating to Early Bronze III. The city wall is still evident on the surface in some places, as are occasional intact remains of foundations of buildings. Various lines of evidence show that the social organization of Bâb edh-Dhr⺠during Early Bronze III was more complex than in the previous phases. Mudbrick masonry had become specialized, as evidenced by the fact that mudbricks during this phase were well made according to standard sizes that vary little across the site. Masons also left marks on many of their bricks in structures in the town and the charnel houses. The construction of the town wall involved an enterprise that took much planning and organization. The town wall was somewhat more than 25 feet wide and for purposes of protection against earthquake was built in separate sections that were separated by a vertical face approximately every 50 feet. In addition, these wall segments were often composed of differing stone material, suggesting that the labor force consisted of several groups assigned to procure stone for the wall foundations. Some of the groups went to the Wadi Kerak below to find and transport large smooth wadi stones, while others gathered pieces of tabular limestone that had at one time split off from the eastern mountains and

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had moved by erosion into the plain east and south of Bâb edh-Dhrâº. The upper two-thirds of the town wall was made of excellently crafted mudbrick, and thousands of these bricks would have been required to complete the wall around the site. Excavation has uncovered many of these bricks of the superstructure of the Bâb edh-Dhr⺠fortification, though numerous other examples deteriorated into heaps of white or green clay found around the edges of the site. The gate into the city was on the west side, facing out toward the Lisan plain below. During the latest part of Early Bronze III, it was blocked up and a new gate with two flanking towers was opened on the northeast. Dwellings within the town were built of mudbrick, and excavation showed a dense cluster of these residences along the gently sloping interior of the site. As they were during Early Bronze II, the foundations of the wall of the Early Bronze III sanctuary were of stone, with upper sections being made of mudbrick covered with plaster. The Early Bronze III sanctuary was built directly above the similar building of the preceding phase, differing from it only slightly in orientation. The architecture of the Early Bronze III building was unique in that, after entering the building through a door on the long western side, one would have turned left going up a number of steps to a well-laid flagstone floor, at the end of which presumably would have been the focus of the religious activity, perhaps a statue of a deity. The wealth of the Early Bronze III town is indicated by the extremely fine pottery from this period, as well as by a collection of impressive artifacts from various parts of the site. The rectangular charnel houses that continued to be used, or were newly built in this phase, had an abundance of fine pottery and objects. Tomb A 22 had several pieces of jewelry made of fine gold. Despite these indications of wealth, other evidence pointed to differentiation, possibly even ranking, in Early Bronze III society. That the population was also growing is evident from the greater numbers of burials in the charnel houses during this phase. Demographic expansion during Early Bronze III is undoubtedly one of the factors explaining the founding of the new walled town at Numeira. Estimates are that the population at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠during Early Bronze III grew to approximately 1,000 people. Although Numeira was smaller than Bâb edh-Dhr⺠(no more than two or three acres in size), the establishment of this new settlement alleviated the stress at the older site. The new site also provided for developing resources and technologies not attempted at Bâb edh-Dhrâº, one of which may have been secondary metal production. That Numeira must be explained as an offshoot of Bâb edh-Dhr⺠is indicated by its parallel settlement pattern and architecture, such as the method of constructing the town wall in segments. The fact that pottery accompanying several burials in the Early Bronze III charnel houses at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠was made from clay at Numeira, as shown by petrographic analysis, also suggests that the Numeira occupants sometimes brought their deceased to Bâb edh-Dhr⺠for burial. Interment at the original site may have been motivated by traditional connections with Numeira, or it could also be explained by the fact that the extremely hard gravel matrix of the outwash fan at

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Numeira seems to have made it difficult to construct tombs anywhere in the vicinity. Numeira was occupied only during the Early Bronze III phase, and only during the last hundred or so years of that phase, so that it too added to the peak that was reached at this time. The town was ringed by a wall about ten feet wide, while within the settlement well-preserved rooms, a central street, and a tower-like fortification at the east end have been found. No specialized buildings have yet been found at the site, but many of the stone and mudbrick dwellings had clay storage facilities built into their floors. A variety of objects and a great deal of pottery were preserved in a thick layer of destruction that included massive burning. The skeletons of three adult males in the burned debris adjacent to the tower belonged to victims of the fiery destruction. A fundamental question about Numeira is what caused the destruction of this town around 2350 b.c.e., a date based on C14 results and pottery. That the Early Bronze III town of Bâb edh-Dhr⺠was apparently destroyed about the same time raises the question whether a natural cause such as an earthquake brought these towns to an end during this phase, or whether they were destroyed during an attack by a group from the outside. Either of these explanations appears possible, although geological data show more support for the former. After the destruction of the two Early Bronze III towns, the pattern of settlement shifted in a major way. During Early Bronze IV, Bâb edh-Dhr⺠was the one settlement in the southern Ghôr, the only other activity attested for this phase being the recently excavated Early Bronze IV cemetery above and east of Wadi Khanazir. Numeira was completely abandoned after the destruction of its Early Bronze III town, and no settlement was undertaken at eß-Íafi or Feifa, neither of which had seen any significant occupation following Early Bronze IB. At Bâb edh-Dhr⺠most of the Early Bronze IV settlement occurred outside the ruined town. Excavations 395 feet northeast of the former town uncovered a group of mudbrick residences, and survey results pointed to many more of these east, northeast, and south of the former town. Thus, during Early Bronze IV Bâb edh-Dhr⺠reverted to being a village. Accompanying these changes in the settlement was a shift in the burial tradition to a new version of the shaft tomb type. This shaft was lined with stones, and interments were placed in the tombs as primary burials. The Early Bronze IV occupation lasted until approximately 2000 b.c.e., when the region as a whole was deserted, at least by permanent settlers. This abandonment was provoked in no small part by environmental changes toward the end of the third millennium, which are also in evidence in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. In the southeastern Dead Sea plain, these stresses would have been even more profound, given the limited resources of the area and its total dependence on water from winter rains and natural springs. The resources survey of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain has also shown that the land around Bâb edh-Dhr⺠suffered serious depletion by the time of Early Bronze IV. Overuse of the fields for agriculture and abundant tree cutting, as evidenced by the amount

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of timber found in Early Bronze III structures, made any use of the area for the kind of extensive settlement found in Early Bronze III much less viable. In effect the southern Ghôr became, in perception if not in reality, a wasteland during the second millennium. The various surveys have produced almost no evidence of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, although a cairn burial of Middle Bronze II at Deir ºAin ªAbata has recently been excavated. During Iron I, conditions were apparently still tenuous, and it was only during the late 7th and early 6th centuries b.c.e. that a small, walled, Iron Age settlement of mudbrick dwellings was established at Feifa. A similar settlement, still unexcavated and dating also to Iron II, appears to have been built at Khanazir, four miles southwest of Feifa. During the Nabataean and Roman periods, occupation of the southeastern plain picked up, especially around eß-Íafi, but it was principally in Byzantine times that settlement once more became extensive. The Byzantine settlers constructed effective aqueduct systems for water control in the wadis and employed a strategy of terracing slopes along the lower Transjordanian Mountains for agricultural and horticultural use. These practices continued to be followed in some fashion during Mamluk times, when a number of settlements in the southern Ghôr flourished. At this time sugar production became a successful industry in the plain, as evidenced by ruins of sugar mills such as the excellent example at Eß-Íafi.

Identification The effort to connect Bâb edh-Dhr⺠and Numeira with ancient sites receives no help from the names used presently in the region. Usually the modern names designate natural features of the region. Bâb edh-Dhr⺠(‘gate of the arm’), for example, may suggest the arm-like canyon of Wadi Kerak that provides the gate to the highlands eastward. The name Numeira, meaning ‘panther’, suggests that before they were killed off panthers were prevalent in the wadi. Questioning of local people showed that until 1973 the Early Bronze site of Numeira was not considered significant by people living in the area and had no name. It was considered part of the lower end of the wadi. Its modern name is simply a convenient transfer from the name of the wadi. The remainder of the names in the southern Ghôr, such as eß-Íafi, Feifa, or Khanazir, also reflect the names of the adjacent wadis and provide no clues for ancient identification. One piece of information, however, has been important for identification. This is the notation on the 6th-century c.e. Madaba map that Segor (Zoara), a Greek derivative from biblical Zoar, one of the “cities of the plain” (Gen 19:24), was located at the southeastern end of the Dead Sea in the Ghôr eß-Íafi. This location obviously must be credited to a late tradition, but an earlier foundation for it cannot be ruled out, given the reference to Zoar elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible as a location toward the south of the Dead Sea (Isa 15:5; 2 Kgs 8:21). Apart from this, no ancient sources contain names of sites that can unimpeachably be connected with the southeastern plain. Even Josephus’s references to the cities of the plain as having been in the southern Dead Sea region ( Jewish War 4.8.4) are

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obscure and not based on firsthand information. For Byzantine times, however, it should be noted that the recovery of the St. Lot church at Deir ºAin ªAbata is an important find. Recognizing the tenuousness of available data, I think it is worth considering whether the two coterminous Early Bronze Age sites of Bâb edh-Dhr⺠and Numeira have something to do with the problem of the Ortsgebundenheit (connection to a location) of the tradition of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. The core of this tradition was the coupling of the two cities usually mentioned together, Sodom and Gomorrah, to which were added several other sites (Admah, Zeboiim, Zoar) during the course of the tradition’s development. The problem of what lies behind the biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah will no doubt continue to be debated. Discussions, however, that place the location of the cities of the plain under the waters of the Dead Sea are clearly outmoded, since research into the settlement patterns of this region has made this view impossible. Also questionable is the conclusion that the tradition of Sodom and Gomorrah is to be explained simply as another example of the widespread theme of destroyed primeval cities, a theme something like that of the ancient flood. Pursuing the issue of interpretation from this perspective seems to lead far astray from the dynamics that gave rise to this tradition. The new data from the southeastern Dead Sea plain pose the question whether behind the admittedly “storied” accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah some measure of truth was not present—if nothing more, that once these two cities did exist and that memory of them was carried on by people who inhabited the southeastern plain at one time or another.

Assessment The primary contribution of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan was that it opened a new vista on shifts in the types of settlement undertaken in the southern Ghôr from the earliest part of the Early Bronze Age to its termination. The expedition has traced a progression from a pastoralist occupation that was seasonal, to a village with permanent settlers, to expansion into the concentrated walled towns of Early Bronze II and III. At Bâb edh-Dhrâº, in particular, it sought to explain causes and conditions eventuating in a startling regression from urban life during Early Bronze IV. Thus, as sites limited in their occupation to the Early Bronze period alone, Bâb edh-Dhr⺠and Numeira have brought to light a wealth of data bearing on what led to one of the most expansive periods of ancient Palestine, as well as the decline that took things in exactly the opposite direction. Complementing the data from the settlements is the fact that the great cemetery at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠contains some of the best-preserved human skeletal data for the entire duration of the Early Bronze Age, introducing new information on many aspects of human biological development during this long period. Finally, the new expedition’s attention to a full array of environmental issues in the southeastern plain is making available data that bear on one of the fascinating regions of the planet.

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Archaeology of the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan Bibliography

Albright, W. F. 1924 The Archaeological Results of an Expedition to Moab and the Dead Sea. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 14: 2–12. Donahue, J. 1985 Hydrologic and Topographic Change during and after Early Bronze Occupation at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠and Numeira. Pp. 131– 40 in Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan II, ed. A. Hadidi. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Harlan, J. R. 1981 Natural Resources of the Southern Ghor. Pp. 155–64 in The Southeastern Dead Sea Plain Expedition: An Interim Report of the 1977 Season, ed. W. E. Rast and R. T. Schaub. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 46. Cambridge, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research. Lapp, P. W. 1968 Bâb edh-Dhr⺠Tomb A 76 and Early Bronze I in Palestine. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 189: 12– 41. Ortner, D. J. 1981 A Preliminary Report on the Human Remains from the Bâb edh-Dhr⺠Cemetery. Pp. 119–32 in The Southeastern Dead Sea Plain Expedition: An Interim Report of the 1977 Season, ed. W. E. Rast and R. T. Schaub. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 46. Cambridge, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research. Politis, K. D. 1993 The 1992 Season of Excavations and the 1993 Season of Restorations at Deir ºAin ªAbata. Annual of the Department of Antiquities in Jordan (Kenneth Wayne Russell Memorial Volume) 37: 503–20. Rast, W. E. 1987 Bab edh-Dhraº and the Origin of the Sodom Saga. Pp. 185–201 in Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Memory of D. Glenn Rose, ed. L. G. Perdue, L. E. Toombs, and G. L. Johnson. Atlanta: John Knox. Rast, W. E., and Schaub, R. T. 1974 Survey of the Southeastern Plain of the Dead Sea, 1973. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 19: 5–53. Rast, W. E., and Schaub, R. T. (eds.) 1981 The Southeastern Dead Sea Plain Expedition: An Interim Report of the 1977 Season. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 46. Cambridge, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research. 2003 Bâb edh-Dhrâº: Excavations at the Town Site (1975–1981). 2 vols. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Schaub, R. T. 1982 The Origins of the Early Bronze Age Walled Town Culture of Jordan. Pp. 67– 75 in Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan I, ed. A. Hadidi. Amman: Department of Antiquities. Schaub, R. T., and Rast, W. E. 1989 Bâb edh-Dhrâº: Excavations in the Cemetery Directed by Paul W. Lapp (1965–67). Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.

Walter E. Rast

The Middle Bronze Age (circa 2000–1500 B.C.E.) Out of the rural, socially fragmented Intermediate Bronze Age came a period of new towns and villages, flourishing international trade, and political consolidation—the Middle Bronze Age. All this occurred gradually and at varying paces in different parts of the country; scholars are not always sure exactly how to synchronize these different regions. One of the period’s more fascinating aspects is that these developments were accompanied by the introduction of a whole slew of new technologies that were to have landmark implications for subsequent human history. These will be discussed below.

Defining the Middle Bronze Age There is no simple definition of the Middle Bronze Age. Archaeologists tend to base their dating and cultural interpretations on assemblages of material culture (such as pottery, bone and metal utensil forms, architecture, burial practices, and cultic paraphernalia) found at key sites. For the Middle Bronze Age (often abbreviated to MB), it is fair to say that the two reference sites are Tell Beit Mirsim, excavated and published by Albright in the 1920s and 1930s; and Megiddo, excavated and published mainly by a team from the University of Chicago at about the same time. When similar assemblages are discovered elsewhere, they are assumed to be of approximately the same date. But what does similar mean? Might some areas change more slowly than others or adopt new features selectively? In the Middle Bronze Age it is almost certain that the marginal or frontier zones of the central hills and the deserts maintained the material culture of the previous period for some time, perhaps several generations, before the new developments taking place on the coast and in the valleys reached them en masse. Having said the above, we still have to explain what archaeologists mean when they talk about MB material culture. In general, MB material culture exhibits the following characteristics that differ from, or did not exist in, the preceding Intermediate Bronze Age (Early Bronze IV): ∑ pottery made mostly on a fast wheel rather than by hand ∑ tools and weapons made mostly of bronze rather than copper (fig. 88) ∑ scarab seals appear (originally an Egyptian cultural feature; fig. 89) ∑ huge earthen ramparts and city walls (fig. 90) ∑ monumental buildings (figs. 91–92) ∑ burial under the floors of houses and courtyards within settlement confines (fig. 93)

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∑ a highly developed hierarchy of settlements from hamlets to real cities, as opposed to the previous array of small villages and the encampments of nomads and seminomads Having described what brought on the cultural changes of the MB, let us examine these features more closely. The period is divided up into stages by the experts: MB I (ca. 2000/1950– 1750 b.c.e.); MB II (1750–1650 b.c.e.); and MB III (1650–1550/1500 b.c.e.). These divisions fit roughly the chronology of parallel dynasties in Egypt: MB I = 12th Dynasty, MB II = 13th Dynasty, and MB III = 14th–17th Dynasties. But from the archaeological or material culture point of view, these divisions are essentially arbitrary. There are few, if any features present in one phase and not another. We use them because they are a convenient way of discussing defined blocks of time.

What Made Things Change: Invasion, Immigration, Trade, or Internal Affairs? The central questions that occupy archaeological research everywhere are how and why things change. Until about 30 years ago, most culture change was attributed to cataclysmic or epochal events—great earthquakes, diseases, and, most prominently, invasion and conquest by foreign peoples. But one must be able to demonstrate the validity of such explanations with real data and with rigorous testing of hypotheses. In any case, it is rare that a single factor brings about large-scale culture change. However, in the Middle Bronze Age it seems clear that people coming from other places did indeed contribute substantially to the culture of the period in Canaan. How do we know this? For one thing, we have tombs and skeletons. The few studies made by physical anthropologists so far show a clear change in the human skeletal form, particularly in the shape of the skulls. These morphological differences from the previous period appear to be of a degree that goes beyond what might be expected from dietary changes. The individuals examined came from somewhere else, although exactly where remains a mystery. Burial features may provide a direction too (see below). Another indication of a new population is architecture and fortification techniques (again, below). Mudbrick vaulted (arched) gates found at Dan (fig. 91), Acco, and Ashkelon were not really well adapted to the Mediterranean climate, with its heavy winter rains; and we see evidence for their frequent collapse, reconstruction, and subsequent abandonment. A further indication of foreign people is the presence of Hurrian names mentioned in tablets and other contemporaneous historical sources (the Hurrians were a non-Semitic northern people with their own language). Finally, a particular kind of painted pottery appears, mostly in the area of Tel Dan, which is made with techniques and motifs clearly derived from Syria. Though immigration was surely a factor in culture change, we should not lose sight of indigenous local transitions brought about by expanding trade relations

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and a growing population (below). The initial spurt of permanent settlement and fortification may have been induced by these factors.

Rural Expansion and Urbanization The land of Canaan in 2000–1900 b.c.e.—the dawn of the Middle Bronze Age—was a land of small farming villages, and pastoral (sheep- and goat-herding) nomads, and seminomads. But over the next hundred years or so, some of these villages grew to become walled towns (fig. 87). New villages were also established in areas that had previously been inhabited by nomads and seminomads, perhaps even by peasants with nomadic roots. In the southern Levant, permanent settlement first intensified in the lowlands of the coastal plain and the interior valleys in and around sites such as Aphek, Ashkelon, Megiddo, Acco, Kabri, Pella, and Tel Dan. (In Syria the urban lifestyle had never ceased.) These settlements were fortified by either walls or massive earthworks. The precociousness of the coastal development may partly have resulted from a resurgent 12th Dynasty Egypt and the trade routes that emerged between the Syrian coast and Egypt itself, although it does not seem likely that Egypt actually controlled Canaan. In a later phase of the period, MB II–III, new walled towns were established in the central hills (for example at Shechem, Shiloh, and Jerusalem) and along the northern margins of the Negev Desert (for example, Tel en-Nagila, Mal˙ata, and Masos). This expansion may have been brought on by a growing population, shortages of arable land, and possibly the steady demand for the agricultural products of Canaan in Egypt. For some reason Transjordan was not affected by

Fig. 87. Tel Megiddo. A reconstruction of dwellings lining the city wall of Stratum XII (reprinted, with permission, from Megiddo II [Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1948] fig. 397).

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this expansion; except for the northern Jordan Valley, it apparently had a consistently low settlement density.

New Technologies A number of new technologies make the Middle Bronze Age stand out from the preceding period. The pottery was now fashioned mainly on a fast wheel, leaving regular, fine horizontal striations along the inside of most ceramic vessels. Only a very distinct type of flat-bottomed cooking pot (perhaps a sort of bread mold or casserole) was made by hand. A number of vessels imitated metal ones, showing sharp angles and false rivets for example. A fine, highly burnished red slip is characteristic of the early part of the period. This was partly a means of waterproofing, but it may also have simulated the sheen of polished bronze or copper. In metallurgy, the technique of alloying tin and copper to form bronze became standard, because bronze is sturdier than copper. Copper was available from the Arabah Valley mines (although there is no evidence that these were exploited in the MB) and Cyprus, although it almost certainly came from other places as well. However, the nearest source of tin seems to have been Afghanistan (although some scholars think there was one in Anatolia), implying the existence of widereaching trade connections. New types of tools and weapons replaced the classic types of the previous periods (fig. 88). Distinctive new forms were the “duckbill” and the “notched-chisel” axes; veined and ribbed dagger; socketed lanceheads; and stick, or “toggle,” pins for fastening garments, making perforations, and perhaps for use as weapons. Along with new weapon types came new military techniques. The chariot appears to have been introduced, from the north it would seem, perhaps by the Hurrians. This was the ancient equivalent of the modern tank—a mobile projection of enhanced firepower. A new fortification type was also imported from Mesopotamia and Syria: the freestanding earthen embankment. Other methods of fortification continued from the Early Bronze Age: the freestanding wall and abutting earthwork glaçis (fig. 90). A number of explanations have been proposed to explain the proliferation of these awesome earthworks: to defend against chariots and archery (to keep them farther away), to prevent undermin-

Fig. 88. Bronze weapons typical of the Middle Bronze Age.

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ing, to defend against water erosion of wall foundations, and to express power— a sort of psychological warfare. All of these were probably true in various places, often in combination.

Literacy The Middle Bronze Age is also the first period in which literacy is firmly attested, and for this reason it is also the first “historical” period in Canaan. The lingua franca of official correspondence was Akkadian cuneiform (wedge-writing)— apparently in an Old Babylonian dialect in which local colloquialisms are present. Documents have been uncovered in Hazor, Taºanach, Gezer, and Hebron, taking the form of legal texts, literary epics, and cultic formulas (a list of offerings from Hebron, for example). Egyptian hieroglyphics are also present on imported statues of Egyptian officials found at Gezer, Megiddo, and Tell el-ºAjjûl. But these were probably antiques by the time they reached Canaan, far from their original contexts, and not testimony to official Egyptian activity in Canaan itself. The most frequent appearance of hieroglyphs is on scarab seals. But the scarabs found in Canaan usually have garbled, nonsensical signs, which indicate that whoever made them did not understand Egyptian. Instead, scarabs and their engraved signs had an amuletic value, particularly for the spirits of the deceased, since the great majority are found in tombs. The real revolution was a new type of writing invented in Canaan during this time that was to have long-lasting consequences: the alphabet. It was revolutionary in consisting of only 27–29 phonemes that resembled what they sounded like—the r sound, for example, came from the word for head, rosh—and it looked like a head. This contrasted highly with the hundreds of signs in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Akkadian cuneiform. Thus it was far easier to learn and remember; even the lower classes could do so, and in fact the alphabet appears to have been invented and first used by local people who were miners, merchants, warehouse foremen, and peasants.

The Arts New technologies, a more complex social system, and more contact with foreign peoples and distant lands all provided fertile ground for a flourishing of the arts. Canaan is poor in remains of sculpture, frescoes, and wall painting, but the minor arts are well represented. Glyptic art—mainly stone-carved cylinder and scarab seals—became an important medium of expression. The idea of the scarab seal originated in Egypt, where it was designed to imitate the form of the scarab beetle (fig. 89). This creature was held by the Egyptians to represent the emergence of life; in wall reliefs the scarab beetle is often seen as Atum, rolling along the sun toward its rebirth in the morning sky at night’s end, just as a real scarab beetle rolls a ball of dung, from which its larval young emerge, as if by spontaneous generation. For this reason, the scarab was a very common feature in burial assemblages, both in Egypt and in Canaan; they were intended to facilitate the rebirth of the deceased in either this world or some other. The great

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majority of scarabs in Canaan come from tombs. As noted above, it is now quite clear that most were made locally in Canaan by craftspeople who did not know the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some of course were actually imported from Egypt Fig. 89. Scarab seals. To the left, four different and belonged originally to high offi- views of the same seal (from Tel Dan Tomb cials, but these may have been plun- 8096, Stratum IX). To the right, a swiveldered from tombs in Egypt and mounted scarab on a ring (reprinted, with permission, from O. Keel, Corpus der Stempelsiegelimported into Canaan. Cylinder seals were usually made Amulette aus Palastina/Israel [OBO 10; Freiof hard minerals, such as hematite or bourg: Universitätsverlag, 1995] fig. 188). jasper, and were used differently, the impression being rolled on the receiving medium (clay or wax) in a continuous scene. They generally show religious and contest scenes, largely from the Syrian milieu, but also with some Egyptian influence. There are many fewer cylinder seals than scarab seals, and we have to ask ourselves why this is so. For one thing, cylinder seals were not made in the southern Levant; the nearest workshops seem to have been in Syria. Unlike the talisman-like nature of the scarabs, the cylinder seal appears to have functioned primarily in the business of daily life. But its relative rarity and the context of its findspots suggest that it was used by the elites of society. It is much more common to find opulent jewelry in the Middle Bronze Age than in previous periods. The richest assemblage came from Tell el-ºAjjûl, identified as Sharuhen, to which the dethroned Asiatic (“Hyksos”) rulers of northern Egypt retreated, with the vengeful Egyptians close on their heels. The owners hid away

Fig. 90. A cross section of the rampart fortification of Tel Dan (from A. Biran, Biblical Dan [ Jerusalem, 1994] fig. 34). Note that the scale is in meters.

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Fig. 91. A reconstruction of the mudbrick city gate of Tel Dan (from A. Biran, Biblical Dan [ Jerusalem, 1994] fig. 55).

their valuables in walls and floors, probably during the Egyptian siege. Obviously, these people never managed to return and reclaim their cached wealth. Fine jewelry has also been found at Megiddo, Jericho, Hazor, and a number of other sites. Gold and silver earrings, pendants, diadems, bracelets, and belts were decorated by granulation (apparently a Mesopotamian technique) or inlaid with glass or precious stones (cloisonné, an Egyptian technique). Geometric, celestial and floral motifs were popular, as were insects and birds. Sheet metal repoussé pendants portraying deities such as Hathor, Ishtar, or Astarte were also fairly common. Clearly, the jewelers who fashioned these luxurious personal ornaments were highly skilled, full-time craftsmen. Fragmentary wall and floor frescoes have been excavated and painstakingly reconstructed in palaces in Kabri, northern Israel, and Alalakh in Syria. That these could be extravagant and even figurative we know from the palace frescoes at

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Mari on the Euphrates in Syria. But the closest parallels are those from the Greek islands—Knossos on Crete and Thera on Santorini—and the excavators have posited that Cycladic or Minoan artists were responsible for their execution. The preserved motifs include landscapes (in miniature); vines and reeds; a swallow; architectural features such as ashlar blocks and roof beams; and geometric designs painted in a variety of warm earth tones and bright pastels. Reports of mural art are rare, but several excavations have recovered bits of painted plaster. Painted and frescoed walls and perishable materials were probably much more common than the published reports suggest. A window into the world of Middle Bronze Age woodworking was opened by the tombs excavated at Jericho. Beds, benches, stools, tables, containers, and tools of various types were preserved here due to the extreme aridity and lack of bacterial activity, so much so that we have a fairly good idea of household furnishings and carpentry techniques for the period. Carved bone was used extensively for the inlay in small wooden boxes that may have served as jewelry boxes, and possibly for furniture. The motifs consist mainly of birds and geometric designs (chevrons, cross-hatching, and concentric circles). Some show Egyptian imagery—djed signs and bound prisoners, for example. Small vessels for valuable scented oils, ointments, or the like were fashioned of faience (a glazed composition somewhat akin to glass) and alabaster (a form of translucent gypsum). The former, at least, appears to have been a purely local industry, perhaps attached to one of the royal city-state palaces. Alabaster may have come partly from a local workshop (on the east side of the central Jordan Valley).

Political and Economic Organization The lack of walled towns and monumental architecture at the beginning of this period tells us that society was less hierarchical and that political rulers— probably clan patriarchs, village headmen, and/or elders and tribal chiefs—had limited powers of coercion over their people. But palaces, ramparts, and large temples did appear (at Megiddo, Aphek, and Dan, for example), perhaps several generations into the period, as the first villages developed into larger settlements. The two groups of execration texts found in Egypt, dating to the same time (12th Dynasty) may be instructional. The earlier group lists fewer towns and more chiefs, and the later group lists more towns and fewer rulers. Some scholars have suggested that this pattern reflects a process of political consolidation. At its zenith, Middle Bronze Age society was highly integrated and hierarchical; towns had their rulers, nobles, and priests; their artisans and traders; and their hardworking peasants. Hamlets and small villages probably functioned in a local setting that was more autonomous and less socially polarized, but to some degree they must have been dependent on, and subservient to, the towns and local chiefs—for exotic materials such as metal or for security from bandits, for example. By way of illustration, it has been estimated that the huge ramparts of Shiloh, Dan, and Hazor could only have been constructed with labor acquired (coerced?) from these towns’ rural hinterlands.

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It follows from the above that regional economies were probably managed in part by the elites living in the towns—the same elites responsible for procuring imported materials and providing protection against both human enemies and natural disasters, such as drought. Contemporary texts from Mesopotamia tell us that gift-giving, sometimes across long distances, was another important aspect of the economy, particularly between rulers or between rulers and retainers. One more “monetary” expression of commerce is the circular or semicircular (better called annular and penannular) rings of gold, silver, copper, and bronze often found in tomb assemblages or cultic deposits. These rings are often too large to be finger rings and too small to be bracelets. In Mesopotamia at this time (and after), metal rings called kamkammatum were used as a form of currency that was weighed out. It stands to reason that this was their function in Canaan as well, although any metal object probably had a currency value in addition to its functional value. While large-scale, long-distance commerce was surely dominated by the upper echelons, there was certainly room for local exchange and personal enterprise.

Religious Beliefs and Behavior Anything we say in this section is bound to be speculative, since there are so few written documents and artistic portrayals that describe cultic practices and religious beliefs. Still, there is much in the archaeological record that points to such practices and beliefs. Let us look at some of these, starting with the most conspicuous. Large, massively walled, rectangular structures with a single entryway in the short wall, opposite an altar and/or niche in the back, have been uncovered at a number of sites in the Levant (for example, Ebla, Mari, Alalakh, Hazor, Shechem, Megiddo, Tell Óayyat, Tel Haror, and Tell el-Dabaº; see fig. 92). This standardized architectural form is now called a migdal (tower) or Syrian temple (because it appears first in that land). These structures are identified as temples because several of them (at Hazor, Haror, and Shechem, for example) contained paraphernalia that was obviously cultic. But many were found to be relatively poor in artifacts, and virtually none contains any iconographic information that hints at which deity or deities were being worshiped. Smaller structures of a less-standardized form have also been revealed; at least four very different, coexisting temples were excavated in the MB layers of Hazor alone. The diminutive “calf sanctuary” at Ashkelon and the temple on the beach at Nahariya are other examples. The latter was especially rich in cultic objects, many of which are now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem: female and animal figurines, miniature votive vessels, weapons and jewelry of gold, silver and bronze, and possible evidence for olive-oil production. Standing stones, called stelae (or maßßebôt in the Bible), are another fascinating feature generally thought to be cultic. Groups of stelae have been found in many places, often in very prominent locations: the Obelisk Temple at Byblos, the row of outsize stelae at Gezer, and in the cultic precinct at Megiddo, for example.

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Fig. 92. A reconstruction of the “Migdal” Temple from Shechem (from T. Busink, Der Tempel von Jerusalem [Leiden, 1970] fig. 98).

Once again, we can only guess about their precise role. A number of intriguing explanations have been suggested, and any combination is possible: they represent deities, commemorate ancestors or treaties, or embody astronomical functions and symbolism. Buried deposits containing metal objects, figurines, beads, miniature votive ceramic vessels and the like have also been reported from a number of locations (for example, Byblos, Ugarit, Megiddo, Tel Haror, and Tel Dan). Sometimes these are associated with a sanctuary, but other times no such context is discerned. Once again a number of explanations have been proffered, a favorite being that they are offerings to gods or ancestor spirits. The metal figurines in many such caches depict, it seems, various deities both male and female. Many are smiting war and/or storm gods and goddesses, others are seated and gesturing, while still other female figurines and plaques emphasize sexuality and fertility. All told, the cultic remains of ancient Canaan take on a remarkable variety of forms that suggests a heterogeneous population with different religious beliefs and much room for individual preference.

Dealing with the Dead The people of the MB invested effort and care in disposing of the dead. The variety encountered in burial practices indicates divergent ideas concerning what was proper and right. Traditional forms of burial were carried over from previous periods in the form of cave tombs and rock-carved sepulchers. Dolmens and

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Fig. 93. Tomb AII–I, no. 5 of Deputy Treasurer Amu (“the Asiatic”) from Tell el-Dabaª (from Bietak 1996: fig. 35).

tumuli continued to be used in the deserts and the steppes. But new forms were also introduced, in the valleys and coasts at first: burials of infants in jars, and older children and adults in larger chamber and cist tombs, under the floors of houses, inside the towns and villages (fig. 93). Apparently these methods were introduced from Syria and Mesopotamia, where they were already common hundreds of years earlier. Many tombs contain offerings; pottery vessels that probably contained food, drink, or perfumed oils and unguents; cuts of meat; fruit and vegetables; tools and weapons; jewelry; furniture; and the like (scarabs are noted above). The skeletons are often flexed, or contracted, into a fetal position. It seems quite clear that a belief in some kind of afterlife or rebirth can be inferred from these practices. That tombs were kin-oriented can also be deduced, both from their archaeological contexts and from ancient texts. In any event, burial within the confines of a settlement represents a significant break with earlier practices and beliefs and may be one of the better indicators of a population with immigrant roots.

The End of an Era Contrary to what one might expect, there exists no firm archaeological criterion to mark the end of the Middle Bronze Age. The material culture of the Late Bronze Age shows complete continuity with the MB and only gradual change. As usual, the criterion for marking the end of the period is an historical event, or process—namely, the ejection of the Asiatic Hyksos rulers from Egypt, which occurred in about 1540 b.c.e., according to the Egyptian texts. After a long period of

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peace, prosperity, and expansion, a number of towns and villages were destroyed, and farmsteads and hamlets abandoned. However, these destructions and abandonments took place over the space of perhaps one hundred years or more. Thus, perhaps only the ones in the south of the country can be attributed directly to the Egyptian pursuit of Hyksos. The unraveling of the social and economic fabric appears to have begun earlier. It is quite likely that the social pyramid had become top-heavy with a controlling bureaucracy and not enough production to support it. All it took was a few years of drought or over-zealous debt collection in selected locales, and the peasantry would have rebelled or moved away. Thus the foundations of a, by now, rickety social and political framework were undermined, causing it to collapse over time. The Egyptian incursion in the south may only have been the coup de grace.

Bibliography Bietak, M. 1996 Avaris—The Capital of the Hyksos: Recent Excavations at Tell el-Dabºa. London: British Museum Press. Dever, W. G. 1987 The Middle Bronze Age: The Zenith of the Urban Canaanite Era. Biblical Archaeologist 50: 148–77. Gerstenblith, P. 1983 The Levant at the Beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. ASOR Dissertation Series 5. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Ilan, D. 1995 The Dawn of Internationalism: The Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 b.c.). Pp. 297–319 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. Kempinski, A. 1992 The Middle Bronze Age. Pp. 159–210 in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. A. Ben-Tor. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mazar, A. 1990 The Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 b.c.e. Anchor Bible Reference Library 2. New York: Doubleday. Oren, E. (ed.) 1999 The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania Press. Ziffer, I. 1990 At That Time the Canaanites Were in the Land: Daily Life in Canaan in the Middle Bronze Age 2, 2000–1550 b.c.e. Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum.

David Ilan

Canaanite Religion Introduction Traditionally, studies of Canaanite religion have emphasized texts, particularly the corpus of ritual and mythological texts from Late Bronze Age Ugarit. However, physical remains recovered through archaeological excavation provide an independent and intimate witness to Canaanite religious practice. Religion in ancient Canaan was neither a static nor an isolated dimension of culture. Consequently, Canaanite places of worship vary. Multiple types of sacred structures were found in urban and rural locations, in venues both public and private. Religious worship included not only veneration of deities but also of ancestors, so funerary sites provided yet another locus of religious observance.

Definition of Place and Time This essay focuses on the second millennium b.c.e., the Middle Bronze Age I–III, and Late Bronze Age I–II (ca. 1850–1200 b.c.e.). Its geographic scope is southern Canaan—that is, the modern lands of Israel, Jordan, and southern Lebanon.

Places of Worship The Middle Bronze Age The Middle Bronze Age I (2000/1950–1800 b.c.e.). In Canaan, the Middle Bronze Age I was characterized by the establishment of small settlements. At or near several of these, including Megiddo, Byblos, Nahariya, and Ugarit(?), unique sanctuaries merging Egyptian influence (courtyard obelisks) with an indigenous Canaanite form of worship (maßßebôt) were constructed. Alternately, Tell elHayyat in the Jordan Valley contained a fortress-style sanctuary, similar to the one at contemporary Ebla in North Canaan. Middle Bronze Age II (1800/1750–1650 b.c.e.). Throughout this period, worship continued at the sanctuaries of Nahariya and Megiddo. The fortress-style sanctuary at Tell el-Hayyat was enlarged, and similar structures were constructed elsewhere in the Jordan Valley, including Tell Kittan and Kfar Rupin. These were primarily regional cult centers staffed by religious “professionals” and used by kin groups residing in or traveling through the area. The small sanctuary from Givat Sharett illuminates religious life in a “suburban” village. Finally, the tombs at Hazor may reflect a cult of ancestor worship that had its origins in the Canaanite north. Middle Bronze Age III (1650–1500 b.c.e.). The Middle Bronze Age III was characterized by the proliferation of large walled cities, many of which included sacred structures. Fortress-style temples were built in fortified Shechem, Hazor,

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and Megiddo; Shechem and Hazor now had additional sanctuaries as well. Smaller shrines were constructed at Tel Mor and in the gateway areas at Ashkelon and Tell el-Farºah North. The regional sanctuaries at Nahariya, Tell el-Hayyat, and Tell Kittan remained in use, and others were built at Gezer (the High Place) and Shiloh. Summary: Middle Bronze Age II. In the large city-states of north Canaan (Ebla, Alalakh, Ugarit, Byblos, and Mari), the construction of multiple temples in a single city occurred as early as the Middle Bronze Age I. In southern Canaan, however, most Middle Bronze Age I through Middle Bronze Age II places of worship were in unfortified countryside locations, accessible to the population at large, thereby underscoring the nonurban orientation of the first two phases of the Middle Bronze Age. It was not until Middle Bronze Age III that any, let alone multiple, sacred structures were newly erected in major cities. Life in the Middle Bronze Age underwent many changes, as demonstrated by its intensive urbanization and fortification. In the religious sphere, these changes are made evident by an increasing religious centralization and by a burgeoning hierocracy. Canaanite religion gradually evolved into the urban-based religion of Middle Bronze Age III, centered almost exclusively within municipal areas and increasingly dominated by powerful elites.

Late Bronze Age Late Bronze Age IA (1500–1450 b.c.e.). Nearly all sacred structures used in Late Bronze Age IA were structures continued from Middle Bronze Age III. Megiddo and Hazor withstood Egyptian military onslaughts, and their Middle Bronze Age III sanctuaries survived throughout Late Bronze Age I. The only new urban sanctuary was located in Beth-shan, a city with a special relationship to Egypt. New regional centers for worship were established at Shiloh and Deir ºAlla, while the old sacred structures at Tel Mor, Gezer, Nahariya, and Tel Kittan went out of use by the end of Late Bronze Age IA. Late Bronze Age IB (1450–1400 b.c.e.). In contrast to the brutal warfare of Late Bronze Age IA, Late Bronze Age IB and Late Bronze Age IIA were characterized by consolidation and renewal, as relations with Egypt stabilized. Worship during Late Bronze Age IB reflected new sociopolitical realities. At Megiddo (Temple 2048) and Hazor (Long Temple and Bipartite Temple), traditional sacred structures were modified and reused, while at Shechem the Fortress Temple was rebuilt. Nearby, Shiloh remained a pilgrimage center. The now-permanent Egyptian presence at Beth-shan was reflected in its new sanctuary, Building 10. The new Lachish Fosse Temple and the new sanctuary at Tel Mevorakh, both located along trade routes, demonstrate the important role trade played in reviving local culture. Late Bronze Age IIA (1400–1300 b.c.e.). The enlarging of sacred installations at some Late Bronze Age IIA sites and the construction of others can be attributed to the relative peace and prosperity that resulted from less oppressive Egyptian policies. Renovations were undertaken at the temples at Megiddo, Beth-shan, Tell Mevorakh, Lachish, and Shechem.

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At Hazor, the Long Temple, the sacred seat of the Canaanite aristocracy since Middle Bronze Age III, was supplanted as Hazor’s main sanctuary by the Orthostat Temple, with its many northern, Hittite-style elements. At the same time, new sacred buildings and installations, including the Stelae Temple and Shrine 6211 in Area C, the outdoor altar in Area F, and open-air installations near the gateways of Area P and Area K were constructed. Late Bronze Age IIB (1300–1200 b.c.e.). During Late Bronze Age IIB, many cities in Canaan were forced to sustain Egyptian garrisons and even to export food to Egypt or to Egyptian allies. New Egypto-Canaanite temples, at least some of which were used to facilitate the collection of needed grains, were constructed at Lachish, Beth-shan, Jerusalem, Tell Abu Hawwam, Aphek, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza. Even Temple 2048 at Megiddo fell under the authority of Egyptian administrators, resulting in the construction of a private chapel in Megiddo’s royal palace. Worship continued at the Fortress Temple in Shechem, but now a neighborhood sanctuary was also used. The Deir ºAlla sanctuary contained texts in an Aegean script. Summary: Late Bronze Age I–II. Despite the military instability of Late Bronze Age IA, the practice of Canaanite religion continued along traditional lines. As Canaan began its process of recovery in Late Bronze Age IB through Late Bronze Age IIA, new sanctuaries were built along trade routes and, even more commonly, in cities. Later, as Egypt consolidated its control over Canaan in Late Bronze Age IIB, it usurped indigenous religious traditions in support of its own imperial demands. Canaanite royal and priestly complicity in this process exacerbated the alienation of local clan groups and was in part responsible for the collapse of the Canaanite sociopolitical infrastructure at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Sacrifice: The Primary Canaanite Rite Canaanite kings were considered the earthly representatives of, or perhaps the embodiments of, major Canaanite deities. Thus the relationship between subject and god was not only religious but also social and political. Just as important was the element of economic subsistence, in which subject provided master (royal qua divinity) with requisite provisions. Sacrifice additionally provided the forum for the convening of the social group. Sacral meals were shared at one-time gatherings and at annual festivals. Kingship was proclaimed, covenants ratified, and ties between tribes and clans confirmed. Texts from Ugarit indicate the expiation of sin through sacrificial offerings. Offerings of livestock, agricultural goods, and luxury items are all attested in texts, particularly those from Ugarit, and through archaeological excavations.

The Sacred Complex A large Canaanite sacred complex typically included a sacred building and a number of courtyards, surrounded by a temenos wall. The building itself might be a single room or a number of chambers among which were a small “holy of holies,” larger areas for the presentation of offerings and the enactment of sacred

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rites, storage rooms and guard rooms. Courtyards sometimes contained favissae for discarding cultic objects and refuse pits. Foundation deposits, usually jars filled with bronze, silver, or gold statues, and other precious objects were occasionally buried under sacred buildings to consecrate their construction or other significant events. Courtyards were used for animal sacrifice, for burnt offerings, and for other rites including the sharing of sacral meals. Additionally, they provided the venue for temple industries such as metal and ceramic production. Stone molds, ingots, crucibles, and metal residues indicate on-site workshops for the production of sacred metal objects while clay molds, kilns, and ceramic by-products represent the remains of pottery workshops.

Implements of Cult Small objects. The single most common class of objects found at sacred sites is ceramic vessels, including fine tableware, elegant imported vessels, special cultic vessels, lamps, cooking pots, storage jars, and especially large quantities of bowls in which food offerings were presented. At some sites these bowls had been ritually broken. Miniature vessels presented as votive offerings are also found. Small statues were made of precious metals or, occasionally, of stone. They most often represented gods and goddesses but sometimes portrayed either the animals associated with those divinities or pious worshipers. Female figurines made of clay were found in sacred and mortuary contexts and played a role in Canaanite fertility and funerary cults. Bronze cymbals and clay masks suggest religious rites that took place within sacred precincts, as do rare pieces of dyed fabric. Astragali and inscribed ceramic livers indicate the importance of divination in the sacred sphere. Ceremonial weapons and vessels fashioned from precious metals have been found, as has jewelry made of precious metals, semiprecious stones, faience, and ivory. Other interesting artifacts include amulets, shells, scarabs, cylinder seals, ceramic “house models,” and “snake houses.” Precious heirlooms, centuries old, are sometimes found. Inscriptions and drawings are rare, but occasionally they occur on vessels or on stelae. Animal and botanical remains. Floral and faunal remains represent the remnants of sacrificial offerings. The bones or ashes of sheep or goats are commonly found. Grains and fruit pits indicate the various agricultural products offered. These offerings were often prepared for consumption, as attested to by the presence of knives for slaughtering and preparing animals, stone grinders, pounders, mortars and pestles for preparing grains, cooking pots and hearths, and vessels for serving and eating. Cultic furnishings. Canaanite sacred structures contained various combinations of cultic furnishings, both moveable and stationary. These include large stone altars for animal slaughter and for burnt offerings, incense altars, offering stands, and benches and altars on which to place multiple offerings. Obelisks, maßßebôt and stelae, some signifying deities or ancestors and others carved with royal inscriptions, were sometimes placed in courtyards.

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Iconographic representations Canaanite deities and religious symbols are depicted on a number of media. These include figurines and sculptures, reliefs on stelae and pendants, and graffiti and drawings on ceramic vessels. Gods represented include El, Reshef, and Baºal; goddesses include Astarte, Elat, Anat, and Qudshu. Animals (bulls, lions, snakes, birds, deer, and ibexes), trees of life, and pubic triangles were all popular religious symbols. Themes include gods smiting and gods victorious, goddesses regnant and goddesses nurturing, animals feeding and animals at play. Ceramic figurines are generally associated with fertility and with the funerary cult.

Mortuary Sites Important information about Canaanite beliefs comes from the excavation of burials, which were intramural (in storage jars under house floors, in the case of small children) or extramural, in caves, in tombs, or in the ground. Burials were variously individual and multiple; multiple interments often took place over a long period of time in family vaults. Depending on resources, grave goods include simple objects from daily life, luxury goods, and furniture. Evidence suggests the veneration of important ancestors, such as kings and clan leaders, and care for the deceased prior and subsequent to interment.

Textual References The late-13th-century b.c.e. destruction of Ugarit resulted in the preservation of a large corpus of texts, many of which illuminate aspects of religion in this Late Bronze Age Canaanite city. The poetic and ritual texts provide the basis for many studies of Canaanite religious practice. Among their important contributions are presentations of mythological and epic stories, including references to major gods and goddesses (some of whom appear elsewhere in iconographic representations) and to epic heroes. Most prominent in the Canaanite literary pantheon were El, Baºal, Mot, Asherah, and ºAnat. Other ritual texts delineate the major components of a number of religious rites, focusing especially on animal sacrifice, as leaders made offerings to ensure the well-being of the community and to expiate sin.

Summary The witness of the archaeological evidence (combined with the texts from Ugarit) is to the multiplicity of worship experience in Middle and Late Bronze Age Canaan and to the importance of sacrifice as the primary means of ritual enactment. For Canaanites, sacrifice was the sacred rite, the primary focus of religious ritual, and the means by which people defined their relationship to each other and to their gods. The veneration of ancestors was another important aspect of Canaanite religion, apparent in texts and through the excavation of funerary remains. Finally, the need to ensure fertility, fundamental to an agriculturally-based society, meant that goddesses and gods were of critical importance to Canaanites. Iconographic

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representations of gods stress victory; those of godesses emphasize fecundity, sexuality, and death.

Bibliography Cross, F. M. 1973 Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Detienne, M., and Vernant, J.-P. (eds.) 1989 The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dever, W. G. 1987 The Contribution of Archaeology to the Study of Canaanite and Israelite Religion. Pp. 209– 47 in Ancient Israelite Religion, ed. P. D. Miller Jr., P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride. Philadelphia: Fortress. Geertz, C. 1969 Religion as a Cultural System. Pp. 1– 46 in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. M. Banton. 2d ed. London: Tavistock. Hallo, W. W. 1987 The Origins of the Sacrificial Cult: New Evidence from Mesopotamia and Israel. Pp. 3–13 in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D. Miller Jr., P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride. Philadelphia: Fortress. Levine, B. A. 1983 The Descriptive Ritual Texts from Ugarit: Some Formal and Functional Features of the Genre. Pp. 467–75 in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. C. L. Meyers and M. O’Connor. Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research / Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Mazar, A. 1992 Temples of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages and Iron Ages. Pp. 161–87 in The Architecture of Ancient Israel: From the Prehistoric to the Persian Periods, ed. A. Kempinski and R. Reich. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Nakhai, B. A. 2001 Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel. American Schools of Oriental Research 7. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Negbi, O. 1976 Canaanite Gods in Metal: An Archaeological Study of Ancient Syro-Palestinian Figurines. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press. Renfrew, C. 1985 The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary of Phylakpoi. The British School of Archaeology at Athens Supplement 18. London: Thames & Hudson. Tadmor, M. 1982 Female Cult Figurines in Late Canaan and Early Israel: Archaeological Evidence. Pp. 139–73 in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays, ed. T. Ishida. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Tarragon, J. M. de. 1988 Le culte à Ugarit: D’apres les textes de la pratique en cunéiforme alphabétiques. Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 19. Paris: Gabalda.

Beth Alpert Nakhai

The Late Bronze Age The Canaanite culture of Late Bronze Age Palestine parallels, chronologically and politically, the New Kingdom in Egypt. It is bracketed by two major ethnic movements: the expulsion of the “Hyksos” from Egypt at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty; and the incursions of the multinational “Sea Peoples” toward the end of the Twentieth Dynasty. The most distinctive feature of the intervening three and a half centuries is the international nature of the Eastern Mediterranean world of which Canaan was a part, enjoying the commercial, political, and social exchanges that flourished in this truly cosmopolitan setting. Internally, the period is difficult to divide, and the subdivisions that have been noted in the archaeological record of Canaan more often reflect the result of the political and military actions of its neighbors or the commercial successes of its trading partners than they represent changes that can be framed in strictly SyroPalestinian terms. Our understanding of the period is further obscured by the fact that the material culture of Late Bronze Age Palestine continued a long and steady development that had begun already in the Middle Bronze Age. However, as is customary, the period is divided here into Late Bronze I (A and B) and Late Bronze II (A and B), based largely on the system devised by Albright during his excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim in the 1920s–1930s. Modifications to the scheme that have taken place since Albright’s day (best discussed in Weinstein 1982) have also been included here.

Late Bronze IA The Late Bronze IA covers a period of approximately a half-century at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty: from Ahmose’s wars with the Hyksos through the attack of Thutmose III on Megiddo (ca. 1530–1468 b.c.e.). It would appear to have been a period in which local Canaanite chieftains formed and adjusted alliances with neighboring friends and rivals in the face of pharaoh’s renewed interest in their land. For their part, although they regularly campaigned in Canaan, the Egyptians did not at this time display any interest in remaining there as an occupying force. Evidence for Late Bronze IA domestic architecture is both scant and uncertain. Several sites seem to demonstrate a gap in occupation at this time, but the badly damaged Stratum IX gate and “palace” in Area AA at Megiddo seems to have survived from the Middle Bronze Age, and similar longevity has been suggested for both Bliss’s “City II” at Tell el-Hesi and “City I/Palace II” at Tell elºAjjûl. Such continuity, however, can be demonstrated more easily in the religious architecture. The internal phasing of the fortified migdal Temple 2048 at Megiddo and Temple IB at Shechem give firm evidence for continuity, as do both the “Long Temple” (Area A) and the “Orthostat Temple” (Area H) at Hazor.

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For the most part, Late Bronze IA burials reused earlier, often centuries old, shaft tombs and are usually datable only by the presence or absence of the ceramic type-fossils of the period (see below). Although several funerary groups have been assigned to this period, the potential value of key Late Bronze IA deposits such as Megiddo Tomb 1100 and Beth-shan Tomb 42 has been lost to postdepositional destruction. Since much of the local Late Bronze Age ceramic repertoire closely followed established Middle Bronze Age fashions, the isolation of Late Bronze IA deposits is based on the appearance of three specialty wares in a given deposit. (1) The very distinctive (“elaborate”) Bichrome Ware, often decorated with birds and fish, was originally believed to have been the work of a single “Tell el-ºAjjûl Painter,” but recent scientific tests suggest that it was crafted in workshops not only in Palestine but also on the island of Cyprus. (2) Grey/Black Lustrous Ware was a distinctive fabric that was used to produce only a single vessel form: tall-necked, globular juglets with single handles attached below the rim in a petal-like fashion. (3) The origin of Chocolate-on-White Ware, first identified and aptly named by W. F. Petrie, has not yet been determined. Technically it is very well known, however, and appears only in a limited range of shapes.

Late Bronze IB Late Bronze IB is a chronological and cultural subdivision whose existence has been debated. Here the term is used to indicate the period in Palestinian history that begins with Thutmose III’s defeat of the coalition of Syrian maryannu at the Battle of Megiddo and ends with the ascension of Pharaoh Amenhotep III to the Egyptian throne (ca. 1468–1400 b.c.e.). Whether or not Thutmose III actually destroyed Megiddo or simply attacked and defeated it is a moot point but, during the 75 years that followed this event, Egypt’s policy toward Canaan changed drastically. New princes, bound to Egypt by oaths of fealty, were installed in strategic areas of Canaan in order to ensure control over the local citizenry. After Thutmose III finally succeeded in taking Qadesh during his sixth campaign, thus establishing Egyptian hegemony over the length of Syria–Palestine, he enacted even sterner measures, bringing children of the local nobility back to Egypt as hostages. This policy would not only assure the good behavior of relatives left behind in Canaan, but it would also provide a corp of future leaders who would be sympathetic to the proper (meaning Egyptian) way of doing things when the Egyptianized princes returned to rule their own people. At this time Canaan was divided into three administrative districts in order to facilitate and expedite the flow of taxed goods to the Nile Valley. Each district was controlled by an Egyptian overseer stationed (from north to south) at Sumur (modern Tell Kazel?), Kumidu (modern Kamîd el-Lôz), or Gaza (modern Gaza or Raphia). An elaborate system of maryannu messengers kept these administrative centers in touch with each other as well as with the home office. Although Thutmose’s policies might seem harsh, he was actually a great deal more benevolent than many of the pharaohs who would subsequently rule Canaan. For instance,

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when Amenhotep II captured seven Syrian princes near Damascus during his second Asiatic campaign, he personally dispatched them with his mace and sailed back to Egypt with their bodies suspended (upside down) from the prow of his ship. They were later hung on temple walls. A glimpse of the Late Bronze IB flora and fauna of Syria–Palestine as viewed through contemporary Egyptian eyes can be seen in the detailed carvings with which Thutmose III decorated the festival hall that he added to the Temple of Amon at Karnak after his many successful Asiatic campaigns. The reason that many scholars question the existence of Late Bronze IB as a separate cultural entity is the fact that distinct archaeological deposits of the period are difficult to isolate. Continued development of the domestic pottery types combine with the absence of the LB IA specialty wares to make this period very difficult to define ceramically. However, Cypriot imports did continue to arrive, now in the form of White Slip II “milk bowls,” while ceramic imports from the Aegean world (Late Helladic/Late Minoan) are encountered for the first time. No civic, domestic, or funerary architecture has yet been assigned to Late Bronze IB with certainty, but with religious architecture we seem to be on firmer ground. The Fosse Temple (Structure I) at Lachish, the Orthostat Temple at Hazor (Area H) with its evidence for the practice of the Mesopotamian custom of hepatoscopy, and the Stratum XI temple at Tel Mevorakh all appear to have been in use during Late Bronze IB, and all give the impression of being small, intimate shrines. At the opposite end of this spectrum is the large, rambling religious precinct in Level IX at Beth-shan (the “Thutmose III Temple”), part of which was dedicated to “Mekal, Lord of Beth-shan,” a deity depicted in a hybrid Egypto-Canaanite style that aptly reflects the blending of these two cultures in 15th-century b.c.e. Palestine.

Late Bronze IIA Late Bronze IIA, which is roughly contemporary with the reigns of Amenhotep III, the Amarna Period, and the “return to normalcy” at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1400–1300 b.c.e.), was a time of reasserted independence for the Canaanite chieftains. Ceremonial scarabs commemorating the marriage between Amenhotep III and Princess Gilu-Khepa of Mitanni, found at Bethshemesh and Gezer, reflect the diplomatic style of a pharaoh who would join in a similar marriage with the daughter of Kadashman-Enlil, the Kassite king. Amenhotep III’s son, Amenhotep IV (later changed to “Akhnaten”), lacked either the skill and/or the desire to maintain the Egyptian holdings in Canaan; and, much to the disgruntlement of the army, priests, and others, this attitude turned to complete neglect when he moved his capital to Akhetaten (modern Tell el-Amarna) and almost totally immersed himself in the worship of the solar disc (the Aten). In the 19th century, local farmers of the site discovered more than 300 cuneiform tablets, known collectively as the “Amarna Tablets,” which provide rich

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insight into the diplomatic correspondence between pharaoh and the rulers of the great powers of the day. In addition, correspondence between pharaoh and the local vassal states of Syria–Palestine gives eye-witness testimony to the increasing pressure caused by the Hittites’ southward advance into the vacuum created by Egypt’s lack of concern for its Canaanite interests. Many of the local rulers began to form new alliances, while Abdi-Ashirta of Amurru and his son went about their own policy of expansion. Further confounding the situation was the appearance of a large number of freebooters and troublemakers, collectively known as the Hapiru/Habiru (Sumerian SA.GAZ). Letter after letter in the Amarna archives records the pleas of the local vassals for pharaoh to send troops to Canaan in order to maintain or reestablish control in the face of this increasing turmoil. A sense of civic/domestic architecture in Palestine during Late Bronze IIA can be gained from the Stratum VIII “palace” and gateway at Megiddo, but much more is known about the temples of the time. The Fosse Temple at Lachish was rebuilt and enlarged (Temple II), while the earlier migdal Temple 2048 at Megiddo (Stratum VIIA) and Temple 2A at Shechem survive but are much less impressive than their predecessors. During Late Bronze IIA, the identity of the deity worshiped was slowly coming into focus. Among the cult objects recovered from the Stratum X temple at Mevorakh was a bronze serpent of a type also known from cult-associated deposits at the Gezer “High Place” and the Hathor Temple at Timna. At Hazor, the earlier temple in Area H was enlarged at this time, and a pair of basalt orthostats, each carved with the image of a lion, was added. A gold foil plaque from the “Summit Temple” on the tell at Lachish depicts a nude goddess (Astarte?) standing on a horse, who appears to have been worshiped with a male consort (Reshef?), whose spear-brandishing image was found incised on a stone slab in the same temple. Burial practices are similarly well documented in Late Bronze IIA. Gezer Cave I.10A, originally dug as a cistern, was reused during this period for the deposition of multiple burials. Included in this deposit was a full-length clay sarcophagus embellished with rows of handles along the length of the lid and down the sides. Although unique to Palestine, similar larnax-burials were very popular on the island of Crete during the Middle and Late Minoan periods. An example of a tomb of this period that had been initially designed for funerary practices is Tomb 8144–8145 at Hazor, which contained over 500 vessels, including a substantial number of pieces imported from Cyprus and the Aegean. Smaller, but equally cosmopolitan in its offerings, Tomb 387 at Tell Dan presented evidence for 45 interments. Included with their grave goods was an exceptionally well-preserved Mycenaean “chariot krater” of a type that is known in Palestine at sites along the coast from Ras Shamra to Tell el-Farºah (South) and as far inland as Amman and Sahab in the Transjordanian highlands. The ever-increasing percentage of imported Cypriot and Aegean pottery in the temples and tombs of Late Bronze IIA Canaan was accompanied by a corresponding decline in the quality of the locally-produced wares. Bowls, chalices, dipper juglets, and other familiar forms were much more poorly crafted

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and appear as distant reflections of their Middle Bronze Age ancestors. Darkon-light, painted decoration was occasionally added to some of these vessels, in an apparent attempt to resuscitate a very tired ceramic repertoire; but this type of decoration is usually limited to groups of lines, “metopes,” and schematically represented trees. Occasionally, some of the abstract elements are combined with stick-figure birds and/or caprids to form a “Tree of Life” pattern, but even at its most decorative the best of the local pottery pales, both technically and artistically, in comparison with the meanest of the imports.

Late Bronze IIB The Late Bronze IIB period parallels the Nineteenth and Twentieth Egyptian Dynasties and represents a period of slightly more than a century from the ascension of the aged Ramses I through the slow collapse of the Egyptian Empire following the defeat of the Sea peoples by Ramses III (ca. 1300–1175 b.c.e.). During the early part of the period, the cities and towns of Canaan suffered severely from a succession of military campaigns, as Egypt tried to reestablish its pre-Amarna frontiers. In the first year of his reign, which he termed “the Renaissance,” Seti I marched into Palestine and defeated a large coalition of local Canaanite chieftains at Beth-shan, where he set up a victory stele before pushing northward into Syria and then southward through the Lebanon Valley to Tyre and the Mediterranean. In subsequent campaigns this pharaoh continued to reassert Egypt’s control over its once-wayward vassals in an attempt to block the increasing threat that was posed by the expanding power of the Hittites, who under King Muwatallis had actually moved their capital south to Tattashsha to be nearer to their Syrian interests. These policies were continued by Seti’s son and successor, Rameses II, who enjoyed the longest reign in Egyptian history (67 years) and whose colossal (1000 ton) statue in his mortuary temple at Thebes (the “Ramesseum”) would later inspire the 19th-century poet Shelley to write his famous poem “Ozymandias.” In the fifth year of his reign, Rameses II fought a very large coalition of Hittite and Syrian troops at Kadesh-on-the-Orontes. Although boasts of victory were carved into the walls of temples throughout Egypt (Karnak, Luxor, and Abu Simbel), clay tablets excavated at the Hittite capital of Hattusha (modern Bogazköy) suggest a Hittite victory and lead us to believe that for the Egyptians it was at best a draw. The cost of continuing such hostilities must have been enormous for both sides; and with the Libyan and Sherden pressure facing Egypt on the West and Assyria becoming more aggressive on the Hittites’ southern border, the stage was slowly prepared for peace between the two superpowers of the day. Subsequently, 16 years after the Battle of Kadesh, Rameses II and his Hittite counterpart Hattusilis II entered into a treaty of peace, the text of which has been recovered both in a cuneiform document from the Hittite archives at Bogazköy and in a hieroglyphic version on the walls of the Ramesseum. The treaty, sealed with a state marriage, ushered in a period of peace in Canaan that would last for decades. The

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period, however, was not completely without strife. Pharaoh Merneptah, Rameses II’s 13th son, in a victory stele commemorating his defeat over the Libyans and an amalgam of future “Sea Peoples,” also claimed victory over some groups in Canaan. This inscription included the famous statement (line 7), “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” Since the name “Israel” is qualified by the hieroglyphic determinative for “people” (as opposed to the determinative for “nation”), some scholars see this reference as evidence for a settled Israel in central-southern Canaan as early as the fifth year of the reign of Merneptah (ca. 1207 b.c.e.). In the meantime, the “Sea Peoples,” some traveling with their families and draught animals, continued to be an increasing source of trouble for the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The situation continued to deteriorate until Rameses III in his eighth year confronted this international confederation of brigands on two fronts. Somewhere along the coast of Palestine, his army destroyed the infantry and chariots of the invading land forces, while off the shore of the eastern Nile Delta, the Egyptian navy clashed with the ships of the intruders and absolutely annihilated them. When the battle was over, Rameses settled groups of the vanquished in southern Palestine, probably to serve as mercenaries. One such group, the PLST, would later emerge as the “Philistines” of the biblical narrative. Although they completely eliminated the external threat, the Egyptians do not appear to have been able to enjoy the fruits of their victory, for the costs of success had so exhausted both their resolve and their revenue that Egypt slowly slipped into a period of decline that would last for centuries. Although true domestic architecture of the Late Bronze IIB period is scantily preserved, we are able to distinguish an important type of civic building termed the “Governor’s Residence.” These distinctive, multi-roomed, courtyard buildings have been excavated at several sites in southern and eastern Canaan (among others, Tell esh-Shariºah, Tell el-Óesi, Beth-shan, Tell el-Farºah South, Aphel/Râs el-ºAin, and Tell es-Saºidiyeh east of the Jordan River) and appear to represent the administrative centers through which the Egyptians controlled their Asiatic empire. Egyptian influence is noticeable in the religious architecture at Beth-shan, especially in the so-called “Amenhotemp III” temple in Stratum VII and the excavator’s “Seti I” temple in Stratum VI, both of which most likely date to the Late Bronze IIB period. This influence should not be surprising at a site that has produced a plethora of Egyptian and Egypto-Canaanite artifacts, including many sculpted steles and a full-sized basalt statue of Rameses III. The indigenous Canaanite cults, however, also continued to coexist. At Lachish, the Fosse Temple (Structure III) continued into the period with only minor modifications, as did the temple in Area H at Hazor, in which a small statue was found that may represent the storm god Hadad. Continuity is also shown in the temple in Area C at Hazor, where the cult focus was a niche containing a basalt statue of a seated male flanked by an array of ten basalt maßßebôt, one of which is carved with a pair of outstretched human arms reaching toward (?) a disc and crescent.

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The eclectic nature seen in the religious architecture is also apparent in the burial customs of the day, and in fact it is very difficult to distinguish any trends in funerary practices that are specific to the period. If a common element did exist, however, it was the increased attention paid to the individual, which is manifested in the discovery of fewer “communal” bone piles and more single interments. The influence that Egyptian thoughts and beliefs had on certain segments of Canaanite society can be seen in the popularity of anthropoid coffins, usually depicting the face and upper torso of the deceased on the lid. Such sarcophagi have been found at Beth-shan, Tell el-Farºah (South), and especially at Deir el-Balah, where a large cemetery was excavated within the wider context of its settlement. Common sense and neutron activation analysis indicate that these large, bulky, and very friable objects were made locally in Canaan and not imported from Egypt. This type of burial survived into the Early Iron Age, when it is often associated with the Philistines or other “Sea Peoples” after they settled (or had been settled) along the Canaanite coast. The quality of the local pottery continued to decline during Late Bronze IIB, and most of the vessels were poorly fabricated and carelessly decorated. Imports from Cyprus, so popular in the preceding periods, for some unexplicable reason were no longer imported to Palestine, leaving a vacuum in the market that was quite readily filled by imports from the Aegean world. Toward the end of Late Bronze IIB, however, the quality of the imports also began to drop markedly, and many of them appear to have been made outside the traditional Aegean production centers, some on the coast of Canaan itself. This situation must be a reflection of the increasing difficulties encountered in long-range, sea-borne trade that was one result of the disturbances brought to the eastern Mediterranean by the marauding Sea Peoples. The interface between the Bronze and Iron Ages is blurry at best and, as Fritz (1987) has shown, many of the major Palestinian cities and towns suffered one or more destructions between the reigns of Rameses II and Rameses VI or possibly a little later (ca. 1180–1140 b.c.e.). The culprit(s) is/are not easy to identify, but certainly the fickle and capricious leaders of Canaan must share the blame with outsiders such as the Egyptians, the habiru, and the “Sea Peoples” for creating the atmosphere that brought the Late Bronze Age to a close.

Bibliography Dothan, T., and Dothan, M. 1982 People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines. New York: Macmillan. Fritz, V. 1987 Conquest or Settlement? The Early Iron Age in Palestine. Biblical Archaeologist 50: 84–100. Gonen, R. 1984 Urban Canaan in the Late Bronze Period. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 253: 61–73.

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Gray J. 1965 The Legacy of Canaan. Leiden: Brill. Knapp, B. A. 1992 Bronze Age Mediterranean Island Cultures and the Ancient Near East, parts 1 and 2. Biblical Archaeologist 55: 52–72; 112–28. Leonard, A. Jr. 1986 Some Problems Inherent in Mycenaean/Syro-Palestinian Synchronisms. Pp. 319–32 in Problems in Greek Prehistory: Papers Presented at the Centenary Conference of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, Manchester, April 1986, ed. E. B. French and K. A. Wardle. Bedminster: Bristol Classical Press. 1989 Archaeological Sources for the History of Palestine: The Late Bronze Age. Biblical Archaeologist 52: 4–39. Mereeillees, R. S. 1986 Political Conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. Biblical Archaeologist 49: 42–50. Naªaman, N. 1981 Economic Aspects of the Egyptian Occupation of Canaan. Israel Exploration Journal 31: 172–85. Oren, E. 1984 “Governor’s Residencies” in Canaan under the New Kingdom: A Case Study of Egyptian Administration. The Journal for the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 14: 37–56. Redford, D. B. 1992 Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sandars, N. K. 1978 The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean. London: Thames & Hudson. Strange, J. 2001 The Late Bronze Age. Pp. 291–321 in The Archaeology of Jordan, ed. B. MacDonald, R. Adams, and P. Bienkowski. Levantine Archaeology I. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Albert Leonard, Jr.

El-Amarna Texts Reflective of the “cuneiform culture” that existed throughout the ancient Near East during the latter half of the second millennium b.c.e. the el-Amarna texts represent an archive of invaluable importance for the reconstruction of Egyptian and Syro-Palestinian history and culture. These clay tablets were first discovered among the ruins of the ancient city of Akhetaten in the late 19th century by Egyptian natives. Eventually 382 tablets and fragments found their way to museums and private collections and have been published. All but 32 are letters or inventories dealing with issues of administration in Egyptian-controlled Syria– Palestine during the 14th century b.c.e., and nearly all of them were received by the Egyptian government from their political representatives and vassals in that territory. The texts represent approximately a 30-year span during the reigns of Amenophis III and Amenophis IV (later known as Akhenaten). The site of Akhetaten is 190 miles south of Cairo on a plain on the east bank of the Nile River. It was briefly the capital of Egypt, starting approximately 1356 b.c.e. and was abandoned after the death of its founder Akhenaten. The social and artistic revolution represented by the changes in architecture, sculpture, and religious activity during this brief period took Egypt’s eyes off its possessions in Syria–Palestine. The result, as reflected in the el-Amarna tablets, is the practice of political opportunism by many of Egypt’s vassals and a much greater degree of unrest in the form of banditry and civil disturbance. The language used in the Amarna tablets, with four exceptions (EA 15, 24, 31– 32), is Babylonian, a lingua franca for international and diplomatic correspondence throughout the ancient Near East at this time. It has a provincial character, with the retention of obsolete vocabulary from an earlier period, as well as the introduction of local forms and transliterations from native languages. As is typical of the Old Babylonian letter form (see the Mari texts especially), there is a general standardization of style, with the text usually beginning, “Speak to PN. Thus says PN” (PN = personal name). The body of the letters also contains conventional and diplomatic phrases. This is particularly evident in the international correspondence from the rulers of the Hittite Empire and the Hurrian kings. There is a stylized character to phrases addressing the pharaoh’s power or attributes and when the writer uses treaty language to point out a long-standing pattern of peace with Egypt or of the reciprocal receipt of gifts and assistance. There are also set forms in the letters from Egyptian vassals and local rulers in Syria–Palestine, such as the prostration formula: “I bow myself seven times and seven times.” One can get from these letters a sense of how the territory was supposed to be administered and what Egyptian expectations were in the way of tribute payments, the conscription of corvée workers, and the maintenance of a

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peaceful, productive, subject people. As might be expected, the subordinates emphasize as much of the positive aspects of their activities as possible, and they are quick to remind the pharaoh of their loyalty and past accomplishments. However, in this troubled period they also must report on very practical concerns and make demands for assistance. All of the demands of the pharaoh on his administrators cannot be met, and some of them are quite pointed in their reactions to orders that they find unrealistic or to charges of incompetence or disloyalty (see Labªayu’s letters, EA 252– 54). Among the officials most often represented in the archive is Rib-Hadda of Byblos. He is a most irritating correspondent, constantly complaining of conditions in his area, constantly making requests of the pharaoh, and always having an excuse for not fulfilling the pharaoh’s demands (see EA 112, 117, 119, 121–26, 130). The principal crisis addressed in the correspondence was the creation of the new kingdom of Amurru in Syria, on the northern reaches of Egyptian control, and the reemergence of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia. This latter event also occasioned a struggle between the Hittites and the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni for control of northern Mesopotamia and Syria. During this period of unrest, some of the Egyptian vassals took advantage of the situation to promote their own aims. Among them were Labªayu of Shechem and his sons. They are accused in the texts of hiring habiru (ºApiru) mercenaries to attack neighboring cities and towns and of forming an alliance with other city-states against Egyptian control. While the Egyptians and their Canaanite allies at Beth-shan and elsewhere were strong enough to quell this attempt at state building, the area was never quiet for long. The Amarna tablets represent a unique archive of historical materials that provide our only substantial information on the amorphous period of the 14th century b.c.e. While they, like all royal correspondence, are filled with propaganda and formalized statements, they are also a source of data on the formation of new states in the region and the role of stateless peoples like the habiru. Linguistically they are important for the study of dialect and the use of an international language by non-Akkadian-speaking people. The relationship between these documents and the biblical narrative, however, is tenuous, and links that have been made between the habiru and the Hebrew people are at this point without substance.

Bibliography Cohen, R., and Westbrook, R. 2000 Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Knudtzon, J. A.; Weber, O.; and Ebeling, E. 1915 Die el-Amarna Tafeln mit Einleitung und Erlauterungen. Vols. 1–2. Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 2. Leipzig: Hinrichs. Moran, W. L. 1992 The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Naªaman, N. 1986 Habiru and Hebrews: The Transfer of a Social Term to the Literary Sphere. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45: 271–88. Rainey, A. F. 1978 El-Amarna Tablets 359–379: Supplement to J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln. 2d rev. ed. Altes Orient und Altes Testament 8. Berlin: Kevelaer / NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag.

Victor H. Matthews

Trade and Exchange in the Levant The Levant, in part because of its geographical location, served as a crossroads for trade and exchange throughout much of antiquity. International routes connecting Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Aegean ran directly through Canaan, Transjordan, and Syria–Lebanon, which together form the region known today as the Levant. Frequently under the control of hostile powers, this diverse territory played host to foreign merchants as well as giving birth to native traders who journeyed to far-flung destinations and returned with exotic goods. Perhaps the best-known period of trade and exchange is the period popularly attributed to the time of King Solomon, but international exchanges of both mundane and exotic materials had already been ongoing for millennia prior to Solomon’s reign, and they continued for more than a millennium after his reign as well. As early as the ninth–sixth millennia b.c.e., foreign products were being carried long distances to Israel and Transjordan; for instance, obsidian from eastern and central Anatolia has been found at Jericho in Pre-Pottery Neolithic levels and at Tell Kabri in Pottery Neolithic levels. Foreign relations expanded during the following Chalcolithic period, so that raw materials from all over the Near East were imported into the Levant, including basalt, turquoise, copper, and ivory tusks. Some of the earliest Egyptian objects in Canaan date to this period, found at Gilat, Tel Aviv, ºEn-Gedi, and additional sites in the northern Sinai. Beginning in the mid–fourth millennium b.c.e., during the Early Bronze I period, substantial links between the Levant and Egypt in particular are attested. A large number of Egyptian ceramic vessels, both imported and locally produced, have been uncovered at Tel Halif, Arad, Nahal Tillah, and elsewhere; a few fragments bear the name of Narmer, unifier of Egypt and final king of Dynasty 0. Perhaps in return, a somewhat smaller number of Syro-Palestinian imports have been found in Egypt, primarily ceramic vessels found at Naqada and other sites in Lower Egypt, as well as in the eastern Delta. The earliest depictions of Canaanite merchants (or possibly tribute bearers) date from this period as well, portrayed on small wood or ivory plaques discovered in First Dynasty tombs in Egypt. These specific Levantine-Egyptian contacts continued during the early third millennium b.c.e.; it has been hypothesized that Syro-Palestinian exports by this time included wine, oil, honey, perfume, and textiles, exchanged for Egyptian stone vessels, jewelry, precious stones, and various perishable items. Use of the overland trade route to and from Egypt temporarily diminished with the close of the Early Bronze II period, however, and was supplanted, or at least enhanced, by a maritime route leading between Egypt and coastal Syria. In part as a response to the growing need for timber in the ancient world, the coastal cities of Syria– Lebanon such as Byblos and Ugarit gradually began their rise to prominence in

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Fig. 94. Canaanites in Egypt; tomb painting from Beni Hassan, Egypt (reproduced from R. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien [Berlin: Nicolaische Buchhandlung, 1891]).

this period. Particularly with the establishment of the kingdom of Ebla in Syria, the coastal and inland cities of Syria–Lebanon began to make substantial contributions to a newly-vigorous series of international contacts between the Levant and the external world. Throughout the Early Bronze III–IV periods (ca. 2600–2000 b.c.e.), Canaan looked more to the north than to the south for its foreign relations, even as far as Anatolia once again. Specific examples of imported objects include a gold plaque found near Beth-yerah, which resembles contemporary objects discovered at Alaca Höyük in Anatolia; two axes of green stone in the temple at Ai, probably also brought from Anatolia; and a series of bone handles with incised decoration, which might be importations from Anatolia or the Aegean region. The coastal cities of Syria–Lebanon remained in contact with Egypt, however. Byblos in particular seems to have developed a flourishing relationship with Egypt around 2300 b.c.e.; numerous Egyptian objects, including alabaster vessels with the cartouches of various 6th Dynasty kings, have been found in late-third-millennium contexts at this site. Toward the end of the millennium, it appears that relations between Canaan and Egypt were also reinitiated, as indicated by finds of Egyptian pottery at sites in the northern Sinai. The second millennium b.c.e. saw the beginning of truly substantial international relations between the Levant and the outside world, with epigraphic and textual documentation to supplement the evidence of the material goods themselves. The Execration Texts, written by the kings of Egypt during the 12th Dynasty (ca. 1990 b.c.e. onwards), are early examples of documents of this kind. The texts consist of bowls or statuettes inscribed or painted with the names of settlements and their rulers in Canaan, Syria, and elsewhere. The Egyptians apparently hoped that texts like these would magically help to give them control over the named cities, which include the Middle Bronze I settlements of Ashkelon, Jerusalem, Beth-shan, Shechem, Megiddo, Acco, Hazor, Laish (Dan), and Byblos, among others. Evidence that the Egyptians were indeed in contact with, and perhaps in control of, the Levant at this time may be seen in various Egyptian artifacts dating to the 12th and 13th Dynasties, many inscribed with royal names, found at Megiddo, Jericho, Gezer, Tell el-ºAjjûl, Byblos, and Ugarit. The Story of Sinuhe, an Egyptian biographical tale describing life in “Retenu” (northern Canaan), is also frequently cited as a textual source for information regarding contact between these two regions during the 20th century b.c.e.

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Further documentation of contacts between the Middle Bronze I Levant and Egypt, in pictorial form this time, is found in the well-known wall paintings at Beni Hasan in Upper Egypt, dating to the Egyptian Middle Kingdom Period (ca. 19th century b.c.e.). Here is depicted a caravan of Semitic-looking people, probably Canaanites from the northern Transjordan area, led by their chief, a “Ruler of a Foreign Land” whose name is recorded as “Abishar.” The Semites are either merchants bringing products or emissaries bearing tribute to Egypt. A large textual archive found at the ancient city of Mari on the EuFig. 95. Canaanites in an Egyptian wall paintphrates River in Syria shows that the ing (reproduced from Y. Yadin, The Art of WarLevant also had a relationship with fare in Biblical Lands [ Jerusalem: International the Amorite kingdoms of northern Publishing, 1963]). Syria and Mesopotamia during this period. Dating to the early 18th century b.c.e., the clay tablets in this archive mention northern Canaanite towns, including Hazor and Laish (Dan), and Syrian towns such as Ugarit and Aleppo. Babylonian cylinder seals found at Megiddo and Jericho further confirm the existence of contacts between the Levant and Mesopotamia at this time. It is clear that the region of Syria–Lebanon had particularly close ties with Mesopotamia during the Middle Bronze I period. During the Middle Bronze II–III period (ca. 1750–1550 b.c.e.), ties between the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia continued, as evidenced by various finds in Israel, Transjordan and Syria–Lebanon. This is the time of the “Hyksos” (or Asiatic) domination of Egypt, beginning in the 15th Dynasty, a domination that apparently extended over southern and central Canaan as well. As a result, the number of worked objects and raw materials originating in Egypt increases dramatically in Canaan at this time; for instance, Ajjul, Megiddo, and other sites report caches of imported and local gold objects found in Middle Bronze II–III contexts. In addition, a large number of scarabs bearing the names of Hyksos kings have been found at various sites in Canaan. However, all of the above contacts pale in comparison to those of the Late Bronze Age, an era that is, without question, truly the age of internationalism. The international contacts of the Middle Bronze Age increased until, from about 1550 b.c.e. onward, the Late Bronze Age Levant was in full-fledged contact with Greece, Crete, and Cyprus, in addition to Egypt, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. These contacts, which included diplomatic embassies and royal exchanges in ad-

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Fig. 96. Excavating the Uluburun Shipwreck off the coast of southern Turkey (photo courtesy of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology).

dition to low-level commercial activity, are documented via a plethora of archaeological, textual, and pictorial evidence. These extensive contacts were in part due to the fact that, for much of the Late Bronze Age, large portions of the Levant lay under the influence of one or another of the major powers in the ancient Near East: namely Egypt, Hatti, and Mitanni. The Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III campaigned extensively in the Levantine area around 1450 b.c.e. and brought much of the region under Egyptian control through a combination of military and diplomatic tactics; at one point Egyptian influence may even have extended as far north as the important coastal city of Ugarit. Solid Egyptian control of the upper regions of the Levant was short-lived, however, for northern Syria fell to the advancing Hittites during the military expeditions of Suppiluliuma I in approximately 1370 b.c.e. Ugarit and its surrounding areas were destined to remain within the realm of the Hittite Empire for the rest of the Late Bronze Age, although imported objects from Mycenaean Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt found at Ugarit in levels dating to these centuries show that the Hittites allowed this important entrepôt to maintain its international ties. spread one pica long

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However, the southern portion of the Levant, Canaan and parts of Transjordan, remained under Egyptian control and/or influence for virtually the entire 400-year-period of the Late Bronze Age. Evidence of the international contacts of Canaan and of Egyptian dominance during this time may be found in the archive of royal correspondence found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt. In this cache of letters exchanged between Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten (ca. 1350 b.c.e.) and the kings of Babylon, Cyprus, Hatti, Arzawa, and Mitanni are a number of dispatches written by Canaanite princes and other Egyptian vassals in the southern and central Levantine region, including Biridiya of Megiddo, ºAbdiHeba of Jerusalem, and Rib-Hadda of Byblos. Numerous towns in the Levant are mentioned in these letters, as are specific individuals; and a variety of contacts and exchanges between the two regions are discussed, ranging from the sending of gifts to the dispatching of troops. Direct land routes between these areas became more important than ever during this period; one such route, later called the Via Maris, led north from Egypt through the coastal plains of Canaan and thence into northern Syria. It is from ruins of this 400-year period, from the beginning of the Late Bronze I period, about 1550 b.c.e., to the end of the Late Bronze IIB (or III) period, about 1200/1150 b.c.e., that foreign artifacts are found in the greatest quantities in the Levant. Mycenaean pottery, rare in previous periods, has now been found at an astonishing number of Late Bronze Age sites in the Levantine region, ranging from Lachish and Megiddo to Ugarit and Kamid el-Lôz; at last count, more than 2300 vessels had been reported from Late Bronze Age contexts at more than 85 Levantine sites. Imports from Cyprus, primarily White Slip and Base Ring vessels, are also numerous from this period; their arrival in the Levant might, in fact, be linked to the arrival of the Mycenaean objects, for the importation of both ceased at approximately the same time during the Late Bronze IIB period. Egyptian objects, too, were common in the Late Bronze Age Levant; they were particularly frequent toward the end of the period, during Late Bronze III, a time that saw the construction of a number of Egyptian fortresses and “governor’s residencies” in Canaan. It is clear that the Late Bronze Age also saw the development of an extensive sea-borne commercial trade, in addition to the traditional overland mercantile enterprises. It is equally clear that the inhabitants of the Levant were quick to make use of this newly-popular form of international trade route, particularly from approximately 1400 b.c.e. onward. A variety of sources attest to seafaring activity by Canaanites and others from Syria–Lebanon. Textual documents indicate the existence of both royal and private ships based at the port city of Ugarit; some vessels, such as that of the merchant Sinaranu, are recorded as having ventured as far abroad as Crete. Egyptian wall paintings, such as those in the tomb of Kenamun, add depth to our knowledge by depicting Canaanite ships moored at the wharves of Thebes, where Canaanite and Egyptian crewmen unload their cargo. Perhaps most important are the recent discoveries of the remains of wrecked ships possibly of Canaanite origin discovered off the coast of Turkey, at Cape Gelidonya and Uluburun (Kas). The latter ship in particular, dated to

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around 1300 b.c.e., sank with its cargo intact, resulting in a veritable treasure trove, which has been painstakingly recovered by skilled underwater archaeologists. On board were goods from at least seven different areas of the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East, including objects of gold jewelry that bear a striking resemblance to others found at Tell el-ºAjjûl in the southern Levant and more than 140 of the transport amphorae known as “Canaanite jars,” which were used to transport a variety of goods ranging from wine and oils to orpiment, resins, glass beads, and perhaps grain as well. That some of the ships were rather more successful in braving the elements is indicated by some 250 Syro-Palestinian imports found in Late Bronze Age contexts on mainland Greece and Crete; goods exported from the Levant at this date apparently included objects of ceramic, stone, ivory, faience, and precious metals. The Iron Age I period, approximately 1200/1150–1000 b.c.e., saw the emergence of the Israelites in the land of Canaan, as well as the rise of the Philistines and other peoples within the Levantine region. This age also saw, however, a possible disruption of the maritime trade routes by the Sea Peoples and a temporary decline in international trade. That such trade did not cease altogether is shown by the “Report of Wen-Amun,” an Egyptian official sent to Byblos to purchase cedar around 1075 b.c.e.; the text breaks off with the unfortunate official having just been shipwrecked on Cyprus while on his way back to Egypt. The following Iron Age IIA period, approximately 1000–900 b.c.e., saw the reestablishment of the international trade routes, and it is the mercantile contacts of this period that are perhaps most familiar to nonspecialists interested in the history of the Levant. This is the time of David and Solomon, when the First Temple in Jerusalem was built and great trading ventures were conducted with Hiram of Tyre and the Queen of Sheba. Levantine exports in this era are said to have included oil, spices, wine, honey, grain, ivory, and the famous cedars of Lebanon, exchanged between areas as distant as Arabia, Nubia, and Mesopotamia. This is also the time of the Phoenicians, those daring sea-faring merchants from the Levantine coastal regions, famous for their carved ivories and purple dye, who brought the alphabet to Greece and Italy and who established a host of colonies in areas as far away as North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. The Phoenician cultural influence and international contacts continued to keep Levantine cities such as Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre commercially important throughout much of the Iron Age II period and resulted in a steady stream of foreign imports from the Aegean and western Mediterranean to the Levant until Assyria took control of the region in the late 8th and early 7th centuries b.c.e. Assyrian rule over the Levant during the Iron Age IIC period inevitably led to increased contact with Mesopotamia, evidenced by a considerable number of Assyrian artifacts such as cylinder seals and bullae found in the Levantine area. Egyptian artifacts at various sites in Israel, Judah, and Transjordan also suggest that there were direct contacts between the Levant and Egypt at this time, a finding that should not be surprising considering the complicated political interactions between the Levant, Assyria, and Egypt during this period. spread one pica long

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Following the destruction of Judah in 586 b.c.e., Babylonian imports also began to appear once again in the Levant, most recognizably in the form of stamp seals incised with cult scenes. It is from approximately this same time that the first archaic Greek coins make their appearance at sites in Israel and coastal Syria–Lebanon. During the Persian period, and on through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Levant continued to play a vital role as a link between East and West. Important overland trade routes for camel and mule caravans of prosperous merchants such as the Nabateans passed directly through various parts of the Levant and connected with the maritime routes leading further west and south. Thus the Levant served as a nexus linking the Far East with the western Mediterranean and ultimately Europe, allowing and facilitating the flow of luxuries such as spices, silks, and precious gems that were in such high demand during the latter years of the first millennium b.c.e. and the early centuries of the first millennium c.e. The international trade and contacts of the Levant began to decline, however, after the Roman period and did not rise again until some centuries later, with the coming of the Crusaders and renewed European interest in the Near East.

Bibliography Ben-Tor, A. (ed.) 1992 The Archaeology of Ancient Israel. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bietak, M. 1996 Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos—Recent Excavations at Tell el-Dabºa. London: British Museum. Cline, E. H. 1994 Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International Trade and the Late Bronze Age Aegean. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum. Gitin, S.; Mazar, A.; and Stern, E. (eds.) 1998 Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Tenth Centuries b.c.e. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Levy, T. E. (ed.) 1995 The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. London: Leicester University Press. Mazar, A. 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 b.c.e. New York: Doubleday. Moran, W. L. 1992 The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Redford, D. B. 1992 Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Weiss, H. (ed.) 1985 Ebla to Damascus: Art and Archaeology of Ancient Syria. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian.

Eric H. Cline

The Iron Age in the Southern Levant Iron Age IA–B: 12th–11th Centuries b.c.e. Iron Age IA Differentiating between archaeological periods tends to be done on two bases: one, a clear demarcation in the archaeological remains or, two, a major historical event that led to a significant sociopolitical change. Ideally the demarcation is the result of the convergence of both a historical event and a change that is clearly reflected in the archaeological record. In the case of Palestine, the transition from the LB to the Iron I period is marked by an apparent widespread destruction of the Canaanite city-states around 1200 b.c.e. and the emergence of a number of new sociopolitical entities known to history as the Philistines, Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites. The precise mechanism by which these new polities emerged has recently been the subject of intense debate, but there are a few events that certainly form some of the contours of the historical context. These include the collapse of both the great Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Mycenaean Empire in mainland Greece, which led to a series of mass sea migrations to the coastlands of the Levant and Cyprus. Some of these immigrants, known as the “Sea Peoples,” included the Philistines, whose settlement along the coast of Canaan affected both the Egyptian control of this area and the local inhabitants themselves. Another factor that appears to have contributed to the changing sociopolitical landscape at this time was the presence of a number of parasocial elements that resided just beyond the reaches of the Egyptian-controlled Canaanite society. These elements were known to the Egyptians and Canaanites variously as “Shasu” and “Hap/biru.” Again, the precise role they played in the transition into Iron Age society is uncertain. The possibility that they might be associated with the soonto-emerge political entities of Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom certainly adds fuel to the debate. Regardless of the precise sequence of events that occurred in the Late Bronze/ Iron I transition, the net result was that, by about 1180 b.c.e. (about the time that Rameses III comes on the scene), Canaan was divided into three major sociopolitical components: the Philistines along the southern coast; Egyptian-dominated Canaanites in central and northern coastal areas and inland valleys; and Israelites and other “highlanders,” including the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites in the hillcountry in Cis- and Transjordan. As with the earlier archaeological periods of Palestine, there is no consensus among scholars on the nomenclature for the subdivisions of Iron Age I. Israeli scholars have tended to date Iron I from 1200 to 1000 b.c.e., while American

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scholars have generally preferred to extend Iron I from 1200 to 920/900 b.c.e. The former scheme excludes the period of Israel’s United Monarchy from Iron I, while the latter scheme includes it. Since the formation of the United Monarchy represents a major new phase of the region’s sociopolitical development that is reflected in the region’s material culture, we will follow the Israeli dating (by now predominant). Internally the period is best divided by recognizing the period from 1200 to 1150 b.c.e. as Iron IA and 1150 to 1000 as Iron IB. This division is convenient in that is corresponds with a convergence of historical events and a corresponding observable change in the archaeological record—specifically, the emergence and expansion of the Philistines along the southern coast of Canaan and the corresponding decline of Egyptian/Canaanite control. Moreover, at this same time there appears in the hillcountry of both Cis- and Transjordan a large number of settlements that are generally associated with the emerging tribal kingdoms of Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom. Since distinctive changes in material culture correspond with the geography of this historic, sociopolitical reconfiguration, we will review the archaeology of Iron Age I by regions. Philistia. One of the most significant effects of the collapse of the Hittite and Mycenaean empires in terms of the impact on Canaan was the setting in motion of a number of migrations of different peoples, including the Sea Peoples. The coast of Canaan was settled by at least three of these groups: the Sherden, the Tjekker, and the Peleset. Of these three groups, the Peleset, identified with the Philistines of the Bible, became the most powerful and best known by carving out a significant kingdom for themselves along the southern coast of Canaan (the approximate area of the present “Gaza Strip”). Their arrival along Canaan’s coast is marked archaeologically by the appearance of what archaeologists have designated Mycenaean IIIC1b pottery. The interesting thing about this new pottery is that, while its decorative motifs are clearly related to Mycenaean IIIB imports of the preceding LB IIB period, the IIIC style is locally made. Moreover, it occurs in precisely those areas where the Philistines are known to have settled according to literary sources. For these reasons, the rather sudden and dramatic appearance of this distinctive pottery is generally associated with the invasion and conquest of southern Canaan by the Philistines. Lawrence Stager dates this event to just a few years prior to the well-known Sea Peoples’ invasion of Egypt during the 8th year of Rameses III, about 1180 b.c.e. He suggests that the Sea Peoples originally left their homelands around 1185 b.c.e. It was previously thought that the Sea Peoples did not arrive in Palestine until after their battle with Rameses III in 1175 b.c.e. (recorded in Egyptian texts and on wall reliefs at Medinet Habu). The general belief, based on Papyrus Harris I, lxxvi 6–10, has been that Rameses III settled the Sea Peoples in Canaan after he defeated them in the Delta. However, Stager has recently challenged this interpretation, arguing that the Sea Peoples had already settled in Canaan prior to this battle, approximately 1180 b.c.e., and actually were using Canaan as the base from which they launched their campaign against Egypt.

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This initial Philistine settlement was, according to Stager, the first of three stages of the Philistine settlement process that can be inferred from the archaeological evidence. This first stage, which occurred between approximately 1180 and 1150 b.c.e., corresponds to the Iron Age IA. During this initial incursion into the southern coast of Palestine (along the Gaza Strip), the Philistines were able to conquer a strip of territory measuring about 12 x 18 miles or about 600 sq. miles. They established five major urban centers at key positions near the borders of this area. The Egyptian response to the successful Philistine beachhead was the adoption of a strategy of containment by rebuilding and/or fortifying key Canaanite sites that were located along the Philistine’s border. This essentially established what Stager describes as a cordon sanitaire. At the northwest corner the Egyptians rebuilt the fortress at Tel Mor in opposition to the Philistine city of Ashdod. Opposite Philistine Ekron (Tel Miqne) Rameses III rebuilt Gezer (Str. XIV). To counter Philistine Ashkelon, Rameses III established an Egyptian center at Lachish (18 miles to the east). The Philistine center at Tel Óaror (Tell Abu-Hureirah) in the southeast corner of Philistia was opposed by an Egyptian center at Tel Seraº (Tell esh-Shariah). In this manner the Egyptians hoped to retard any further Philistine incursions into the territory of the Canaanite vassals. The policy appears to have succeeded—at least until the death of Rameses III in 1151 b.c.e. During this early stage of development, the Philistines’ material culture was virtually indistinguishable from that of other Sea Peoples who settled along the eastern Mediterranean coast. They all had a common pottery tradition that is believed to have been derived from the Late Bronze Age Aegean culture. This Mycenaean-style pottery (classified as Mycenaean IIC1b, or Myc. IIIC) was locally made and utilized a distinctive monochrome design. Other unique aspects of the Sea People’s material culture include large circular hearths in the middle of the main rooms of domestic and public buildings; the use of unperforated loom weights; a preference for wine mixed with water; and religious rituals featuring distinctive mother-goddess-type figurines. Canaan. The invasion of the Sea Peoples along the coast of Canaan was only one of the events that adversely affected the Canaanites during the LB/Iron I transition. Other sites appear to have been destroyed by Canaan’s nominal overlords, the Egyptians, suggesting that some Canaanite cities may have attempted to take advantage of the confused situation by breaking out from under Egyptian control. Various tribal highlanders, including the newly emerging Israelite polity (mentioned in 1207 b.c.e. by Pharaoh Merneptah), may have also seen new possibilities for consolidation and expansion, and they probably attacked yet other Canaanite settlements. The net result was that many if not most of the major cities and towns of Canaan were destroyed around or just prior to 1200 b.c.e. These destroyed Canaanite settlements include Hazor (Str. XIII); Beth-shan (Str. VII); Megiddo (Str. VIIB); Aphek (the Egyptian residency); Beth-shemesh (Str. IV); Gezer (Str. XV); Tell Beit Mirsim (Str. C); Lachish (Str. VII and Fosse Temple III); Ashdod

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(Str. XIV); Ekron (Str. VIII Fld. I); Óaror (Tell Abu-Hureirah, Str. K3 and B7); and others. In spite of the fairly widespread destruction, many of these Canaanite sites were rebuilt by about the time that Rameses III assumed the throne in Egypt (ca. 1185 b.c.e.). The rebuilding of these Canaanite cities was conducted along the same lines as and reflects a continuation of the local Late Bronze Age II Canaanite culture. However, there are two notable differences. First, the distinctive pottery imports from Greece and Cyprus that are the hallmark of LB II Canaan are no longer present in these rebuilt Canaanite cities of Iron IA. This absence is probably the result of the crisis that led to the collapse of the Hittite and Mycenaean empires and that undoubtedly disrupted Mediterranean trade with Canaan. Mycenaean and Cypriot imports were no longer reaching Canaan. Rebuilt Canaanite cities that are missing the Mycenaean and Cypriot imports include Lachish (Str. VI) and Tell Deir ºAlla ( Jordan). Second, a number of these Canaanite cities include distinctive evidence of an increased Egyptian presence in the city. We have already noted the cities rebuilt under Egyptian supervision along the border with Philistia: Tel Mor; Gezer (Str. XIV); Lachish (Str. VI); and Tel Seraº (Tell esh-Shariah, Str. IX). Other cities with a significant Egyptian presence include Tell el-Farºah South, and in the north, Megiddo (Str. VIIA) and Beth-shan (lower Str. V). Apart from the absence of Mycenaean and Cypriot imports and the increased Egyptian presence, it is virtually impossible to distinguish the LB Canaanite material culture from that of Iron IA. This situation is exemplified at Megiddo (Str. VIIA), where red and black decorated pottery (bichrome), bronzes, jewelry, and other typical elements of the LB II Canaanite material culture were recovered from the Iron IA levels. The Canaanite Iron IA period continued until the end of the reign of Rameses III, approximately 1150 b.c.e. At this time a number of sites were again destroyed, and the Canaanite enclaves in Cisjordan were reduced even further (see below). Highlanders: Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom. The third significant event that marks the onset of Iron IA in Canaan is the relatively sudden appearance of highland settlements in both Trans- and Cisjordan, with their own distinctive material culture. These highland tribal peoples included the emerging sociopolitical entities known from the Bible as Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom. Because of its central position in the Hebrew Bible, it is natural that Israel has received the most attention from scholars. That Israelites were present in the highlands of Cisjordan at the beginning of Iron IA appears to be confirmed not only by the biblical tradition, but also by an explicit reference to them in a stele commissioned by Pharaoh Merneptah approximately 1207 b.c.e. However, there has been considerable debate about the precise nature of Israel’s actual “emergence.” At least three major models have been proposed. The first is the Conquest Model, which argues that Israel invaded and conquered Canaan in a series of military campaigns; this model follows the biblical account fairly closely. The second model is the Peaceful Infiltration Model, in which the tribes of Israel are

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said to have infiltrated Canaan and settled peacefully among the Canaanites over a fairly long period of time. Eventually the Israelites came to dominate the land. The third model is the so-called Peasants’ Revolt Model, which argues that Israelites emerged from the lower levels of Canaanite society and eventually were able to take over. Recently, Stager has also offered a variation that he calls the Ruralization Model, wherein peasant farmers moved beyond the areas of state control as the LB city-state system collapsed. It is possible that in various locales each of the processes described in these models played a role in Israel’s emergence as a social-political entity during Iron Age I. It needs to be kept in mind that there are actually two issues involved here. One is the emergence of Israel (and the other highland tribal entities) as an ethnic entity. The second involves the development of the sociopolitical entity. The processes of “ethnogenesis” and political coalescence can be related but are not necessarily identical. At this stage of research it is easier to trace the evolution of the sociopolitical entities than to explain adequately the so-called process of ethnogenesis. In this regard, Iron IA clearly reflects the sedentarization of a number of tribal entities that were outside the control of Egyptian and Canaanite polities. By Iron IIA these tribal entities displaced both the Egyptian and Canaanite entities and the dominate powers in the land, and coalesced into tribal kingdoms or “states.” There are a number of distinctive features of the settlements of the Iron IA highlanders in western Palestine, whom some regard as “Proto-Israelites.” Several of their early Iron Age I villages were laid out in an oval-shaped pattern, with a large open space in the center and the buildings located along the perimeter. The outward-facing wall of the buildings thus formed a de facto wall for the settlement, providing a modicum of protection for the settlers. The central open area may have been used to pen up the flocks at night. Some scholars have speculated that this plan was derived from the tent camps of seminomads. Eventually the central open areas were filled in with additional buildings, and the settlements were enclosed with proper walls. One of the hallmarks of the Iron Age I highlanders consists of what archaeologists describe as the “pillared house.” Typically the plan of these houses is rectangular with three parallel long rooms at the front of the house and a single broad room at the back. The entrance to the house is usually through the central long room. This room appears to have served as an open-air courtyard in most cases, and it is usually set off from the outer long rooms by rows of pillars. Because so many of these pillared houses have four rooms, they are often called “four-room” houses, although this plan was regularly modified so that three-room and fiveroom variations also exist. There is some question about the origin and ethnic affiliation of these houses. Regarding ethnic associations with this house form, it has often been assumed that the house plan was invented and used by Israelites. This idea has recently been questioned, however, since this style of house has now been found at sites thought to be outside the traditional boundaries of the Israelites, that is, in lowland areas

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of Canaan and in Transjordan. In light of various traditions of Israelites living outside their homeland (e.g., Ruth’s family in Moab), the question should perhaps remain open for the present. The ultimate origin of this house plan is also a debatable issue. Some argue that it is derived from the layout of LB nomadic tents (although this position has not gained wide acceptance); others have found possible Canaanite or even Egyptian (Tell ed-Dabºa) prototypes. The ceramic repertoire of the highlanders is distinctive, albeit limited. It appears that the basic forms were derived from Canaanite prototypes. However, the highland repertoire distinguishes itself in that only a few utilitarian forms were selected from the much broader Canaanite repertoire. Moreover, the selected forms were then simplified in terms of external decoration and ware. Painted decoration, very common in the Canaanite corpus, is almost nonexistent in the highland repertoire. Large storejars (pithoi) are prevalent, especially the well-known “collared-rim” jar. While it appears that this form had limited use among the lowland Canaanites—indeed its earliest appearance seems to be at Canaanite Aphek (LB II)—it is clear that the highlanders embraced it as their own. Other forms include cooking pots, jugs, kraters, and bowls. Everyday vessels do not generally have painted decoration, in contrast to vessels from valley sites. Not much is known about the early Israelite cult. Fragments of ceramic vessels decorated with animal heads are thought to have something to do with the Israelite cult at Shiloh. A bronze bull figurine found at the “Bull Site” near Samaria is generally understood as reflecting an Israelite cultic site, in this case rural. It has also been argued that an enigmatic structure on top of Mt. Ebal is an altar of an early Israelite cult center, but this interpretation has been subject to considerable debate. Writing and Literacy. There are not many examples of writing from this period. The incised ostracon from ºIzbet Íar†ah, apparently a student’s practice text, demonstrates the alphabetic nature of the forerunners of the Hebrew alphabet. Ten 11th-century arrowheads were found at el-Khadr near Bethlehem, of which four were inscribed, providing an additional example of early alphabetic or “Old Canaanite” writing.

Iron IB: 1150–1000 b.c.e. The Iron IB period corresponds to the heart of the biblical “period of the Judges.” In general, the material culture of Iron IA continues in the highlands, Canaan, and Philistia, with a few notable changes that enable archaeologists to mark the period, as noted below. Philistia. For Philistia, Iron IB (ca. 1150–1050 b.c.e.) marks the second stage of Sea Peoples settlement. This phase was initiated by the decline of Egyptian hegemony in Canaan that set in after the death of Rameses III (1153 b.c.e.). The Philistines began to expand beyond their original territory in all directions— north, east, and south. The extent of this expansion is marked by the presence of

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the successor of Myc. IIIC pottery, known as “Philistine bichrome ware,” in which distinctive eclectic red and black painted designs were superimposed upon a cream-colored background. Little is known at this point concerning Philistine writing. At Kubur elWalaydah, in southern Philistia, there was found a bowl fragment incised with an alphabetic inscription dating to the 12th century, but it is probably “ProtoCanaanite.” It is thought to be a dedication inscription for a temple offering. Two Canaanite names are mentioned, raising the question whether it was Canaanite inhabitants within Philistia who were responsible for the inscription, rather than Philistines. An Iron I carved seal was found near Ekron in Philistia with the name lªbª in an alphabetic inscription. A seal inscription from Ashkelon and several clay tablets from Deir ºAlla remained undeciphered. Canaanites in Iron IB. As a result of continuing pressure from the Philistines to the southwest and the highlanders, especially Israel, to the east, the territory of the Canaanites became more and more contracted during Iron IB (1150–1000 b.c.e.). By the 11th century, the center of Canaanite culture had gravitated to the Jezreel Valley (including its eastern extension to Beth-shan) and the Acre Valley (from the Carmel ridge northward). Under Rameses III it experienced a brief revival in this region. Ultimately, however, it would be restricted to the Phoenician coast and would give rise to a new permutation known as Phoenician culture. Archaeologically, the best representations of the Iron IB (11th century) Canaanite culture are found at Megiddo (Str. VIA) and Beth-shan (Lower Str. V). Megiddo VIA was built on a large scale with palaces, public buildings, and a city gate, although no city wall was found. Pottery painted in the Canaanite tradition was found in abundance. The presence of Cypriot pottery points to the reopening of trade relationships. More intriguing is the presence of Philistine pottery, raising questions of the nature of the relationship of the Canaanites and the Philistines at this time. At Beth-shan Lower Stratum V, another large, well-planned town was built. Its cultic center included two adjacent temples known as the “Northern Temple” and the “Southern Temple.” Objects found in these temples include round and square ceramic stands, some of which were decorated with human figures and snakes or painted in red and black geometric patterns. Egyptian statues and stela indicate the continuing influence of that country in Canaanite culture during this period. Ultimately, both of the sites were destroyed in the 10th century, probably by Israel’s King David. Highlands in Iron IB. Sites that were originally founded in the 12th century (Iron IA) as rather poor settlements began to flourish during the 11th century (e.g., Tel Masos and ºIzbet Íar†ah, ºAi, and Shiloh). The pillared house in both its three- and four-room variations predominates at 11th-century sites. Cisterns, storage pits and silos, and agricultural terraces (essential for preserving water and soil on the steep slopes of the hillcountry) are common features associated with these settlements and demonstrate the shift to intensive agriculture that usually accompanies the process of sedentarization. However, these growing settlements

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still lack monumental structures, public buildings, or fortifications, suggesting a lower level of social complexity. The absence of fortifications at 11th-century settlements probably explains why some sites appear to have been founded specifically as fortresses. Har Adir (Upper Galilee) is a square fortress protected by a casemate wall. Its location near a number of small, unwalled villages suggests that it was intended to provide protection for the settlers in the immediate area. A similar purpose is assumed for a fortified tower at Giloh that also dates to this period. The 11th century also witnessed settlement expansion of the highlanders into new areas. The Galilee was one of the regions that saw considerable settlement during the 11th century. In Transjordan a similar growth in sites can be seen. Surveys and excavations in Ammon show that there was a jump from 20 sites in the LB/Iron IA transition to at least 68 sites during Iron IA/B. Of this latter number, there were at least 3 towns, 24 small villages, and 42 fortified farms. The material culture and settlement layout was very similar to that of the Cisjordan highlands. Pottery forms, cisterns, and agricultural terraces are common. The picture is similar for Moab and Edom, although as one goes south, sedentarization occurs more slowly, probably because of the decreasing rainfall. Indeed, there are few settlements in Edom until Iron II (below). Nevertheless, people were there, and the elements were in place so that, by Iron II, all of the tribal highlanders in both Trans- and Cisjordan coalesced into distinctive tribal kingdoms, and a new level of social complexity was reached that effectively displaced the Canaanite city-state system that had prevailed at one level or another since the Early Bronze Age.

Iron Age IIA–C: 10th through Early 6th Centuries b.c.e. As noted in the previous section, the periodization of Iron Age I and II has failed to reach a consensus among scholars. American scholars such as G. Ernest Wright initially limited the Iron II period to the time of the divided monarchy. Israeli scholars, on the other hand, have tended to include the period of the United Israelite Monarchy (under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon—10th century b.c.e.) in Iron Age II. Recently Herr has noted that this latter position appears to be the growing consensus. The ceramics of the 10th century can certainly be set apart from the earlier Iron Age (12th and 11th centuries b.c.e.) by the emergence of redslipped wares and distinctive burnishing techniques that characterize the entire Iron II period. From a sociopolitical point of view, the 10th century also marks the coalescence of local tribal groups into territorial monarchies such as Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom. The 10th century has thus been designated as corresponding to Iron Age IIA. The transition from Iron Age IIA to Iron Age IIB runs from about 925 b.c.e. (marked by Pharaoh Shishak’s invasion of Palestine) down to the end of the 10th century. Iron Age IIB covers the 9th to the late 8th centuries b.c.e. (900–721 b.c.e.). Again, the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) marks the commencement of the transition into Iron IIC.

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Iron Age IIA Of the various sociopolitical entities that emerged during the Iron I, Israel came to be the most dominant. This dominance reached its apex during the time of David in the middle of the 10th century b.c.e., when the House of David subjugated virtually all of Israel’s immediate neighbors, including southern Aram, Ammon, Moab, Edom, southern Phoenicia, and even Philistia. House Plans. The continuation of the extended or tribal family can be seen in the continued use of the pillared house (the “four-room plan” and its variants) in Israel and Judah. Ethnographic and archaeological data indicate that in many cases the back room and one or both long rooms may have had a second story. City Walls. Iron IIA cities were protected by one of two major types of city walls: casemate and solid walls. Casemate walls were constructed by building two parallel walls around the city; the space between the two parallel walls would then be subdivided into chambers, or casemates, by the construction of partition walls at regular intervals. One could enter into the casemate through a door constructed into the inner parallel wall. Casemate walls have been found at Hazor X, Gezer VIII, Jokneam XV–XIV, Beth-shemesh IIA, Tell Beit Mirsim, and ºEnGev 5–4. Solid walls from the mid–10th century b.c.e. have been recovered at Megiddo IVb; Kinnereth V–IV; and possibly at Jerusalem. City Gates. The major cities of Iron IIA were typically entered through a six-chambered (or “four-entry way”) gate, examples of which are found at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. Although similar in overall layout, there are some significant differences in constructional details. These differences have led to a modification of Yadin’s idea that a single architect simultaneously constructed all three gates according to a single uniform plan. Nevertheless, the arguments that date the construction of these gates during the reign of Solomon and under the direction of his administration are still sound. Monumental Architecture. Monumental or public construction is more evident in the 10th century, reflecting the consolidation of political rule under central authorities. The preferred palace layout in Israel is the “northern Syrian palace,” adapted from the bit hilani plan of northern Mesopotamia and Syria. The bit hilani comprised a pillared entryway, a central court surrounded by rectangular rooms, and a stairwell leading up to a second floor. Two palaces designed according to this plan have been found at Megiddo, Building 1723 (separated by its own wall and gate system on the south side of the site), and Building 6000 (located at the northern edge of the site). The bit hilani has also been found at Beth-saida, and it is thought by some that another exists at Hazor under the Iron IIB palace and near the gate. It is thought that Solomon’s palace in Jerusalem was patterned after this same design. Another important type of public building is the “tripartite” or “pillared” building. Although these buildings are widespread in Israel and adjacent countries from the 9th to 6th centuries b.c.e., the earliest occurrences date to the 10th century. The function of these buildings has been widely discussed. Some scholars hold

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that they served as army barracks or royal storehouses. Others have maintained that they served as stables (especially at Megiddo). Still others believe that they served as marketplaces. While the precise function continues to be debated, the size and centrality of these pillared buildings within urban centers suggest an important investment on the part of the society who constructed them and a level of cooperation typical of a more complex social organization. Examples dating to the 10th century have been reported at Beth-shemesh and Tell el-Hesi (although the latter goes into the 9th century b.c.e.). While monumental architecture within the urban centers in the heart of the country is found in the form of palaces and tripartite buildings, fortresses were built in the frontier regions, especially in the south. More than 45 fortresses have been found in the Beersheva and Arad basins and the Negev highlands. The fortresses can be divided into two categories: oval or round, and rectangular or square. A typical characteristic of monumental buildings during the 10th century b.c.e. is the use of ashlar masonry. Ashlars are stones (usually nâri) that were dressed into elongated rectangular blocks. All six sides of the block were smoothed—especially the outer faces that would be seen. It is generally thought that this type of masonry originated in Phoenicia, which is not surprising, given the biblical tradition of strong relationships between Israel and Phoenicia at this time. The fact that ashlar construction seems to be restricted to large public buildings or palaces in major centers leads most scholars to assume that it was the product of state or royal initiative. Another important architectural element that is associated with ashlar construction in Israel around the 10th century b.c.e. is the “Proto-Aeolic” capital. It is referred to as Proto-Aeolic because it was originally thought that it anticipated the Aeolic capitals of later Greek architecture stylistically, although the existence of a direct connection is debatable. The capital typically displays a central triangle flanked by palmette volutes. It is thought to have been employed as the ornamental crown for either engaged columns or door jambs of entrances of important buildings. Over 35 of these capitals have been found within the boundaries of ancient Israel, Moab, and Ammon, including Hazor, Dan, Megiddo, Samaria Ramat Ra˙el, Jerusalem, Amman (Ammon), and Medeibiyeh (Moab). Unfortunately, none of them has been found in situ. Another important aspect of public works is the city water system. Part of the Jerusalem system (the Siloam Tunnel) may date to this period, as does a fourbranched underground reservoir at Beth-shemesh. The large stone spiral staircase leading to a water source at Gibeon (2 Sam 2:13) has also been dated to this period. Textual Evidence. Few written materials have been found from the 10th century. The best known is the Gezer calendar. Some have suggested that it was a schoolboy’s practice tablet and reflects literacy among the lower classes. However, since it was found at a “royal” city it may be a training tablet for a scribe. At any rate, it is written in the Old Canaanite script. The existence of “national” scripts is not yet evident.

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Religion and Cult. Little is known of religion during the Iron IIA. According to the Bible, the official cult was sanctioned only in Jerusalem, although there is evidence of local religious practices. Small cult rooms or shrines have been identified at Lachish V, Michal XIV, and Tell el-Farºah. Objects possibly associated with cultic activity include a number of fertility figurines, a figurine of a bull’s head at Shahaf (Hulah Valley), and various animal figurines. There are a few burials known from the Iron IIA. The tombs tend to be multichambered, rock-hewn tombs cut into hillsides. The ability to hold multiple bodies suggests that they were intended as family tombs. This is in line with the tribal social structure the Israelites had according to their literary sources. Tenthcentury tombs have been found in Cemetery 200 at Farºah South. Pottery. Imports begin to appear in significant quantities, especially CyproPhoenician ware, fine ware vessels typically with a red slip and decorated with black concentric circles. The local pottery frequently exhibits hand burnishing. Metallurgy. While Iron is known, most metal objects continue to be made of bronze. Ivory. While it is generally thought that ivory-working occurred during the 10th century b.c.e., there is at present little archaeological evidence for it (Barkay 1992: 323).

Iron IIB Iron Age IIB corresponds to the 9th and 8th centuries b.c.e. Politically it is marked by the breakup of Israel’s United Monarchy into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. While Israel was able to retain its holdings in Transjordan (especially Moab) for awhile, the ultimate effect of this breakup was the emergence of several small kingdoms that alternately formed alliances and fought with each other. These local kingdoms included (besides Israel and Judah), Ammon, Moab, and Edom in Transjordan, Aram (in Damascus), Philistia along the southern coastal plain, and the Phoenicians along the northern coast. Throughout most of the 9th and the first part of the 8th centuries b.c.e., these local kingdoms were able to pursue their own agendas unfettered by interference from outside powers such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. The power of the Philistines, who still occupied the southern coastal plain, had by this time been eclipsed by the Northern and Southern Israelite Kingdoms, but they still retained their independence. The intermittent independence acquired by the Transjordanian kingdoms also led to the development of certain distinctive elements in their material cultures, although politically they tended to be overshadowed by their neighbors to the west. The Phoenicians, on the other hand, were able to expand their influence considerably during this period. Ultimately they would provide the major cultural influence during this period, not only in Israel, but also throughout the entire Mediterranean. The Arameans, with their capital at Damascus, controlled most of the Golan down to the Sea of Galilee, although they had a running feud with Israel (and occasionally Judah) during this period.

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Settlement Patterns. As Barkay notes, Iron IIB towns existed within a discernible settlement hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy were the capitals of the two kingdoms, Samaria and Jerusalem. They were the largest and most important sites. The next level consisted of what the biblical accounts refer to as “royal” cities, such as Megiddo (IV) and Lachish (IV–III). These were of secondary size and importance. Below this were tertiary provincial centers. The population of Judah during the 8th century has been estimated to be about 110,000. Houses. The four-room house continued to serve as the fundamental house plan of Iron IIB. They have been found in Iron IIB levels at Hazor, Tell el-Farºah North, Shechem, Tell en-Naßbeh (Mizpah), the City of David ( Jerusalem), Bethshemesh, Lachish, Tell Beit Mirsim, Tell Beersheva, and elsewhere. Three- and two-room variations are also found. House plans in Ammon are different. At Jawa a house from this period was laid out in a large square plan with many interconnected rooms and a possible small central court, but the four-room plan has not been found so far. City Wall Systems. According to Barkay, a unique feature of the Iron Age IIB is the stone-covered glaçis. These have been found at Lachish, Beersheva, Tel ºIra, and Tel Halif. City wall construction varied in Israel and Judah and included solid, casemate, inset-offset, or even zigzag walls. In Transjordan, casemate walls have been found at Jawa in Ammon. City Gates. Gate construction also varied in Iron IIB. At some sites, sixchambered gates continue into Iron IIB. Ninth-century examples include Lachish Level IV. Four-chambered and even two-chambered gates have been found at other sites, however. In Ammon, a four-chambered gate was found at Tell Jawa South. Monumental/Public Construction. At Hazor, a tripartite building and two storehouses existed just south of an open space just inside the gate. In Samaria Ahab completed a large palace compound measuring 500 x 250 feet. An ashlar fortification wall (partially casemate and solid) surrounded it. Within the compound were open spaces, storehouses (one of which contained 102 ostraca from the 8th century), a large residential building, smaller residential quarters, and a building that contained about 500 ivory fragments. Seven Proto-Ionic capitals were found at Samaria. The tripartite buildings that first appear in Iron IA at Beth-shemesh and Tell el-Hesi become widespread in Iron IIB. Ashlar masonry and Proto-Ionic capitals continued to be used during Iron IIB. With reference to monumental works, it is important to note that the best source of statuary in Syria–Palestine during this period, and probably throughout the Iron II period in general, is Ammon, where a significant number of stone statues of kings and/or divinities have been discovered. Cult. The division of the Monarchy led to the establishment of a separate cult center in the North. At Dan the platform of a temple or shrine dating to this period has been found. A possible shrine used for human sacrifice (a tophet) has also been found outside Samaria.

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Water Systems. Monumental water systems seem to be primarily found at royal cities such as Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer. In Ammon Transjordan, a large reservoir has been cleared at Hesban that was certainly in use during Iron IIB (although it may have been initially constructed during Iron IIA. Writing. As noted by Herr, evidence for scribal activity begins to proliferate significantly during Iron IIB. One of the most important inscriptions from this period is the “House of David” inscription found at Dan. This Aramaic victory stele was erected in the mid–9th century b.c.e. to commemorate the triumph of Damascus over Israel during the reign of Hazael. Toward the end of the 9th century, personal stamp seals inscribed with the owner’s name became quite popular. One of the better known from the 9th century is the seal of Shema, a servant of Jeroboam II. From the 8th century b.c.e. come the Samaria ostraca. Written in Hebrew, these inscribed potsherds are important in what they reveal about the economy and social structure of Israel during this period. An important seal from this century is that of Hoshea, the last Israelite king. A comparison of seals from Israel and Judah has revealed differences in spelling and names. In Ammon a considerable amount of inscriptional material from this period has turned up. Perhaps the most significant of these is the “Balaam Inscription” found in a shrine at Deir ºAlla, east of the Jordan River. This inscription recounts the vision and prophecy of Balaam, son of Beor, known also from the Bible (Numbers 22–24). There is debate about the language and script—whether it is Ammonite or Aramaic. The best-known inscription from Moab is the Mesha Inscription (Moabite Stele), found at King Mesha’s capital, Dibon. This important inscription recounts Mesha’s successful rebellion against Israel during the 9th century b.c.e.

Iron IIC: Late 8th to Mid–6th Centuries b.c.e. Iron IIC is marked by the Assyrian conquest of the region, Israel falling in 721 b.c.e., and the other local kingdoms coming under different degrees of vassalage. Ironically, while the Assyrian conquest essentially led to the destruction of those who resisted (i.e., Israel), others who accepted vassalage actually prospered under the pax assyriaca. Indeed, this led to a greater amount of independence for each country in terms of a lack of local interference, and for the first time quite distinctive local developments emerge in various aspects of the material culture. City walls continued to be constructed in various styles, including casemate, solid, and inset-offset. The fall of Israel appears to have led to an influx of refugees to Judah. It appears that many towns and cities, including Jerusalem, experienced substantial growth. In Moab, the important towns that have been excavated include Balua, Dibon, Lehun, and Mudayna. In Edom, Iron IIC towns include ºArôer (Negev) III–II, Bozrah (Buseirah), Hazeva 5-4, Kheliefeh, Malhata C Late, Qitmit, Tawilan, ªUmm el-Biyara, and ºUza.

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Monumental Architecture. Fortresses were built throughout Judah, especially in the south. In Ammon the landscape is dotted by a large number of circular and rectangular towers. At Rabbath-Ammon, part of the palace of the Ammonite kings may have been found. The remains suggest an international influence. A large administrative building with basements has been found at ºUmayri. At Jalul, farther south, a large tripartite building from this period was excavated. In Moab, “Proto-Ionic” capitals have been found at Mudaybiya and Kerak. In Edom, a possible palace has been identified that exhibits some Assyrian influence. Edomite fortresses were constructed at Kheleifeh (near Aqaba), ºArôer, and Hazeva. In Philistia, at Ekron (Miqne), many houses included special rooms where olives were processed, supporting a large industry. In Ammon, a four-room house was found at ºUmayri, a form that is rare in Transjordan during this period. Ceramics. The basic pottery corpus of Iron IIC is similar in all of the local kingdoms, although each kingdom does have some unique forms. Surface decorations tend to set the various types off from each other. Judahite pottery is often wheel-burnished. Lamps have a high stump base. Decanters with a squarish body are common in this period. Ammonite pottery has a great deal of distinctive black, red, and white painted decoration. Black-burnished bowls are also very common in Ammon. Edomite pottery typically displays multicolored bands and geometric patterns. In the Negev, there is found a handmade pottery known as “Negev ware,” although the makers of this simple pottery remain elusive. Written Materials. Based on the considerable amount of written materials that have been found from this period, it can be said that each of the local kingdoms had developed rather distinctive dialects. While inscriptions still utilize the Northwest Semitic alphabet, it appears that the peoples modified the script in their own way, so that scholars now speak of “national scripts.” Some of the more important Hebrew inscriptions include the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets, which contain the earliest biblical passage (Num 6:24–26). At Arad, over 100 ostraca have been found. At ºUza, over 20 ostraca have been recovered. The Meßad Óashavyahu ostracon provides contemporary evidence of biblical law. The Siloam Tunnel Inscription, found in Hezekiah’s Tunnel in Jerusalem, provides an account of the digging of the water tunnel to assist Jerusalem’s resistance to Sennacherib’s attack in 701 b.c.e. The Royal Steward Inscription appears to have belonged to the steward Shebna, mentioned in Isa 22:15–16. Numerous inscriptions have been recovered from Transjordan as well, especially from Ammon. The more important include the Siran bottle, which mentions at least three Ammonite kings; and the Heshbon ostraca. The first major Philistine inscription was found at Ekron; it mentions the name of the city (Ekron), as well as two Philistine kings, Padi and Achish, the former mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions. This inscription indicates that by Iron IIC the Philistines spoke a Northwest Semitic dialect. In Edom, writing is limited to a number of seals and a few ostraca, the latter being found at Kheleifeh, Bozrah, and at ºUza—a Judahite site possibly captured by the Edomites. Many of the Edomite names on the inscriptions include the theophoric element Qôs, an Edomite deity.

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Bibliography Amiran, R. 1969 Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Massada. Aharoni, Y. 1982 The Archaeology of the Land of Israel. Philadelphia: Westminster. Barkay, G. 1992 The Iron Age II–III. Pp. 302–73 in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. Amnon Ben-Tor. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ben-Tor, A. 1994 Tel Hazor—1992/1993. Excavations and Surveys in Israel 14: 9–13. 1995 Tel Hazor, 1994. Israel Exploration Journal 45: 65–68. Biran, A., and Naveh, J. 1993 An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan. Israel Exploration Journal 43: 81–98. 1994 The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment. Israel Exploration Journal 45: 1–18. Broshi, M., and Finkelstein, I. 1992 The Population of Palestine in the Iron Age II. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 287: 47–50. Cahill, J. M., and Tarler, D. 1995 Excavations Directed by Yigal Shiloh at the City of David, 1978–1985. Pp. 30–45 in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. H. Geva. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Dever, W. G. 1994 Social Structure in Palestine in the Iron II Period on the Eve of Destruction. Pp. 417–31 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Facts on File. Dornemann, R. H. 1983 The Archaeology of the Transjordan in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Milwaukee: Milwaukee Public Museum. Finkelstein, I. 1988 The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1999 State Formation in Israel and Judah: A Contrast in Context, A Contrast in Trajectory. Near Eastern Archaeology 62/1: 35–52. Geva 1994 Twenty-Five Years of Excavations in Jerusalem, 1967–1992: Achievements and Evaluation. Pp. 1–29 in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. H. Geva. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Herr, Larry G. 1978 The Scripts of Ancient Northwest Semitic Seals. Harvard Semitic Monograph Series 18. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press. 1997 The Iron Age II Period: Emerging Nations. Biblical Archaeologist 60/3: 114–83. Kempinski, A., and Reich, R. (eds.) 1992 The Architecture of Ancient Israel. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. LaBianca, Ø. S., and Younker, R. W. 1994 The Kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom: The Archaeology of Society in Late Bronze/Iron Age Transjordan. Pp. 399– 415 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Facts on File. Mazar, A. 1985 The Emergence of the Philistine Material Culture. Israel Exploration Journal 35: 95–107. 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 bce. New York: Doubleday.

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The Iron Age I. Pp. 258–301 in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. A. Ben-Tor. New Haven: Yale University Press. Miller, J. M. (ed.) 1992 Archaeological Survey of the Kerak Plateau. Atlanta: American Schools of Oriental Research. Sauer, J. A. 1985 Ammon, Moab and Edom. Pp. 206–14 in Biblical Archaeology Today. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1986 Transjordan in the Bronze and Iron Ages: A Critique of Glueck’s Synthesis. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 263: 1–26. Sawyer, J. F. A., and Clines, D. J. A. (eds.) 1983 Midian, Moab and Edom. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 24. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Stager, L. 1985 The Archeology of Family in Ancient Israel. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260: 1–36. 1995 The Impact of the Sea Peoples in Canaan (1185–1050 bce). Pp. 332–65 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. 1998 Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel. Pp. 123–75 in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. M. D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press. Younker, R. W. 1997 Moabite Social Structure. Biblical Archaeologist 60: 237– 48. 1999 The Emergence of the Ammonites. Pp. 189–218 in Ancient Ammon, ed. B. MacDonald and R. W. Younker. Leiden: Brill.

Randall W. Younker

Religion and Cult in the Levant: The Archaeological Data This essay reviews the archaeological evidence, both artifactual and textual, for religion and cult in Syria–Palestine from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age.

Neolithic Religion is presumed to have been significant in the Neolithic period, about 8500–4500 b.c.e., but there are few tangible remains. There are increasing numbers of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, including steatopygeous “mother goddesses” from Shaºar ha-Golan. There is also evidence for the specialized treatment of the dead in a series of detached, plastered skulls at sites in Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Related to these are the remarkable Pre-pottery Neolithic plastered statuettes from ºAin Ghazel in Jordan, found in a cache, presumably deities. At Jericho a small rectangular mudbrick building was regarded by Kenyon as a sanctuary.

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic period, about 4500–3300 b.c.e., is well known only in Jordan and Israel. At Teleilat al-Ghassul near the Dead Sea, a small sanctuary produced a fresco of a cult-scene featuring masked priests, goblets and chalices, and objects that may be votives. At several sites in the Beersheva basin, there are carved ivory statuettes of both male and female deities. Near Gaza, at Gilat, much of the site seems devoted to cultic activities, to judge from the large number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, violin-shaped figurines, offering stands, chalices, and other ceramic votive vessels. Along the coast around Tel Aviv, caves have produced terra-cotta ossuaries for secondary burials representing house-forms as well as human and animal motifs, surely evidence of the cult. The only fullfledged temple is at Nahal Hever, on a high cliff along the western shores of the Dead Sea. Here a broadroom temple with low benches and several favissae is surrounded by an enclosure wall with a gate. In caves nearby at ºEn-Gedi, almost certainly associated with the temple, a hoard of much more than 400 spectacular copper implements was found, including mace-heads, scepters, and crowns. Other objects include ivory tusks and carvings, as well as votives.

Early Bronze Age From the Early Bronze Age, about 3000–2000 b.c.e., the first urban era, we have several temples from Palestine, including smaller sanctuaries at Bâb edhDhr⺠and Jericho in the Jordan Valley. At Megiddo, a large stone altar for animal

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Fig. 97. The “high place” at Dan (ninth century b.c.). From Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, 1.319.

sacrifices was later adjoined by three exceptionally well-built megaron (or porch) temples with roof columns and altars. At Tel Yarmut in the central hills, the “White Building,” a monumental plastered masonry temple with a side altar, belongs to late in the period, Early Bronze II. At Arad in the northern Negev, the “Twin Temple” of Early Bronze II is a complex of two broadroom temples side by side, with a large exterior altar and adjoining circular, stone-lined favissa. Unfortunately, all of the above structures, while undoubtedly sacral buildings, were found virtually empty; and even elsewhere, few clearly cultic objects have been found. A few “mother goddess” figurines from tombs at Bâb edh-Dhr⺠and a stone fragment incised with a praying (?) stick-figure reminiscent of rites of Dumuzi, the Mesopotamia grain god, may suggest that the basic theme of the cult was fertility—as indeed we know it later was. From the Italian excavations at Tell Mardikh near Aleppo, ancient Ebla, we have the earliest textual evidence of the cult. Among the more than 20,000 cuneiform tablets from the archives of Palace G (about 2300 b.c.e.) we have several texts that allow us to reconstruct something of the “Canaanite Pantheon.” In addition to a few Sumerian deities, there is evidence of a core of West Semitic deities, all of whom continue into the Middle Bronze, Late Bronze, and Iron Ages. The names clearly recognized include: Baal/Hadad, head of the pantheon; his consort Ashtar (Mesopotamian Ishtar, later Asherah); Dagan, a grain god; ºAthtar, the morning/evening star; Kabkab, another star deity; Malik ‘king’; Rasap, god of healing; and Kamish (later Chemosh). Most of these deities are apparently to be connected with the well-known “fertility cults” of later Canaan. Apart from the few cosmological or mythological texts from Ebla, however, we have little in the way of priestly or liturgical texts and almost nothing in the way of tangible remains from the cult of the Early Bronze Age. The last phase, Early Bronze IV, represents a post-urban period of collapse, when Palestine (although not Syria) reverted to pastoral nomadism. For this

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Fig. 98. Terra-cotta temple model from (Tell el-Farºah [N]. ca. 9th century b.c.). From A. Chambon, Tel el-Farºah 1: L’age du Fer, pl. 66.

period, the only evidence of cult comes perhaps from the relatively elaborate shaft-tomb burials of the dead, usually transferred from somewhere else. These “houses for the dead” may suggest notions of a permanent home in the afterlife.

Middle Bronze Age Religion and cult in the Middle Bronze Age, about 2000–1500 b.c.e., are well documented in both Syria and Palestine. Early in the period there emerge several types of monumental temples, especially (1) large, rectangular, thick-walled “fortress temples,” usually consisting of a single main room with a central altar or niche on the rear wall and a two-columned entrance porch; and (2) similar “longroom” temples but with two and increasingly three rooms along the central axis. These temple types may originally have been Syro-Anatolian, but they are most at home in Syria and Palestine. Examples are found in Syria at Ebla and elsewhere; and in Palestine at Hazor, Megiddo, Shechem, and even at Tell el-Hayyat and other village sites. Few examples of cult paraphernalia, votives, or other offerings have been found. But at Hazor there is evidence of ceramic cult-stands; a potter’s workshop and many mass-produced miniature vessels used as votives; a fine bronze plaque showing a priest; metal figurines; and an inscribed clay liver-model for reading fortunes, which reads in part: “The gods of the city will come back.”

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During the Late Bronze Age, about 1560–1260 b.c.e., traditions of Canaanite religion continue and develop further. We now have an even larger number of olderstyle bipartite and tripartite monumental temples in Syria and Palestine, together with (1) local-style multiroomed temples featuring altars and low benches around the walls for offerings of less stereotypical style (Lachish, Tel Mevorakh, etc.); and (2) more elaborate temples that may reflect Egyptian influence (especially Beth-shan and Lachish). Here we are more fortunate in having considerable numbers of artifacts, including basalt altars; terra-cotta stands; clay and metal figurines of deities, both male and female; terra-cotta naoi, or model temple/shrines; and many types of votives, such as stone vessels, bronzes, scarabs, seals, jewelry, and other precious objects. In addition to this wealth of artifactual data, we have rich Late Bronze Age Fig. 99. Drawing: Gisela Tambour, in: textual evidence in the hundreds of well- K. Galling (ed.), Biblisches Reallexikon, known clay tablets from Ras Shamra, an- (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977) 191, fig. 45, 3. cient Ugarit, on the coast of Syria, excavated by the French since 1929. These are, happily, mostly mythological texts, with a few more practical liturgical texts. These texts may be regarded, in fact, as “cult libretti”—that is, they make the ideology lying behind Canaanite religious practices vivid, probably going back to remote origins in the Bronze Age. The pantheon at Ugarit (and undoubtedly elsewhere in Syria and Palestine) included an elderly pair, Bull El, “the merciful one,” and his consort Lady Asherah of the Sea; and a younger, rival pair, the heavenly storm-god and fertility figure, Puissant Baal, and his consort Virgin Anat, goddess both of life and death. Other principal deities are Baal’s mortal enemies, especially Mot (‘Death’), but also Judge River and Prince Yam (‘Sea’); the male-female morning/evening star deity, ºAthtar/ºAthtart; Reshef, god of both pestilence and healing; and several lesser deities. From other texts, we get an idea of the actual cult personnel at Ugarit, which included various kinds of priests and priestesses; perhaps the king and queen in certain cultic roles; singers; perhaps (?) temple prostitutes, male and female, or “dedicated ones” of some sort; sculptors; garment-makers; and others. Temple

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Fig. 100. Female figurines form Kenyon’s “cult-cache” in Jerusalem (seventh century b.c.). from K. M. Kenyon, Jerusalem, fig. 10.

rituals included the frequent offerings of food and drink to the gods; animal sacrifices of various kinds; periodic rituals such as “the enthronement of Baal,” or the “sacred marriage” of the gods; the marzea˙ banquet, or kispu festival; and so on. In all of the above evidence, it seems that we confront a “nature cult” that celebrates and reinforces the productive powers of the earth, the animal kingdom, and the human family. The rituals of the cult ensure that, despite the perennial struggle of existence in a marginal land, life triumphs over death.

Iron Age The Iron Age in Syria–Palestine, about 1200–600 b.c.e., represents a major cultural break at the end of the long Bronze Age. New ethnic groups appear, such as the “Sea Peoples”/Philistines, Israelites, Arameans, Edomites, Moabites, and

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Fig. 101. Inscription III from Kh. el-Qom (8th century b.c.). From A. Lemaire, Revue biblique 84, fig. 1.

Fig. 102. Hebrew inscription and scene on an ºAjrûd storejar. From Z. Meshel, Kuntillet ºAjrûd, fig. 12.

others, who will soon grow into vigorous nation-states with their own distinctive ideologies and material cultures. Yet we mostly only have well-excavated, published archaeological evidence from Israel—supplemented, of course, by the Hebrew Bible, our only extensive textual source for the period. In premonarchic Israel, only one reasonably certain cultic installation is known, the 12th-century b.c.e. “Bull site” in the Samarian hills, an open-air altar and standing-stone, near which was found a fine bronze bull figurine (reminiscent of Canaanite “Bull El”) From the period of the monarchy, however, about 1000–600 b.c.e., there are a number of Israelite and Judean temples known. These include a complex at Dan (fig. 96) on the northern border, consisting of a monumental outdoor stepped stone altar (undoubtedly the biblical “High Place”) and an adjacent multiroomed structure (perhaps the biblical liskah). Associated with the 10th–8th centuries b.c.e. complex were small and large four-horned altars; an olive-pressing installation; male and female terra-cotta and faience figurines; terra-cotta votives; lamps; bronze scepters, shovels, and other implements; and a naos or temple model. At Arad, a small fortress in the northern Negev of the 10th– 7th centuries b.c.e., a tripartite temple was found very similar in plan to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. It had an open-air forecourt with a large altar; a smaller central chamber with low benches; and an inner sanctum (biblical debîr) with a pair of stylized horned altars for incense, as well as a pair of standing stones (the biblical maßßebôt, here perhaps Yahweh and Asherah). Associated finds were terra-cotta offering stands; evidence of burnt animal sacrifices; a fine bronze lion (Asherah is the “Lion Lady” in Canaan); and two shallow offering plates inscribed in Hebrew qôp, kâp, probably an abbreviation for qodesh ha-kohanîm ‘set apart for the priests’. On ostraca (potsherds) found nearby were the Hebrew names of priestly families that are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. A third Iron II temple at nearby Beersheva

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has been reconstructed largely on the basis of a large, dismantled four-horned altar—possibly evidence of the cultic reforms of the Judean kings, Hezekiah or Josiah, in the 8th–7th centuries b.c.e. Smaller Iron Age public or household shrines (fig. 98) have been found at Tell el-Farºah (North), Megiddo, Taºanach (fig. 97), Samaria, Lachish, Kuntillet ºAjrûd, and elsewhere. They have yielded small four-horned altars, cult stands, votive vessels, female figurines and molds (fig. 101), kernoi or ‘trick-vessels’; censors, rattles, astragali for fortune-telling, and votives of various kinds. A number of these items—especially anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines—have also been found in Iron Age tombs, along with miniature furniture, and Bes and “Eye-of-Horus” amulets. Thus there is growing evidence of household cults and popular or “folk” religion in ancient Israel or Judah. Much of this contrasts with the portrait of orthodox religion in the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Deuteronomistic history and Priestly literature. However, the archaeological evidence confirms the actual existence and dominance of the syncretistic “nonconformist” cults that the biblical prophets castigated. Rather dramatic evidence of the above claim has come recently from texts recovered by archaeology. The first is a Hebrew inscription from an 8th-century b.c.e. tomb at Khirbet el-Qôm (fig. 99), west of Hebron, part of which reads: “May Uriyahu be blessed by Yahweh; and from his enemies save him by his (i.e., Yahweh’s) Asherah.” A roughly contemporary inscription on a large store jar from Kuntillet ºAjrûd (fig. 100), a fortress and shrine in the eastern Sinai desert, reads in part, “May X be blessed by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah.” In view of the mounting evidence, both artifactual and textual, many scholars now are willing to posit a popular cult that coupled Israelite Yahweh with a consort, Asherah, the Old Mother Goddess of Canaan. Certainly Baal and Anat, Mot, and other gods of Canaan are remembered, if not approved, in the Hebrew Bible. It seems likely that strict monotheism was a product of the exile and its aftermath in the 6th–5th centuries b.c.e., not earlier. In any case, recent archaeological evidence requires us to rewrite nearly all the standard histories of ancient Israelite and Judean religion.

Bibliography Albertz, R. 1994 From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy. Volume 1 of A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox. Albright, W. F. 1968 Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Becking, B., et al. (eds.) 2001 Only One God? Montheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Coogan, M. D. 1978 Stories from Ancient Canaan. Philadelphia: Westminster.

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Dever, W. G. 1987 The Contribution of Archaeology to the Study of Canaanite and Early Israelite Religion. Pp. 209– 47 in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride. Philadelphia: Fortress. 1990 Archaeology Reconstructs the Lost Background of the Israelite Cult. Pp. 121– 66 in Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Holladay, J. S. Jr. 1987 Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach. Pp. 249–99 in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride. Philadelphia: Fortress. Miller, P. D. 2000 The Religion of Ancient Israel. Library of Ancient Israel. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox. Miller, P. D.; Hanson, P. D.; and McBride, S. D. (eds.) 1987 Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross. Philadelphia: Westminster. Olyan, S. 1988 Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Smith, M. S. 2002 The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. 2d ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Tarragon, J.-M. de. 1980 La Culte à Ugarit d’après les textes de la pratique en cunéiformes alphabétiques. Paris: Gabalda. Toorn, K. van der (ed.) 1997 Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East. Louvain: Peeters. Zevit, Z. 2001 The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum.

William G. Dever

Goddesses Goddess traditions thrived in the polytheistic religious systems of the Bronze Age. Goddesses remained an integral part of Iron Age religions, even in the supposedly monotheistic culture of Israel.

Goddesses of Bronze Age Mesopotamia Goddesses abounded in the Sumerian and Akkadian pantheons, but Mesopotamian myths rarely described them separately from their male consorts. An exception is Sumerian Inanna, called Ishtar by the Akkadians.

Inanna/Ishtar Sumerian Inanna is primarily a goddess of agricultural fertility. Texts depict her courtship with and marriage to the fertility god Dumuzi (Akkadian Tammuz) and his death shortly thereafter. Many posit here a representation of the Mesopotamian agricultural calendar, with courtship and marriage symbolizing spring fecundity, and the untimely death of Dumuzi symbolizing the onset of summer drought. The tale of Inanna’s descent to the underworld describes how the goddess, trapped in the realm of the dead, must provide a substitute to secure her release. Although the tradition is fragmentary, the substitute she orders her henchmen to seize seems to be Dumuzi, indicating that Inanna’s feelings of love and desire for Dumuzi are paired with attitudes of belligerence and aggression. In the Akkadian period the goddess manifests similarly polarized attributes, described as both a goddess of love and of war. This duality is apparent in the Gilgamesh Epic, where Ishtar first attempts to seduce Gilgamesh and then, after he refuses her, persuades her father Anu to unleash the ferocious Bull of Heaven to wreak havoc on Gilgamesh’s city of Uruk.

Goddesses of Bronze Age Egypt As in Mesopotamia, goddesses in Bronze Age Egypt were an integral part of the culture’s religious traditions.

The Divine Ennead The best known Egyptian creation myth begins with primordial water, from which emerges the creator god Atum. He in turn begets four male-female pairs: first, the deities of the physical universe, Shu and Tefnut (air and moisture) and Geb and Nut (earth and sky); second, the deities associated with kingship, Osiris and Isis and Seth and Nephthys. Of these nine deities (hence the appellation Ennead), the most prominent female among the initial generations is Nut, the sky goddess (fig. 103). As befits a

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Fig. 103. The sky goddess Nut, covered in stars, traversed by a boat carrying the sun god Ra as it travels from east to west. Below lies Geb, god of the earth, bedecked with reeds. Reprinted with permission from O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 36, fig. 32.

celestial deity, she is often depicted as part of the ceiling decoration in tombs, represented either as a woman or in theriomorphic form as a cow. Typically Ra, the sun god, is shown moving along the length of her body, being swallowed by the goddess as the sun sets every evening and emerging newborn from her womb the next morning. Nut’s role in the sun’s daily cycle of death and rebirth thus provides a potent metaphor for the ancient Egyptian quest for life after death. The primary goddess among the four deities associated with kingship, Isis, also plays an important role in cultic traditions associated with life after death. According to Egyptian mythology, she is responsible for recovering the body of her husband, King Osiris, who was murdered by his brother Seth, and restoring Osiris to life in the underworld. Moreover, as mother of Horus, the divine counterpart of the earthly pharaoh, Isis is intimately associated with kingship and is represented in hieroglyphics and often in art as a throne.

Hathor Hathor is in many ways the preeminent goddess of Egyptian religion because of her several different functions within the cult. Like Nut, she can be depicted as a cow and be associated with the sky. Like Isis, she is associated with motherhood, especially the motherhood of Horus in his solar manifestation. Hathor is also a patron of music, and depictions often show the goddess wearing a sistrum, her characteristic instrument, on her head. In addition, she can be represented as a sacred tree, frequently a tree with breasts that gives suckle to the Egyptian

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pharaoh. This ability of Hathor to bestow the milk of life manifests itself in the Middle and New Kingdoms in the funerary cult, when the goddess becomes known as one who can bring fertility to the deceased in the form of eternal life.

Goddesses of Bronze Age Syria–Palestine The three major goddesses of Syria–Palestine in the Bronze Age are Anat, Asherah, and Astarte. Evidence concerning them comes primarily from library archives found at the Canaanite city-state of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and also from Egyptian sources.

Anat At Ugarit Anat appears primarily as a goddess associated with violence and war, described as wearing a necklace of skulls and a girdle of hands, and dancing knee-deep in the blood and gore of her defeated foes (CAT 1.3.2.11–15, 23–28). Anat’s military characteristics feature prominently in the two main episodes of the Ugaritic Baal-Anat cycle, which describe Anat’s role in the victory over Yamm, the god of the sea (CAT 1.3.3.35–40), and her defeat of Mot, the god of death. The Ugaritic Epic of Aqhat describes how Anat plots to kill Prince Aqhat to acquire his magical bow. Iconographic materials from New Kingdom Egypt depict Anat holding a shield and a mace. Egyptian texts liken her to a shield and a part of the pharaoh’s war chariot and identify her, along with the goddess Astarte, as “a woman acting (as) a warrior.”

Asherah Asherah is the mother goddess of Canaanite religion, called both the “mother” and the “creatress” of the gods at Ugarit. The gods of the pantheon are likewise called “the children of Asherah” or the “children of Qudsu,” Qudsu being a well-known epithet of Asherah. Numerous Egyptian representations from the New Kingdom depict the goddess nude, viewed frontally, standing astride a lion and holding snakes in either one or both hands (fig. 104). Lions and serpents are also associated with Asherah elsewhere; at Ugarit the children of Asherah are called her ‘pride of lions’ (sbrt ary [CAT 1.3.5.37, 4.2.25–26,

Fig. 104. Fourteenth-century gold plaque portraying the goddess Asherah. The serpents entwined about the goddess’s waist and the lion on which she stands are animals often associated with Asherah. From U. Winter, Frau und Göttin (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983) fig. 42. Reprinted with permission.

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4.4.49–50, 6.1.40–41]); the goddess is called ‘Lady of the Serpent’ (qt btn) in the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. Another image frequently associated with Asherah is the sacred tree. Pendants from Ugarit that represent Asherah frequently show a stylized branch or tree etched in her navel.

Astarte Astarte, the least well attested of the three main goddesses at Ugarit, is primarily a goddess of love and fertility, usually paired with the fertility god Baal (in CAT 1.16.6.54–57, for example). Astarte’s attributes as a goddess of war are less commonly discussed, but Egyptian representations show her on horseback carrying weapons of war; in Egypt she, like Anat, is also compared to a shield and to part of a war chariot and is called a “warrior” (see above) and “Lady of Combat.” Astarte is further noted for her astral characteristics. She is known in Egypt as the “Lady of Heaven” and is associated with the planet Venus, as are Ishtar, her Mesopotamian counterpart, and Aphrodite, her Greek equivalent in later tradition.

Goddesses of the Iron Age The major feature of Iron Age goddess traditions is a tendency toward syncretism, as the formerly distinct identities of various goddesses become fused. This phenomenon is most evident in Egypt, Phoenicia, and Israel.

Egypt Syncretism between the various ancient Near Eastern goddesses can be found in Egypt already at the beginning of the Iron Age. A 12th-century plaque depicts a frontally viewed, naked goddess similar in many respects to representations of Asherah, but the plaque’s inscription indicates the goddess is a composite deity, “Qudsu [Asherah]—Anat—Astarte.” Furthermore, this composite goddess wears a headdress typically associated with Egyptian Hathor, demonstrating a further fusion between the three main Canaanite goddesses and one of their Egyptian counterparts. Further evidence of goddess syncretism in Egypt may come from the 5thcentury site of Elephantine, where a deity ºAnat-yahu was worshiped. Some have seen here a divine pair, the god of Israel, Yahweh, and the goddess Anat. Syncretism of goddesses is suggested because Yahweh, when paired with a consort, is more typically paired with Asherah (see below). Most, however, prefer to understand the word ºnt in the phrase ºAnat-yahu as the common noun meaning ‘providence’ or ‘sign’, worshiped at Elephantine as a hypostatized aspect of Yahweh.

Phoenicia The major conflation of goddesses in Phoenician religion involves the goddesses Asherah and Astarte. The patron goddess of the city of Sidon is identified in the Bronze Age Kirta epic as Asherah (KTU 1.14.4.34–36, 38–39), but by the

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Iron Age the city’s deity is Astarte (1 Kgs 11:5, 11:33; 2 Kgs 23:13; KAI no. 14.15). The Sarepta inscription of the 7th century reads ltnt ºstrt ‘to tnt-Astarte’, suggesting that the epithet tnt is a title of Astarte, yet a compelling argument has been made by F. M. Cross identifying tnt with Asherah. Although these two positions appear conflicting, the data may instead indicate a fusion of Asherah and Astarte. R. A. Oden has further suggested that this syncretism extends into the Hellenistic period, arguing that the Syrian goddess Atargatis represents a conflation of Asherah, Astarte and, in addition, the goddess Anat.

Israel Goddesses whose cults are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible include Asherah, Astarte, and in Jer 7:18 and 44:15–19, 25 an astral deity called the Queen of Heaven. Associated both with fertility and with war, this goddess’s rituals seem to have been especially appealing to women and to have involved the baking of offering cakes called kawwanîm. The ancient Near Eastern goddesses who best fit this description are Mesopotamian Ishtar and Canaanite Astarte, and the Queen of Heaven is most probably a syncretistic fusion of these two. When Astarte appears in the Hebrew Bible by name, she is called Ashtoreth (1 Kgs 11:5, 33; 2 Kgs 23:13; 1 Sam 31:10 [emended]) or, more commonly, Ashtaroth, the plural form of Ashtoreth. The singular Ashtoreth, by incorporating the vocalic pattern of Hebrew boset ‘shame’ suggests the scorn with which the goddess was regarded by the biblical writers; the plural Ashtaroth, because it is typically paired with a reference to the béºalîm, the Baals, indicates that one source of the biblical writers’ scorn was their understanding that Astarte was the consort of Canaanite Baal ( Judg 2:13, 10:6; 1 Sam 7:4, 12:10). The same biblical writers, however, elsewhere paired Baal with the goddess Asherah ( Judg 6:25, 28, 30; 1 Kgs 18:19; 2 Kgs 21:3; 23:4). Still, despite the biblical writers’ syncretistic pairing of both Astarte and Asherah with Baal, evidence increasingly suggests that many practitioners of ancient Israelite religion worshiped Asherah as the consort of Yahweh. 1 Kgs 15:13; 2 Kgs 18:4, 21:7, and 23:7 indicate that, regardless of the efforts of several reformer kings, it was the norm to have a cult statue of the goddess Asherah standing in Yahweh’s Temple in Jerusalem. (This statue, called an ªåserâ, most likely represented the stylized tree known to symbolize the goddess.) Asherah worship also seems to have existed alongside the worship of Yahweh elsewhere in Israel; the statue of Asherah erected by King Ahab in the Northern capital city of Samaria, for example (1 Kgs 16:33), was not marked for destruction by the reformer King Jehu, although Jehu otherwise purged all non-Yahwistic elements from the cult (2 Kgs 13:6). 2 Kgs 23:15 similarly indicates that there was a cult statue of Asherah in Yahweh’s temple at Bethel. These biblical materials are further illuminated by archaeological data. From the southern site of Khirbet el-Qôm comes an inscription pairing Yahweh and “his ªåserâ,” probably Yahweh and the cult statue that symbolized the goddess. Similar inscriptions have been found at the site of Kuntillet ºAjrûd (see fig. 102,

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p. 388), including one that is tantalizing reminiscent of the Kings material concerning Ahab’s cult statue of Asherah as it pairs ‘Yahweh of Samaria’ (the most likely translation of yhwh smrn) with “his ªåserâ.” The goddess Anat is for the most part absent from biblical literature, her name appearing only in place-names and in the patronymic Shamgar ben-Anat in Judg 3:31, 5:6. The patronymic ben-Anat is found also on the reverse of a 12th- or 11th-century arrowhead from the site of el-KhaÎr; the obverse of this same arrowhead is inscribed ºbd lbªt ‘servant of the lion lady’. Syncretism once again is indicated, because the leonine characteristics associated with Asherah in the Bronze Age have in this Iron Age inscription been assimilated to Anat.

Bibliography Ackerman, S. 1992 Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah. Harvard Semitic Monographs 46. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Bleeker, C. J. 1992 Isis and Hathor: Two Ancient Egyptian Goddesses. The Book of the Goddess, Past and Present: An Introduction to Her Religion, ed. C. Olson. New York: Crossroad. Cross, F. M. 1973 Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1980 Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 238: 9–20. Frymer-Kensky, T. 1992 In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Free Press. Hadley, J. 2000 The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacobsen, T. 1976 The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lesko, L. H. 1991 Ancient Egyptian Cosmogonies and Cosmology. Pp. 88–122 in Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice, ed. B. E. Shafer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Oden, R. A. 1977 Studies in Lucian’s De Syria Dea. Harvard Semitic Monographs 15. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press. Olyan, S. M. 1988 Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 34. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Walls, N. H. 1992 The Goddess Anat in Ugaritic Myth. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 135. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

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Wiggins, S. A. 1993 A Reassessment of “Asherah”: A Study according to Textual Sources of the First Two Millennia b.c.e. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 235. Kevalaer: Butzon & Bercker / Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Winter, U. 1983 Frau und Göttin: Exegetische und ikonographische Studien zum weiblichen Gottesbild im alten Israel und in dessen Umwelt. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Susan Ackerman

Syria–Palestine in the Persian Period Introduction The Persian period (539–332 b.c.e.) has traditionally been neglected both by biblical scholars and by archaeologists of Syria–Palestine. Both scholarly communities, although for different reasons, have focused instead on developing syntheses of earlier or later periods. The earlier periods were of greater interest since they provided information on the social, cultural, literary, and material record of societies with connections to the emergence of the people of Israel in Syria–Palestine and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The later periods, particularly the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods, were considered more important than the Persian period since they provided data on the emergence of Judaism and Christianity. Full-scale excavations tended to focus on sites of importance at the two ends of the cultural and religious spectrum (that is, biblical Israel and early Christianity); and, when Persian-period remains were discovered, they were generally either poorly dug, under-reported, or both. Before the early 1980s, there was no comprehensive study of Persian-period archaeological remains for the “biblical world.” Instead, scholars who were interested in the period would have to pore through excavation reports of major sites to discover material cultural or epigraphic remains that dated to the two centuries of Persian hegemony. This changed in 1982 with the publication of Ephraim Stern’s Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period, an English translation of his 1968 doctoral dissertation. Stern’s major contribution lay in his bringing together in one source information about the archaeological contexts and remains from numerous excavations at both major and smaller sites. It has remained the standard point of departure for serious study of the Persian period for two decades of scholarly research. However, while it provides a breadth of coverage, it is sometimes imprecise and inconsistent. The past decade has seen a marked increase in interest in and discussion of the archaeological, historical, and textual study of the Persian period. This led to the publication of numerous interdisciplinary studies on the period; the publication of Transeuphratène, a new journal dedicated to the study of Syria–Palestine in the Persian period; and the Achaemenid History seminar based in the Netherlands, the proceedings of which have been published in a series by the same name. This interest has not only focused on the material record of the period but has also led to an attempt to understand more broadly such issues as sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural developments that occurred under Persian control. At the same time, interest in the period has increased among biblical scholars, who have begun to see it not as a “dark age” marked by moribund legalism but as a period of intense creativity and a source for the composition and editing of much of the Hebrew Bible. The result of these developments is a focus on the

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period that views Syria–Palestine from the vantage point of Persian imperial interests; that not only focuses on the physical evidence of coins and seal impressions or foreign material culture but seeks to define broader economic patterns; and that sees Yehud and its environs as important to the Persian core, while existing on the periphery of imperial power.

Historical Overview At its height, the Persian Empire extended from the Indus Valley in the east to Egypt and parts of Greece in the west. The extent of Persia’s rearch and its organizational acumen have led many to assert that the Persian Empire was the first true world-class empire. While its appetite for power was not without parallel, its ability to satisfy that appetite and extend its control was, in fact, unprecedented. Before one turns to a review of the major events of the empire’s involvement in Syria–Palestine, it is important to come to an understanding of the terminal and transitional points of the period. While the beginning and ending of the Persian period are clearly established, several important issues concerning the transitions of material culture from the Iron Age to the Persian, and the Persian to the Hellenistic periods are unresolved. Whether one considers the end of the Iron Age to have occurred with the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, as is commonly asserted by biblical scholars and archaeologists, or one views the Iron Age as ending at 539 b.c.e. with the rise of Persian control, it is clear that the beginning of the Persian period is marked in the archaeological record by a continuation of traditional Iron II pottery traditions. As the period continued, several distinct forms emerged, some indigenous and some either foreign or local imitations of foreign types. At the end of the Persian period, a similar period of transition occurred, with Persian-period forms gradually giving way to distinctly Hellenistic traditions. This type of transition is typical at the dawn of an archaeological period, but it has proved particularly problematic for the study of the Persian period, owing in large part to the general lack of interest in the period noted above. This issue was perhaps more acute in the earlier years of scientific archaeological excavations, when so little was known about the material culture of the Persian period. In excavation reports of major sites, it was thus not uncommon to see pottery referred to as Iron II/Persian or a site referred to as “Persian-Hellenistic.” Making matters even more difficult was the lack of precision regarding the period’s beginning point, with some writers using the nomenclature Persian period to refer to the entire postexilic period, or roughly 586–332 b.c.e. Further clouding the issue has been a lack of consensus regarding transitions within the period. Traditionally, archaeologists have been content to refer to any divisions of the Persian period as either “early” or “late,” with little clarity as to when the shift(s) may have occurred. More recently, Hoglund has argued for a discernible shift in imperial policy that led to a pattern of fortification of the western periphery to shore up the empire’s defenses against a growing Greek threat. This pattern is seen in the archaeological

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record of Syria–Palestine in a series of fortresses with similar architectural typology that were erected in the mid–5th century b.c.e. Building upon this, Carter has proposed a division of the period into Persian I and Persian II, with approximately 450 b.c.e. as the middle point of the period. Archaeological Divisions of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods

Usin g Iron Ag e Nomenclature Iron IIC Persian I Persian II

605–539 539–450 450–332

Using Historical Periods Neo-Babylonian Persian I Persian II

586–539 539–450 450–332

While this division has allowed for greater precision in analyses of the NeoBabylonian and Persian periods, the transitional periods between Iron IIC/ Neo-Babylonian and Persian, and Persian and Hellenistic periods still affect the interpretation of data from archaeological surveys. Recent surveyors of the territory of Benjamin and the hill country of Judah have sometimes had to resort to a dual classification (Iron II/Persian or Persian/Hellenistic) for the forms that cannot be clearly assigned to a particular period. This, in turn, makes the interpretation of the data for each period more difficult and requires greater caution when one reconstructs social patterns based on surveys. Syria–Palestine was part of the fifth of twenty satrapies of the Persian Empire, also known as “Eber-Nari” (Eber-Nahara in Aramaic, ‘beyond the river [Euphrates]’). This major subdivision of the empire comprised ten or more provinces (fig. 105). These included the Sidonian land-grant, Samaria, the Shephelah (from Gezer to Lachish), Yehud, Idumea, Ashdod, Galilee, Karnaim, Hauron, Damascus, Ammon, and Moab. According to Herodotus, Cyprus was a part of the province, which may have extended from just south of Cilicia in the north to the Negev in the south, although the exact boundaries are impossible to determine. Persian control was marked by a combination of both peace and stability on the one hand and a certain level of flux on the other. While many areas of the empire enjoyed the benefits of the pax-Persica, such as more secure trade, travel, and communication lines, areas on the edges of the empire’s political control often saw a greater degree of instability. The early Persian rulers were marked by a relatively high level of political strength and expansionist vision. The goal of Cyrus was not only to generate the rule of law or force within his realm but also to act in a cohesive way to promote a certain level of self-interested cooperation among his subjects. The policy of allowing formerly subjugated peoples to return to their homeland, and even to rebuild their ancestral sanctuaries with some imperial support, seems intended to promote this type of loyalty and thereby to enhance social control. The Cyrus Cylinder suggests that the return of the exiles to Jerusalem

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Fig. 105. The Province of Yehud in Syria–Palestine, from C. Carter, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study. Used by permission of Sheffield Academic Press.

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and Judea and their charge to rebuild the temple was not an isolated event but part of a cohesive policy. While Cyrus sought to increase his influence through a series of social, political, and even religious initiatives, Cambyses and Darius sought to expand and consolidate their power. This expansionist policy sought to bring Egypt and Greece more fully into the orbit of the Persian crown, a policy that was never fully realized. Indeed, it could be argued that the appetite of Persian emperors to control Egypt and Greece ultimately led to the eclipse of the empire, since accumulating the resources necessary to mount numerous military campaigns against these two areas weakened Persia socially and economically. Persian Emperors, 539–332 Cyrus Cambyses Darius I Xerxes Artaxerxes I Darius II Artaxerxes II Artaxerxes III Ochus Darius III

539–530 530–522 522–486 485–465 465–423 423–404 404–359 359–338 336–332

This is particularly evident in the rule of Xerxes and Artaxerxes I. Xerxes followed a policy that funneled resources away from the empire’s peripheral areas and toward its Persian core. This led to a rise in taxation, increased interest rates, and less imperial investment in the outlying satrapies and provinces. This general pattern continued during the rule of Artaxerxes I, which was marked by an effort to maintain unity in the face of growing internal unrest and continued pressure on its western front from Greece. Economic and political decline generally marked the reigns of the final four emperors, despite the resurgence of Persian control of Egypt and parts of Greece during the administration of Artaxerxes II.

Material Culture The archaeological record of the Persian period, although less accessible than that of some earlier and later periods, is nonetheless present in most traditional forms. And, while the earlier and later portions of the period are transitional, there is ample evidence of distinct Persian-period traditions in pottery, architecture, burial practices, and weaponry.

Architecture Throughout the Persian period, building structures shared features with that of the Iron II period but often demonstrated adaptations of these traditional styles. Tell en-Naßbeh provides a good example of this type of development.

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J. Zorn identifies several three- and four-room buildings that continue a typical Iron II layout but improve on construction techniques in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian-period stratum. In this stratum, buildings were constructed not of one-stone-thick walls but of a combination of one-stone- and two-stone-thick walls; were constructed completely of walls with a thickness of two stones; or have stone-paved floors and stone monoliths supporting a roof or in some cases a second story. Similar developments of traditional styles may be seen in the coastal plain, in sites such as Tel Mevorakh, Tel Dor, Acco, and Jaffa. At Mevorakh and Dor, casemate walls were constructed with traditional header and stretcher technique, but they combine dressed stones and fieldstones. This construction technique is known from both Megiddo and Hazor in the Late Iron Age, but it was used most commonly in the coastal areas in the Persian period. Stern identifies two major types of buildings, common to both domestic and public structures. The most common design is that of an open court building surrounded by rows of rooms on three or four sides. Stern suggests that this type of building was introduced from Mesopotamia in the Late Iron Age and continued without major innovation in the Persian period. The so-called bit-hilani style of entrance was added to this type of building at Lachish, which is interpreted as the governor’s residence in the Persian-period stratum.

Pottery Traditions The pottery of the Persian period tends to be local, some types maintaining the forms and styles of the Late Iron II period, others fashioned after Greek or Persian prototypes. While there is a considerable amount of Greek and Cypriot pottery in sites that functioned in a more central and/or administrative role, very little pottery was actually imported from Persian itself. The continuation of local Iron II forms is particularly evident in the late 6th century and in the regions of Samaria and Yehud. These would include typical cooking pots, storage jars, bowls, flasks, oil lamps, jugs/juglets, and kraters. Common decorative motifs on the local pottery were the so-called “wedge-shaped and reed impression” combination, which some scholars believe was a ceramic imitation of decorative forms on metal vessels. Numerous vessels made of alabaster have been discovered in sites such as Jerusalem, ºAin ºArrub, ºAtlit, and Jericho; and chalk vessels discovered in Jerusalem seem to have been local imitations of their alabaster counterparts. Greek and Cypriot vessels dating to the Persian period have been discovered at numerous sites within Syria–Palestine. Tell en-Naßbeh yielded fragments of a skyphos, an oinochoe, and Attic black and red cups. The oinochoe had a black glaze and was decorated with an ivy-branch motif. Similar pottery types were discovered in the City of David excavations and at ºEn-Gedi, Jericho, Meßad Óashavyahu, Tel Megadim, and Tel Movorakh. The decorative motifs include painted bands and geometric designs on burnished or glazed vessels. Amphorae, lekythoi, bowls, jars, and lamps are among the various types of Greek pottery, and many of these forms led to local imitations. Imitations of Persian styles were

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also widely manufactured in Syria–Palestine. Palestinian potters tended to manufacture ceramic imitations of metal vessels, such as rhytons and other zoomorphic types.

Burial Practices Stern has identified four major types of tombs that date to the 6th through the 4th centuries b.c.e. A transitional type evident only in the 6th century (i.e., NeoBabylonian and the very beginning of the Persian period) has its closest parallels with Iron Age II tombs. These tend to be rock-cut tombs, with a central chamber lined with benches or shelves, and according to Stern generally have local pottery and accompanying grave goods. Tombs from Mamilla (Tomb 5) and Ketef Hinnom (Tomb 26) near Jerusalem fit this general typology, although their contents include foreign artifacts. Two other types of tombs—the shaft tomb and the cist or pit grave—date later in the Persian period. Shaft tombs of various types have been discovered at numerous sites within Syria–Palestine, including Jerusalem (Mamilla, Tomb 7), Dor, ºAtlit, Gezer, Tell el-Farºah (S), and Lachish, and they have parallels to Persian-period tombs in Cyprus and Syria. These tend to be entered through either a vertical shaft or a sloped and/or stepped dromos. The burial chambers are generally cut in either a trapezoidal or square shape and often have sloping or vaulted ceilings. A third type is the cist or pit burials. The pit burial, the more simple of this type, is typically used for one body interred in a shallow grave. The cist tombs are rectangular in shape and feature floors, sides, and covers constructed of mudbrick or cut stone. The final type of grave common in Syria–Palestine is the anthropoid coffin. These coffins are sometimes considered a subtype of shaft tombs, but they are associated with Phoenician sites and have Egyptian, Phoenician, and Greek decorative motifs. Aside from exemplars from Gaza and Cyprus, these are concentrated in the coastal region associated with Phoenicia.

Military Traditions One of the evidences of Persian imperial policy within Syria–Palestine comes in the form of military remains. Indeed, Hoglund identifies militarization as one of the key developments of the Persian period. This militarization is evident both in architectural forms and in the more traditional form of weaponry and other paraphernalia. Hoglund has identified a series of fortresses with a common size and floor plan and dates these to the middle of the 5th century. These fortresses, he contends, were built in the western reaches of imperial holdings as a response to the Inaros revolt and the increased pressure from Greece and its alliance with Egypt being felt at that time. These fortresses were evidently intended to protect trade, communication, and travel routes. In addition to the fortresses, grain silos and/or storage facilities have been discovered at sites such as Tell el-Hesi and Tell en-Naßbeh. These facilities would likely have been used to store provisions and resources for the royal garrisons. Persian-style arrowheads are known from Jeri-

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cho, ºAtlit, Gezer, and Tell Megadim. In addition, two “Iranian-Scythian” horsebits were excavated in the Persian-period stratum at Gezer, and underwater excavations have yielded Greek helmets near Ashdod and Ashkelon.

Yehud in the Persian Period The renewed interest in the Persian period has made the archaeology of Yehud more accessible. Sites that were excavated earlier in the century have often become the subject of new studies that evidence a more comprehensive understanding of the Persian period. New sites have been excavated with greater interest in the period, and archaeological surveys have helped provide data that allow a more nuanced understanding of the settlement pattern of the period. Taken together, these data provide a firmer foundation for both a socioeconomic and a demographic reconstruction of the fortunes of Yehud from 539 to 332. The size and boundaries of the province must be established before the number and relative size of sites can be reconstructed. Earliest reconstructions of the province relied heavily on a series of texts from the Ezra–Nehemiah traditions, texts that most scholars now view as idealized. Moreover, it is not at all clear that any of these texts intended to designate the borders of the province. Earlier portrayals of the province included the coastal plain. Shephelah, central hills and Judean desert, and most sites mentioned in the biblical narratives at which Persian-period remains were discovered. More-recent reconstructions have excluded the coastal plain sites, but no consensus has emerged concerning the status of sites from the Shephelah and those south of Beth-Zur. Rainey and Grabbe include the Shephelah sites but differ on the status of ºEn-Gedi (Rainey includes in it Yehud; Grabbe includes it in Idumean territory). Carter excludes both the Shephelah and coastal plain sites but would extend the southern boundary of the province to just south of Hebron and would include ºEn-Gedi. In the reconstruction of site distribution and population that follows, the map of Yehud follows Carter’s proposal and envisions a province that was about 1800 square kilometers, or roughly one-half the area of the state of Rhode Island. Twenty-two sites have been excavated within the province of Yehud, as delineated above, that date to the Neo-Babylonian, Persian I, and Persian II periods, 18 of which represent settlements. Adding sites discovered in archaeological surveys, Carter estimates that there were 86 settlements in the Persian I period and 125 occupied sites in the Persian II period, with a settled area ranging from 133.5 acres in the Persian I period to 206.5 acres in the Persian II period (see table). The population of the province grew by 55 percent during the Persian period, from approximately 13,350 in the late 6th/early 5th century b.c.e. to approximately 20,650 by the middle-to-late Persian II period (fig. 106).

The most densely populated area of the province was the central spur, extending from Bethel in the north, through Jerusalem, and to the region of Hebron in the south. This region boasted some 68 sites, more than half (54 percent) of the villages in the province, and accounted for 64 percent of its

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Syria–Palestine in the Persian Period Settled Area in Yehud, Persian Period I and II Persian I Excavated Area (in acres) 23. 50 Surveyed Area 100.00 Correction Factor 10.00 Total 133. 50 Population coefficient x100.00 Approximate Population 13,350.00

Persian II 35. 25 147. 75 23. 50 206. 50 x100.00 20,650.00

population. The population of this region in the Persian II period (13,225) nearly equaled the population of the entire province in the Persian I period (13,350). The western slopes (the region between the central hills and the Shephelah) contained 32 sites (26 percent of the total) and 20 percent of the province’s population. The desert fringe, an area of mixed animal husbandry and agricultural subsistence strategies, was home to 23 sites (18 percent) and 13 percent of the population of Yehud. Two settlements were located in the Judean Desert—Jericho and ºEn-Gedi—accounting for 2 percent of the sites of the province and 3 percent of its population. This reconstruction of site distribution and these population estimates show a general pattern of gradual growth in a small province located in the western reaches of the Persian Empire. What is perhaps more telling, however, is an analysis of village size within Yehud. It has become common practice in such archaeological reconstructions to propose a site hierarchy in order better to understand the socioeconomic setting of a particular period. Carter has applied a fivefold hierarchy to Persian-period Yehud, from very small villages (0.1–0.5 acres) to very large (more than 6.25 acres). Using this model, one finds that the majority of the villages in the province were very small or small (0.5–1.25 acres), with populations of less than 125. Over 90 percent of the villages had populations of less than 300, and only one site, Jerusalem, was larger than 6.25 acres at any point in the Persian period. Its size ranged from approximately 6.25–7.5 acres in the Persian I period to approximately 15 acres in the Persian II period, and its population grew from about 750 in the early Persian period to approximately 1500 in the late 5th/early 4th centuries b.c.e. Jerusalem functioned as the capital of Yehud beginning early in the Persian period, though its habitation history is difficult to reconstruct with precision. It has generally been proposed that the city remained in ruins for most of the NeoBabylonian period, and that nearby Tell en-Naßbeh functioned as the regional capital until early in the Persian period. The size, material culture, and settlement horizon of Tell en-Naßbeh seem to support such a view. The latter site has evidence of continual habitation from Iron II to the middle of the Persian period, and the seal impressions discovered there (the majority of the m-(w)-ß-h impressions come from Tell en-Naßbeh, perhaps indicating that it was a central administrative site) as well as large public buildings indicate that it may have functioned as a central administrative site in the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian I periods. The site

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Fig. 106. Site Distribution in the Province of Yehud During the Persian II Period. From C. Carter, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study. Used by permission of Sheffield Academic Press.

seems to have declined in size and importance as Jerusalem regained its status as regional capital. The archaeological evidence for Jerusalem’s ascendancy is widespread. The city walls seem to have followed those of Jerusalem in the Late Iron I period, with the habitation being limited to the southwestern spur known as the “City of David.” The areas of the Ophel and the Temple Mount were most likely given spread one pica long

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over to administrative functions, with about 15 acres of the city given to domestic life. Within the Persian-period stratum of the City of David excavations directed by Yigal Shiloh, there was ample evidence of regional production centers for chalk vessels and for (cosmetic?) spatulae. In addition to these, 33 seal impressions dated generally to the Persian period were discovered—21 of which were Yehud or p˙wª (governor) impressions—as well as foreign vessels. In addition to the seal impressions, at least 5 coins have been discovered in excavations or surveys in and around Jerusalem. Some were Greek coins, though most were some form of Yehud coin. These, combined with the Hellenistic, Persian, and Egyptian vessels discovered in the nearby Mamilla and Ketef Hinnom tombs, suggest that Jerusalem enjoyed active trade and the cultural influence that generally accompanies such exchange. Nearby sites round out the picture of Jerusalem’s central status, with several agricultural settlements surrounding the city and providing it with goods and production centers that would have supported the elite of the city. While Jerusalem’s size and status were without equal within Yehud in the Persian period, Jerusalem was not the only center of trade or administration. Tell enNaßbeh, Jericho, ºEn-Gedi, and Ramat Ra˙el seem to have functioned as administrative centers (with En-ºGedi also acting as a center of production), and a total of 12 sites show evidence of foreign pottery and either trade or nonindigenous population. Three of these latter sites were tombs that had either foreign ware or domestic imitations of foreign goods.

Socioeconomic Settings One of the effects of Achaemenid imperial policy in Syria–Palestine was ruralization, a policy that is evident in the material culture of Yehud. Very few cities were fortified, most settlements were unwalled, and those with Iron II fortifications generally have evidence of construction over the remains of those walls. With the exception of major urban centers—generally provincial capitals or major trading centers, such as Dor, Samaria, Ashdod, Jerusalem, Lachish, Tyre, and Sidon—Syria–Palestine was marked by a village-based economy. Agricultural surplus was extracted from the countryside to support both the urban elite and the broader Persian infrastructure. Given this basic setting, a look at seal impressions and coinage, taxation, and trade will give a more complete understanding of socioeconomic developments during the Persian period.

Coinage and Seal Impressions The use of seal impressions to mark ownership, authenticity, and/or administrative/taxation functions continued in the Achaemenid period (fig. 107). While the use of impressions is not new, Achaemenid and Greek motifs began to influence even local decorative traditions. In Yehud, some anepigraphic impressions from late in the Neo-Babylonian period or early in the Persian period have parallels with decorative motifs from Ur and Persepolis. Impressions from el-Jîb and Ramat Ra˙el depict a lion standing on its back paws with a schematic image of an

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1. Lion Seal

2. mßh Seal

3. yhwd yhwºzer p˙wª

4. yhwd ˙nnh

5. y˙zqyh (h)p˙h (2:1)

6. y˙zqyh [h]p˙h yh (2:1)

Fig. 107. Seals and coins. (1:1 except as noted). From C. Carter, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study. Used by permission of Sheffield Academic Press.

altar in the upper left or lower right quadrant of the seal. Impressions from the Wadi ed-Dâliyeh show both Persian and Greek influence, with the images of Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite, Zeus, Eros, and Persian and Greek warriors (often nude) decorating bullae and seals. Impressions from ºAtlit and scarabs from ºAtlit and Tel Magadim show Greek, Egyptian, and an admixture of Egyptian and Mesopotamian themes. Inscribed impressions from Samaria and Yehud give evidence for a reconstruction of governmental structure and leaders and perhaps underscore the administrative uses of both seals and bullae. Numerous Yehud impressions have been discovered at sites both within and outside of the boundaries of the province. Added to these are a substantial number of impressions naming individuals as governors ( p˙wª ) of the province. Similar impressions exist from Samaria, although smaller in number and dating to later in the Persian period; two bullae apparently belonged to a certain “Yeshua, son of Sanballat, governor of Samaria.” The Persian period also saw the emergence of coinage and its expanded use within the economy. Several hoards of coins have been discovered throughout Syria–Palestine, indicating both the gradual movement toward a monied economy and a series of local mints. Hoards of various mints and denominations have been discovered at Beth-Zur, Nablus, and Eliachin (on the Sharon Plain); local mints were located in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Gaza, Tyre, Sidon, Samaria, Ashdod, and the Arabian territories. The provincial mints of Samaria and Yehud have exemplars with the name of ruling officials (yrbºm of Samaria; y˙zqyh, ydºa, y˙nn)

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and the name of the province or an office (smrn, sm, and s for Samaria; yhd, hp˙h, and hkhn for the Yehud coins). The local mints date somewhat earlier than the provincial coins, with the former dating to the mid–5th century through the end of the 4th century and the latter from the early to the last third of the 4th century. To the local and provincial mints one may add a smaller number of imperial minted coins bearing the name of the official Mazday, known from Tarsus, Sidon, and Samaria. Evidently, Persian policy allowed considerable economic autonomy within localities and provinces to mint coins (and presumably to collect taxes). The coins likewise have a variety of traditional Jewish, Persian, and Hellenistic artistic motifs. Perhaps most famous of these is a Yehud coin with an image often interpreted as Zeus on the reverse and a bearded, helmeted figure on the obverse. A Phoenician quarter-shekel is decorated with the image of Zeus on the obverse and the inscription Iao Sabao(th) on the reverse. This has been interpreted as evidence that the Gentile community in Syria–Palestine had identified the Hebrew deity YHWH with the Greek deity Zeus. Other images include male heads wearing a Persian kidaris (crown) and a bearded male associated with a hawk and olive spray. Lions, owls, lily plants, Athena, and Bes are also represented on coinage from the fifth satrapy.

Taxation and Commerce Given the presence of both seal impressions and coins, one is still left with the question of the function of both in the wider economy. The most common understanding of the seal impressions is that they were used in the collection of taxes in the form of in-kind contributions or that they were used in trade. That imperial and local taxes were collected from the populace is without question, but the method of this collection is less clear. The biblical texts suggest that the burden of taxation was severe and led to wider social differentiation and to economic decline for the peasantry. Arguing for a taxation-related function for the seal impressions is that they seem to be concentrated in sites that had a central administrative function, such as ºEn-Gedi, Jerusalem, Ramat Ra˙el, Jericho, and Tell en-Naßbeh in Yehud. If the vessels on which the impressions were stamped were used primarily for trade purposes, one would expect them to be discovered throughout the province and to have a higher frequency outside of the province. It is likely that the local coins would have been used for small purchases and payment of day wages to workers and mercenaries. Nonbiblical texts from the Persian period allude to economic exchanges being conducted in-kind. Several weights and remains of scales were discovered in the Persian-period stratum of the City of David excavations. Taken together, this suggests that traditional forms of exchange existed alongside coinage and that the emergence of a monied economy was gradual, not complete until well into the Hellenistic period.

Trade and Commercialization Syria–Palestine, as early as the Neolithic period, has been engaged in widespread trade; trade and accompanying exchange of ideas and cultures remained central to its economy in the Persian period. Local Palestinian vessels discovered

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within Yehud and throughout Syria–Palestine attest to intraprovincial trade in the satrap of Eber-Nari. Excavations at sites such as Ashkelon, Dor, Jerusalem, Tell en-Naßbeh, ºEn-Gedi, Jericho, ºAtlit, Ashdod, and Tel Megadim have yielded significant amounts of Persian, Egyptian, and Hellenistic pottery and jewelry, as well as local imitations of these traditions. In general, the distribution of these finds suggests that major centers within the satrapy’s provinces were involved in trade—places where a growing elite and merchant class would be expected. This fits a pattern of increased commercialization for the region, one in which several entropôts were involved. It is unclear to what degree this trade was regionally administered or fell under the more direct control of Persian officials.

Conclusion The increased interest in the Persian period will no doubt lead to a greater understanding of the archaeology of Syria–Palestine from 539 to 332 b.c.e. Not only will surveys and new excavations benefit from this renewed concern, but previous excavations in the region can now be analyzed from the vantage point of new finds and refined understanding of the material culture of the Persian period. The growing number of excavations in Jordan and Syria promise to add significantly to the data concerning the period. The result will be an increased ability to reconstruct the social patterns, archaeological history, and demographics of the fifth satrapy of the Persian Empire.

Bibliography Achaemenid History 1987– Published by the Groningen Achaemenid history workshop. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut Voor Het Nabije Oosten. Berquist, J. L. 1995 Judaism in Persia’s Shadow: A Social and Historical Approach. Minneapolis: Fortress. Briant, P. 2002 From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Trans. P. T. Daniels. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Carter, C. E. 1999 The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Hoglund, K. 1991 The Achaemenid Context. Pp. 54–68 in Second Temple Studies I: Persian Period, ed. P. Davies. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 1992 Achaemenid Imperial Administration and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah. Atlanta: Scholars. Lapp, P. 1970 The Pottery of Palestine in the Persian Period. Pp. 179–97 in Archäologie und Altes Testament: Festschrift für Kurt Galling, ed. A. Kuschke and E. Kutsch. Tübingen: Mohr. Olmstead, A. T. 1948 History of the Persian Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

spread one pica long

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Sapin, J., and Elyai, J. 1998 Beyond the River: New Perspectives on Transeuphratene. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Stern, E. 1982 Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period 538–332 b.c. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. 1984 The Persian Empire and the Political and Social History of Palestine in the Persian Period. Pp. 70–87 in Introduction: The Persian Period. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods (732–332 b.c.e.). Vol. 2. New York: Doubleday.

Charles E. Carter

The Samaritans The word Samaritan refers to a self-conscious religious sect preferring Mount Gerizim rather than Mt. Sinai as the proper place of worship and owing allegiance to the Samaritan Pentateuch as the holy text. This definition of Samaritan is rather narrow and differs from several ancient sources ( Josephus, for example) that on occasion use “Samaritan” to refer to Jews living in Samaria who often placed themselves in political competition with the authorities in Jerusalem. Aside from the specifically religious artifacts produced by the Samaritan community, Samaritan material culture differs very little from that of the Jews or from that of the Gentile population groups living in Samaria from the Hellenistic through the Roman-Byzantine eras. For this reason, it is wise to remain cautious when attempting to identify archaeological findings as “Samaritan.” With this caution in mind, we can say that archaeology does have much to offer when attempting to gather information about the history of the Samaritan community. Several sites have become particularly noteworthy.

Qedumim Qedumim, approximately six miles west of Nablus, is situated in an area reported to have been dotted with Samaritan settlements during the RomanByzantine era. In fact, Jewish sources refer to this area as “a strip of Samaritans,” suggesting that it was inhabited predominantly, if not exclusively, by Samaritans. The site was excavated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The site appears to have two distinct periods of occupation. The first period, from the 3d to the 5th centuries c.e., suggests a prosperous population with wellbuilt houses of hewn stone. This period was brought to an end by a destruction during the 5th or 6th century. The rebuilt settlement evidences a decided decrease in prosperity, because the buildings were now of unhewn stone and lacked any corporate city plan. Perhaps the most interesting finds recovered at Qedumim, apart from the jars, lamps, and assorted household implements, are three oil presses and six miqvaªot: three connected to the presses and three not associated with other permanent structures. The miqvaªot, or ritual baths, are caverns hewn into the bedrock that measure approximately 3 x 4 meters. They are lined with plaster, including the ceiling and the steps descending into the pool. The bottom step is higher than the others. Presumably, when the miqvaªot were being used, this step was submerged in water and perhaps used as a bench as well as a step. The three miqvaªot associated with the presses suggest that the oil processed there was used in religious rituals and that ritual purity was maintained in its manufacture. The existence of these miqvaªot dating from the 1st century c.e. provides testimony that Jews and Samaritans shared some rituals.

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The Samaritans Mount Gerizim and the Samaritan Temple

The most important site for recovering the material remains of this religious sect is, of course, the center for worship used exclusively by the sect: Mt. Gerizim. The perennial question that accompanies excavations conducted on Mt. Gerizim is the location of the Samaritan Temple, which is mentioned by Josephus (Antiquities 12.5.5; 13.3.4) but thus far has eluded material confirmation. F. de Saulcy, and later V. Guerin, stimulated the modern quest for the excavation of Gerizim during the late 1880s by providing competing identifications of ruins that they thought to be the remnants of the Samaritan Temple. In the mid-1870s, C. W. Wilson reported on ruins that he identified as a fortress and church built on the site previously occupied by the Samaritan Temple. Wilson also mentioned a building on Tell er-Ras but left it unexamined. The building mentioned by Wilson was left substantially untouched until the 1960s, when R. J. Bull excavated this structure (his “Building A”) and discovered underneath it a large platform of unhewn stone build on bedrock. This large platform (“Building B”) Bull identified as part of the Samaritan Temple and “the remains of the Samaritan altar of sacrifice.” The identification of “Building B” as the Samaritan Temple or altar has been challenged by subsequent excavations, and the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim has been legitimately disputed. Beginning in the mid-1980s, I. Magen excavated Tell er-Ras and the main peak of Mt. Gerizim and found no evidence of a Samaritan temple. Although the excavations are not complete, the evidence to date offers no indication that a Samaritan temple ever stood on the summit of Gerizim. The Samaritan written sources are equally silent regarding a temple on the mountain. Only Abu ºl-Fath mentions that a temple existed that was subsequently destroyed by the Jews. On the other hand, an altar on which sacrifices were offered is mentioned in the Tolidah, and the Delos inscriptions contain a reference to the “temple [on] Argarizim.” These witnesses from within the Samaritan community appear to confirm the testimony offered by Josephus regarding the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim during the Hellenistic period. The wide-ranging interpretations of the available evidence regarding the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim suggest that the resolution of the issue must await further excavations. Confirmation may be forthcoming, because Magen has reported that his most recent excavations have uncovered the foundation of a building whose dimensions are 400 feet by 560 feet. This structure was found below the foundations of the 5th-century Byzantine church. The remains of this building are, according to Magen, replete with altars, gates, and inscriptions written in the Samaritan script detailing religious customs similar to the customs practiced in the Judaism of the Roman era. This new excavation was expected to be open to the public by the summer of 1996.

Nablus The excavations of Nablus, the Samaritan-populated Neapolis of the RomanByzantine era, have revealed a bustling and prosperous Roman city that boasted a

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large theater, hippodrome, and amphitheater. Information about the Samaritans can be drawn only in a very general fashion from the excavation of these monumental structures at Neapolis, since the Samaritans were only one portion of the resident population, and it is difficult to know the extent to which they participated in the community functions attested to by these great buildings.

Synagogues Several Samaritan synagogues have been brought to light in Israel, identified by inscriptions found in mosaic floors of the buildings. Four synagogues can be identified as Samaritan with considerable confidence: Shaºalvim, Beth-shan, Ramat Aviv, and Huzn Yaºqub. The identifying inscriptions are in the Samaritan script, and in at least one instance (Shaºalvim) they quote favored Samaritan texts (Exod 15:18). Aside from inscriptional evidence found in the buildings, there are no special architectural designs or features that can be used to identify a building as a Samaritan synagogue. The synagogues found in Israel that have been identified as Samaritan all date between the 4th and 5th centuries c.e. and are virtually of the same style as their Jewish counterparts.

Inscriptions In addition to the recovered remains of the buildings themselves, inscribed stones presumably used as lintels either in synagogues or in private homes have been recovered, which may provide further evidence of Samaritan synagogues. One such stone forms part of the Chamberlain-Warren Collection housed at Michigan State University in East Lansing (see fig. 108). Broken on the left side, the remaining portion of the stone bears the following inscription: hb rwbyg hwhy yab qwmk ym arwn vdqb yrdn The entire text probably read: wmv hwhy hmjlm]hb rwbyg hwhy ˚wmk ym hwhy µyl]yab ˚wmk ym halp hv[ tlht] arwn vdqb yrdn The text, taken from Exod 15:3, 11, can be translated: The Lord is mighty in the war, the Lord is his name. Who is like you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like you? Magnificent in holiness, doing wonders.

Undoubtedly this text was chosen for the stone because of its ability to communicate the hopes of the minority sect in a sometimes hostile social environment. Since it has been removed from its architectural context, we can never be certain

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Fig. 108. A Samaritan inscription; from the Chamberlain-Warren collection (number 2472). Used by permission of Michigan State University Special Collections.

whether that was a public building, such as a synagogue, or a private home. The size of the stone and the quality of the inscription on the Chamberlain-Warren stone, as well as several similar stones and texts (for example, First Emmaus Inscription; Delos Inscription), suggest that the engraved text was meant to serve as a public reminder of a cherished religious attitude or affiliation.

Coins Samaritan numismatics, the examination of coins circulating among the Samaritan community, may be misleading, since it does not appear that this religious sect distinguished themselves in any manner by the type of currency that they used. Consequently, the examination of coinage from Samaria is better referred to as “Samaritan numismatics.” This negative evaluation may be moderated by one important exception. M. Rosenberger has published 129 coin pieces bearing images of Neapolis. The majority of these coins carry images of Mt. Gerizim and of buildings erected on the mount. While some of the buildings cannot be identified, it has generally been assumed that the buildings represent a temple or temples. It is going too far, however, to suggest that these are visual representations of an actual Samaritan temple; in fact, the representations are probably those of a temple dedicated to Zeus. The value of these coins for Samaritan studies is simply to illustrate the dominant cultural symbols with which the ancient Samaritan community interacted. Not only was the geographic landscape of Mt. Gerizim and Neapolis dominated by Roman religious structures, but the holy mount of the Samaritans was dominated symbolically as well by these Roman intrusions.

Bibliography Anderson, R. T., and Giles, T. 2002 The Keepers: An Introduction to the History and the Culture of the Samaritans. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson.

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Bruneau, P. 1982 Les Israelites de Delos et la juiverie delienne. Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique 106: 465–504. Bull, R. 1978 Er-Ras. Pp. 1015–22 in Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. M. Avi-Yonah. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Coggins, R. 1975 Samaritans and Jews: The Origins of Samaritanism Reconsidered. Atlanta: John Knox. Crown, A. 1989 The Samaritans. Tübingen: Mohr. 2001 Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. Giles, T. 1995 The Chamberlain-Warren Samaritan Inscription CW2472. Journal of Biblical Literature 114: 111–16. Hjelm, I. 2000 The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements 303. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Magen, I. 1982 Qedumim. Pp. 96–100 of vol. 2 of Excavations and Surveys in Israel. Jerusalem: Israel Department of Antiquities. Rosenberger, Mayer 1977 City Coins of Palestine: The Rosenberger Israel Collection, Vol. 3: Hippos-Sussita, Neapolis, Nicopolis, Tiberias. Jerusalem.

Terry Giles

The Hellenistic Period The Hellenistic period in Palestine begins with the conquests of the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 332 b.c.e. and ends with the settlement organized by the Roman general Pompey in 63 b.c.e. Most historical reconstructions highlight the period’s many military clashes, but archaeological evidence reflects a largely peaceful, increasingly wealthy and cosmopolitan society. Lifestyles, settlement patterns, and routes of exchange continued in patterns developed in the later 6th century b.c., when traders and colonizers from the Aegean and Phoenicia settled along the coastal plain, and Jews repatriated from Babylon returned to Jerusalem and its surroundings (Stern 1982: 238–43; 1995a: 432). By the beginning of Hellenistic times, Palestine had become home to two populations, one oriented to the cultural and commercial opportunities of the Mediterranean, the other focused on the rebuilt Temple and its prescribed rites and duties. The upheavals caused by Alexander and his successors have left few visible marks in the archaeological record. Pottery, legal documents, and two official bullae from a cave in Wadi ed-Daliyeh, just north of Jericho, represent Samaritans who fled after killing Alexander’s appointee for governor (Curtius Rufus 4.8.9– 10; Lapp and Lapp 1977). Conflagration levels at Ashkelon and Dor reflect skirmishes between Alexander’s successors. Outnumbering finds such as these, however, are many instances of comfort and prosperity, fostered by the Ptolemies of Egypt, Palestine’s rulers throughout the 3d century b.c.e.

The Ptolemaic Period The Ptolemies transformed Gaza into the region’s mercantile center, with a new customs house and a prolific mint: the city’s 3d-century issues include eight different types (Rappaport 1970). The Zenon papyri, letters from an Egyptian official traveling in Palestine in 259/258 b.c.e., document caravans leaving Gaza with wheat, oil, wine, spices, and slaves. Along the Negev’s northern rim, Nabatean road stations (for example, Nessana, Elusa, Oboda, and Moyet ºAwad [Moªa]) reflect new economic opportunities. Meanwhile the Ptolemies protected their own markets and trade routes by fortifying settlements at Marisa, Beth-Zur, and Arad. In Idumaea, trade was joined by small industry. A large new farm at Aderet included wine and olive oil presses. Six ostraca from the village of Khirbet el-Qôm preserve business transactions; the longest records a loan of 32 drachmas from Qôs-yada, an Idumaean, to a man named Nikeratos, and is written in both Aramaic and Greek, reflecting the monetarization of the local economy and a multilingual populace. Marisa became a thriving market center for slaves and grain (according to the Zenon papyri), along with oil and doves (fig. 109). Underground chambers housed more than 20 presses capable of producing about 270 tons of oil annually, while over 60 columbaria contained some 50–60,000 niches for indi-

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Fig. 109. Marisa, section drawing of columbarium (from F. Bliss and R. Macalister, Excavation in Palestine during the Years 1898–1900 [London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1902]).

vidual birds (Kloner 1993). Profits allowed residents to indulge Mediterranean tastes, evidenced by large houses adorned with Ionic pilasters and beaded mouldings as well as numerous imported wine jars and tablewares. The Ptolemies built a second customs house at Acco (now renamed Ptolemais), and they minted coins at Joppa, Acco-Ptolemais, Tyre, and Sidon (Mørklhom 1983: 242). The pagan population of the coastal plain relied on their fertile territories for subsistence and their industrial activities for prosperity. At Ashkelon, Rhodian and Italian wine amphoras along with Greek, Italian, and Chian tablewares were found in three new large blocks of villas. At Tel Mor and Dor, new residential areas included purple dye manufacturies; residents of Dor enjoyed Rhodian and Knidian wine, Greek tablewares, and gold, silver, faience, and bone jewelry. In the middle of the 3d century a new city wall with projecting towers was constructed at Dor, built of one-meter-long sandstone blocks laid with narrow ends facing out (a style called “header” construction; Stern 1995a: 440–41). In contrast to the coast and the south, the central hills were thinly populated throughout the 3d century b.c.e., and inhabitants did not acquire luxury goods (Harrison 1994: 106–7). At Qalandiyeh, a new rural farm, there was a large winery with six presses (similar to the presses at Marisa), several treading floors, refuse basins, stone weights, and numerous storage jars. Profit did not lead to an elaborate lifestyle, however; local pottery comprised the bulk of the household goods. A ritual bath indicates that Qalandiyeh’s residents were Jews. Jerusalem was the only sizable settlement in Judea, and the archaeological evidence shows it to have been small and poor, with occupation confined to the City of David ridge (Avigad 1984: 135). Here almost all of the pottery is of local manufacture. Antiochus III, in a letter to the Ptolemaic king from the end of the 3d century, emphasizes the city’s underpopulation and enumerates a series of pensions and taxation discharges so that the citizens might “retrieve the condition of

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their city” ( Josephus, Ant. 12.140–42). Judea was poor enough that the Ptolemies collected taxes “in kind” rather than in coin, a practice attested by about 100 3d century b.c.e. stamped jar handles found in and around Jerusalem. Most read YHD, Judea’s name under both Persian and Ptolemaic administrations; these designate goods for the king. Others read YRSLM, meaning Jerusalem; these contained goods intended for Temple rituals (P. Lapp 1963). This picture of general deprivation probably did not apply to every citizen of 3d-century Jerusalem. The aristocratic author of Ecclesiastes, for example, boasts of large estates worked with slave labor (Qoh 2:4–8), a situation also attested by a Judean administrative document that cites illicit possession of slaves (Applebaum 1989: 31–32). Settlements such as Qalandiyeh may actually have supported wealthy landlords in Jerusalem. The northern hills had pagan and Jewish settlements in the 3d century b.c.e. At Samaria, a dedicatory inscription to Serapis and Isis indicates a temple, perhaps built by the Macedonian garrison stationed there since the late 4th century b.c.e. (Crowfoot, Crowfoot, and Kenyon 1957: 37, no. 13). The soldiers were certainly responsible for the construction of three round towers built of ashlar blocks laid in headers against the older wall. Imported tablewares and a great many Aegean wine amphoras reveal connections with coastal markets. South of Samaria, the town of Shechem was reoccupied in the late 4th century, probably by Jews evicted from Samaria on account of the garrison (Wright 1962; contra Isaac 1991: 143 and n. 46). They mounded soil on top of the cleared Middle Bronze Age wall and built courtyard houses with stone walls and flagstone or plastered floors (Toombs and Wright 1961). In pointed contrast to the material goods at Samaria, the material goods at Shechem consisted largely of local pottery. A plow point and an iron bolt suggest that the residents were farmers. In Transjordan a small, materially impoverished population lived, engaged in subsistence agriculture. Zenon stops at Rabbath-Ammon (renamed Philadelphia), which he calls a birtha (fortified residence; P. Cairo Zen. 59009); 3d-century remains include fortifications, houses, and water channels. At ºAroºer (in Moab), several small farmsteads have been found. Houses and altars at Petra are linked to the new Nabatean route across the northern Negev, making this the region’s only settlement with commercial ties. In the 3d century b.c.e., northern Palestine—the Jezreel and Beth-shan Valleys, the Galilee, the Hula basin, and the Golan—was also thinly populated and largely poor. Agricultural land here was classified as “King’s Land,” a status continued from Persian times, as confirmed by the Zenon papyri and Hefzibah inscription (Smith 1990 does not consider this). Zenon visits a Galilean site where leaseholders paid a percentage of their output to the crown, as in Egypt (P. Cairo Zen. 59004; Tcherikover 1937: 39–40). One section of the Hefzibah inscription identifies villages as the “hereditary tenure” of the military governor, indicating that they were once royal possessions (Landau 1966; Bertrand 1982). Villages of agricultural workers include Tell Keisan and Tell Qiri in the Jezreel Valley and Philoteria (ancient Beth-Yerah) and Chinnereth on the Sea of Galilee. One

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wealthier site in this area was Tel Istabah, adjacent to the tell of Beth-shan (renamed Scythopolis), where several hundred stamped handles from Rhodian and Knidian wine amphoras reflect the inhabitants’ taste and means (Landau and Tzaferis 1979). The Upper Galilee and the Hula Valley probably belonged to the hinterland of Tyre (Herbert and Berlin 2003: 48–54). At Kedesh, Zenon stopped to pick up flour and bathe, activities that reflect some level of prosperity (Berlin et al. 2002). At Tel Anafa, spindle whorls; bone tools; over 25 loomweights; and a circular, sludge-filled stone structure, perhaps used for dyeing, suggest a small weaving industry. Faunal remains indicate that residents engaged in intensive agriculture and also reared cattle and goats (Redding 1994). The people lived in small houses built of rough, basalt boulders, with pebble or dirt floors; their possessions included pottery made in the Hula and perfume bottles from Phoenicia (Herbert 1994; Berlin 1997a). At Banias, at the springs of the Jordan River, a huge natural cave in the face of Mt. Hermon housed a sanctuary to the Greek god Pan. Locally made cooking vessels and tablewares reflect “ritual dining,” in this context perhaps better called picnicking.

Seleucid Period In 200 b.c.e., when the Seleucid king Antiochus III routed the Ptolemaic forces at Banias, little changed for the population of Palestine. At sites on the coast and throughout the south, commerce continued; foreign goods remained available; and Phoenician connections were maintained or increased. A Sidonian enclave at Yavne-Yam records favorable taxation status in an early-2d-century b.c.e. inscription (Isaac 1991). At Ashkelon, a 2d-century b.c.e. cistern fill included Aegean wine amphoras, Greek and Italian tablewares, and Phoenician oil jars (Stager 1991: 37). At Marisa, an elaborate underground tomb is identified by an inscription of 196 b.c.e. as belonging to the town’s Sidonian colony (Peters and Thiersch 1905). Two long chambers lined with individual burial niches (loculi) carry carved and painted pseudoarchitectural details and a painted frieze course. The Ptolemaic fortress at Beth-Zur became a commercial community in the early 2d century b.c.e., with a large marketplace, an inn, a butcher shop, a tavern, several other shops, and a public bath house (Sellers 1933: 16–17; Reich 1988). Jewish and Gentile settlement expanded in the central hills. Seven new farmsteads were founded in the early 2d century b.c.e., of which the largest is at Tirat Yehuda (fig. 110). An enclosed area housed dwellings and workrooms with crushing and pressing stones for oil production (Yeivin and Edelstein 1970; Hestrin and Yeivin 1977). Goods included imported pottery and wine amphoras. All of these farms were destroyed in the first wave of Hasmonean expansion (see further below), which suggests that the inhabitants were pagan (Applebaum 1986: 260). On top of Mt. Gerizim, a walled village and sacred enclosure connected by a broad staircase represent the expansion of the Samaritan community of Shechem. Six large courtyard houses had cisterns and rooms partially paved with roughly hewn stones; two houses also had bathrooms, with plastered basins and, in one, a stone

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Fig. 110. Tirat Yehuda, plan (from Yeivin and Edelstein 1970, fig. 2).

tub. Presses, weights, basins, and jars indicate oil production. Goods include basalt and metal vessels but not imported pottery. In Transjordan, an elaborate building known as the Qasr al-abd (Fortress of the Servant) was constructed at ºIraq el-Emir in the early 2d century b.c.e. (N. L. Lapp 1983). Monolithic pillars formed a window wall, and four monumental relief panels of a prowling feline adorned the upper story. The panels identify the Qasr as a construction of Hyrcanus, a scion of the wealthy Jewish Tobiad family; and they also identify Hyrcanus as a “hellenizer,” in contrast to traditional Jews, who shunned representational art in the Greek tradition ( Josephus, Ant. 12.169–75, 230–33). In Jerusalem as well, some residents embraced a more “hellenizing” lifestyle. An agoranomos (a Greek market official) and a gymnasium are attested (2 Macc 3:4, 4:12–13). Two or three long Greek inscriptions reflect the language’s growing use (Rappaport 1984; Applebaum 1980; Merker 1975). Over 1000 stamped handles of imported amphoras, mostly from Rhodes, provide evidence for consumption of foreign foodstuffs (Ariel 1990). In 167 b.c.e., when the Seleucid king Antiochus IV built the Akra (‘the heights’), a fortified encampment within the city (its precise location is unknown), “impious [ Jews]” moved in with the permanent garrison (1 Macc 1:33; Josephus, Ant. 12.252). The next year, when the king ordered traditional Temple sacrifices and ritual replaced with altars and shrines for pagan gods, many Jews complied (1 Macc 1:44–50, 52). The resultant armed confrontation between traditional Jews and their hellenizing brothers is recorded in the period’s historical sources. Mattathias, a Jewish

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leader from the town of Modiºin, and one of his sons, Judah (surnamed the Maccabee), organized a guerilla army that first targeted faithless Jews and then the Seleucid armies sent to quell the turmoil. In 160 b.c.e., after many battles, the Seleucids overcame the Jews. Few archaeological traces of these events remain. A wall at Bethel and the rebuilding of the Iron Age gate at Gezer may reflect Syrian (Seleucid) defensive constructions. At Beth-Zur both the citadel and the Middle Bronze Age wall were rebuilt before the middle of the 2d century b.c.e., modified shortly thereafter by the inclusion of a peristyle courtyard (Sellers et al. 1968). These may represent Judah’s establishment of a garrison there in 164 b.c.e. and its recapture by the Seleucids in 160 b.c.e. (1 Macc 4:61, 9:52). Archaeological remains from elsewhere in the country reveal peaceful maintenance or expansion during this time. Life along the coast and in Idumaea continued prosperous, the result of long-standing commercial connections, a diverse economic base, and geographic good fortune. Luxury goods and foreign imports at Acco-Ptolemais, Dor, Ashkelon, and Marisa reveal material comforts. Some coastal settlements expanded, such as Ashdod and Strato’s Tower, which had both been relatively small 3d-century hamlets. In the far north, at Tel Dan, the Iron Age “High Place” was enlarged and a plaster basin installed. A dedication found there reads in Greek, “To the god who is in Dan, Zoilos (offers) a vow,” and in Aramaic, “[This] (is the) vow (of ) Zoilos to the [god in Dan]” (Biran 1981; Millar 1987: 132–33). This combination of Greek custom and “local” deity reflects a kind of cultural fusion.

Hasmonean Period The country’s balance was soon upset. The Seleucid king was unstable; various would-be successors began lining up allies; and Judah’s brother Jonathan, who had inherited the remnant of the Jewish army after Judah’s death, found he held a valuable bargaining chip. In 152 b.c.e., Jonathan received official amnesty, moved to Jerusalem, and began fortifying the settlement on Mt. Zion (1 Macc 10:10–12). The construction of a massive new fortification wall around the acropolis of Samaria right around the middle of the 2d century b.c.e. may be the Syrian garrison’s response to Jonathan’s activities (Crowfoot, Crowfoot, and Kenyon 1957: 218–19). In 145 b.c.e., further political machinations gave Jonathan control of the coastal plain, and he immediately stationed troops in Joppa (1 Macc 11:59, 12:33– 34). The Maccabees did not use this new acquisition to bridge the cultural divide between the coast and the central hills (contra Applebaum 1989: 20; and Kasher 1990: 99–102); imported goods do not begin to appear at Jewish sites inland. This was instead a foreign outpost, a religiously-defined force in a mercantile land. In 141 b.c.e., Simon, who had succeeded Jonathan as ruler of the Hasmonean Kingdom (as it may now be called), captured the Akra (1 Macc 14:49–52), and in the succeeding quarter century the country’s settlement pattern changed substantially. In the central hills, Gentile sites were destroyed or abandoned (for example, Tirat Yehuda), and many new Jewish settlements appeared, laid out as

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both agricultural villages and strategic outposts (for example, the small hilltop forts at ºAzoun and Qarawat bene Hassan, in Samaria (Dar 1986; 218, 230– 49; Kasher 1990: 105; Applebaum 1989: 41, 44–45; Stern [ed.] 1993: 3.816). On the coastal plain, settlements were taken by force, their pagan population expelled, and new Jewish settlers established (1 Macc 13:11, 14:43–48; Kasher 1990: 108–9). At Gezer, Simon’s siege is evident in a broad destruction level; above this level stand a rebuilt gate, walls, and new courtyard houses equipped with mikvaot (Reich 1981). From the surrounding area come stones reading “Boundary of Gezer” in Hebrew, and “of Alkios” in Greek; these stones demarcated Jewish agricultural land from land belonging to Gentiles (Reich 1985; 1990; some scholars date the boundary stones to the Herodian era). In 139 b.c.e., the Seleucid king Antiochus VII attempted to regain control of Palestine. He moved first against Tryphon, a royal contender who had taken refuge in the stronghold of Dor ( Josephus, Ant. 13.222–224). Four lead sling bullets, inscribed in part “For the victory of Tryphon,” “Dor. Year 5,” reveal that Tryphon held the site until at least 135 b.c.e. (Gera 1995; Appian, Syr. 68). In 132 b.c.e., Antiochus besieged Jerusalem; scores of ballista stones, slingstones, arrowheads, and iron spearbutts were found outside the Citadel (Ant. 13.237; Johns 1950: 130, fig. 7; Sivan and Solar 1994: 173–74). John Hyrcanus, Simon’s son and successor, agreed to pay an indemnity, and Antiochus retreated. Shortly before or after this event, Antiochus’s forces apparently attacked Shiqmona, on the coast (Elgavish 1974; 1976). The period’s anarchic political situation created opportunities for other cities and leaders in addition to the Hasmoneans. The Nabateans expanded their dominion in the Negev and southern Transjordan; the Ituraeans moved into the Golan. In central Transjordan a dynast named Zeno Cotylas seized Philadelphia; on the coast, a strongman named Zoilus took over Dor and Strato’s Tower. Ashkelon, Acco-Ptolemias, Tyre, and Sidon declared or purchased their independence from the Seleucids. At some places fortifications are constructed: Zeno Cotylas rebuilds Philadelphia’s Iron Age bastion on the acropolis as a casemate wall; Zoilus installs a new wall with one polygonal and three round towers at Strato’s Tower (Blakely 1992: 31–34; Raban 1992: 18–21). New walls notwithstanding, archaeological evidence suggests that commerce and creature comforts, not conquest, motivated these polities. Acco-Ptolemais and Ascalon continued to mint Phoenician standard tetradrachms (Kindler 1978: 53). Aegean and Phoenician wine and oil containers are found in quantity at Nabatean sites (for example, Nessana, Oboda, Petra) as well as throughout coastal Palestine. Phoenician vendors supplied pottery to settlements in the Jezreel Valley and elsewhere in the north (Berlin 1997b). A fancy new Phoenician tableware known as Eastern Sigillata A (ESA; also known as ETS-I), which has a smooth, orange-red slip, became common at Northern, coastal, and southern sites (Slane 1997). In the Galilee and the Hula Valley, the number of later-2d-century b.c.e. settlements increase threefold (Meyers, Strange, and Groh 1978; Idan Shaked, personal

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Fig. 111. Tel Anafa, plan of courtyard building (from Herbert 1994, fig. 2.4).

communication). At Tel Anafa (fig. 111), abandoned after the later 3d century, new residents, probably from southern Phoenicia, built a large courtyard house that included a three-room bath complex (Herbert 1994: 14–18). Interior decor included painted and gilded stucco, mosaic floors, and Ionic and Corinthian capitals. The inhabitants drank imported Aegean wines and used hundreds of cast glass bowls, bronze vessels, ESA, and other imported table wares (Weinberg 1970; Grose 1979, 1989; Slane 1997; Ariel and Finkelstein 1994). Toward the end of the 2d century b.c.e., John Hyrcanus expanded the Hasmonean policies of destruction and resettlement. Josephus records strikes in Transjordan (Madaba, Samega, and “neighboring places”), followed by attacks against Shechem and Mt. Gerizim, and finally by the capture of Idumaea (Ant. 13.254–58). The order of Josephus’s list notwithstanding, archaeological evidence demonstrates that Hyrcanus began in the south. A Phoenician shrine at Ashdod was destroyed just after 114 b.c.e., and the area was immediately reoccupied, apparently by Jews (Dothan 1971: 64). Yavne-Yam and Mazor were attacked but not resettled

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(Moshe Fischer and David Amit, personal communication). Just after 112 b.c.e., the houses throughout the lower city of Marisa were badly damaged, and the site was largely abandoned. At other Idumean sites occupation continued (for example, Tel ºIra and Tel Halif ), and new settlements were established as well (for example, Horvat Rimmon). The settlement atop Mt. Gerizim was destroyed after 111 b.c.e.; Samaria suffered a comprehensive conflagration in or just after 108 b.c.e.; and Shechem was burned after 107 b.c.e. (Ant 13.275–79). Hyrcanus burned pagan altars and confiscated idols at Scythopolis, though a continuous series of stamped amphora handles from Tel Istabah confirm that occupation continued here into the 1st century ( Josephus, J.W. 1.66; Ant. 13.280; Kasher 1990: 128). In Judea conspicuous displays of individual wealth first appear in the later 2d century b.c.e. Tombs and private residences became larger and more lavish. The earliest evidence is the Hasmonean family sepulchre that Simon built at Modiºin, which was tall enough to be seen from the coast, built of polished stone, and included seven pyramids surrounded by columns decorated with armor and carved ships (1 Macc 13:27–29). This was an edifice in the tradition of Hellenistic royal memorials, such as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. In Jerusalem, an aristocratic family built Jason’s Tomb of beautifully trimmed limestone ashlar blocks, with a large paved forecourt, a porch embellished by a Doric limestone column between Doric pilasters, and a pyramid above (Rahmani 1967). Inside were charcoal drawings of ships, two menorahs, Greek and Aramaic inscriptions, and burial loculi, similar to the Marisa tombs. The ostentatious exterior funerary architecture of these tombs was new; in the past family tombs, such as the tomb of the Sidonians at Marisa, concentrated their displays inside (Berlin forthcoming). Hasmonean wealth derived in part from taking over “King’s Land.” Simon received revenues from three Samaritan districts that had previously belonged to the Seleucids, along with the oasis and balsam groves at Jericho. Hyrcanus built a palatial private residence there, including a huge building (50 x 55 m) with frescoed interiors and a heated bathing room with a plastered tub and a mikveh (1 Macc 14:10, 16:11–12; Applebaum 1989: 41). Side-by-side swimming pools lay to the south, fed by an aqueduct that also watered an enormous expanse north of the palace. A series of long straight walls found there probably separated plots for date palm, persimmon, and balsam trees (Strabo 16.2.41; Pliny, NH 5.15.70). While this complex is of a piece with late Hellenistic remains outside of Judea (for example, the villa at Tel Anafa), it is shocking in terms of Jewish traditions. These constructions illustrate Elias Bickerman’s statement that “the Maccabees eradicated one kind of Hellenism only to facilitate the growth of another kind” (Bickerman 1962: 178). There remained Jews who believed that this kind of display was immoral. One group resettled the site of Qumran in the late 2d century b.c.e (fig. 112). They built a guard tower, several communal rooms, a small pantry, a pottery workshop, new cisterns, storerooms, and miqvaot. They used no interior decoration, no imported or luxury goods. This simplicity presents a material counterpoint to the conspicuously affluent lifestyle of the Hasmoneans and their aristocratic sup-

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Fig. 112. Qumran, view of cistern and rooms. Photo: author.

porters. Most scholars believe that the Qumran inhabitants were Essenes and that this sect was responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in nearby caves; the Scrolls record the beliefs of rigorously religious Jews who rejected the materialistic lifestyle of the Judean ruling class (Magness 2002). The Hasmonean Kingdom continued to expand. Aristobolus (104–3 b.c.e.) conquered Iturea, and his brother Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 b.c.e.) bought out Dor and Strato’s Tower ( Josephus, Ant. 13.318, 324; Levine 1974). For a time, commerce replaced conquest, as attested by the appearance of Hasmonean coins in quantity at Dor, Strato’s Tower, Samaria, and Gerasa in Transjordan (Kasher 1990: 142; Applebaum 1989: 21 n. 51). At over one hundred small Iturean encampments and villages across Mt. Hermon and the northeastern Golan, local cult sites were maintained and peaceful native occupation continued; there is no indication of Jewish religious practice (for example, mikvaot; Dar 1993: 200, 210; Hartal 1989: 125). Jannaeus soon reverted to previous policies, however, as is clear from the disparate fates of Pella, a sizable, wealthy Gentile town, and Gamla (Gamla), a Jewish settlement. In 80 b.c.e. Jannaeus destroyed Pella, while at

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Gamla he appointed an observant Jew as the new mayor (McNicoll, Smith, and Hennessy 1982; Josephus, Ant. 13.394, 397). At Gamla occupation continued: remains include small houses with shared courtyards and a plethora of undecorated, local pottery. Simplicity was a choice, not a necessity; several large oil presses and thousands of coins attest to industry and its profits (Syon 1992). Ironically, the one settlement in the kingdom with a hellenized character was the Hasmonean palace at Jericho. Here Jannaeus put in a second aqueduct, a new pair of pools, a colonnaded pavilion, plastered patios, and ornamental gardens (Netzer 1993). His wife and successor, Salome Alexandra, oversaw construction of two large courtyard buildings (the “twin palaces”), decorated with frescoes, and flanked by square pools surrounded by gardens. By 80 b.c.e., the Hasmonean Kingdom included almost the entire coastal plain, Idumea, all of Judea and Samaria, the Jezreel Valley and Galilee, the Golan Heights, and much of Transjordan ( Josephus, Ant. 13.395–97). Jannaeus devoted considerable resources to its defense. He built towers along the Yarkon River and new fortifications at Horvat Mesad and Horvat ºEqed in the “Jerusalem corridor” (Kaplan 1971; Fischer 1987: 125–26). In Jerusalem, he completed the wall around the southwestern hill (the Upper City). Along the western bank of the Jordan River, he built two mountaintop fortresses at Alexandrium and Machaerus (Tsafrir 1982; Josephus, Ant 13.417). At the former are walls of drafted limestone ashlars with wide, rough bosses, as well as a vaulted pool (cistern?), a mikveh, and perhaps a stoa. The one area of Palestine not incorporated in Jannaeus’s kingdom was the Hula Valley, which we know from the final Hellenistic occupation of Tel Anafa (contra Kasher 1990: 159). There an elaborate late-2d-century b.c.e. villa underwent extensive remodeling in the early 1st century, and occupation continued for another 20–25 years. Luxurious ceramic, glass, and metal objects remained abundant, along with important wine amphoras, and even a small group of Italian cooking vessels—all indicative of outside contracts (Berlin 1993; 1997a; Slane 1997; Grose 1979). Only three coins from Jannaeus’s Kingdom were found and no evidence of destruction (Meshorer 1994; Herbert 1994). The expansion of the Hasmonean Kingdom in the late 2d and early 1st centuries b.c.e. altered the patterns of settlement and exchange that had developed in Palestine after the return from Babylon. The Mediterranean-facing culture of the Graeco-Phoenician coastal plain and Idumaea were replaced by material simplicity and economic isolation. By 67 b.c.e., when the Hasmonean Kingdom passed to Hyrcanus II and Aristobolus II, settlement concentrated almost exclusively in the central hills of Judea and Samaria, in the Lower Galilee, and the Golan. Most of the perimeter regions were very largely depopulated. In the Hula Valley, Tel Anafa was abandoned; in the Acco plain scores of small farmsteads were deserted; on the coast, Dor, Strato’s Tower, and Ashdod sat unoccupied; in the foothills and in Idumaea, Gezer and Maresha lay deserted. Palestine had become Hasmonean: religiously defined, inwardly focused, settled in farmsteads and villages, and organized around Jerusalem. According to the archaeological criteria of material culture and settlement patterns, the joint reigns of Hyrcanus II and Aristobolus II mark the end of the Hellenistic period.

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These material changes are joined by a seminal political act. In 63 b.c.e. the Roman general Pompey took control of the country, vastly reduced the Hasmonean realms, and restored the Gentile cities of the coastal plain, Idumaea, Samaria, and Transjordan ( Josephus, Ant. 14.74–76). This first official Roman intervention in the history of Palestine, which demarcates the end of the Hellenistic period, reestablished the patterns of previous centuries but not the balance of power behind them. Intending a settlement, Pompey instead effected a collision course. It took only one century for Palestine’s populations to come to the inevitable clash.

Bibliography Applebaum, S. 1980 A Fragment of a New Hellenistic Inscription from the Old City of Jerusalem. Pp. 47–60 in Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period (A. Schalit memorial volume). Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1986 The Settlement Pattern of Western Samaria from Hellenistic to Byzantine Times: A Historical Commentary. Pp. 257–69 in Landscape and Pattern: An Archaeological Survey of Samaria, 800 b.c.e.–636 c.e., ed. S. Dar. London: British Archaeological Reports. 1989 Judaea in Hellenistic and Roman Times: Historical and Archaeological Essays. Leiden: Brill. Ariel, D. 1990 Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Vol. 2: Imported Stamped Amphora Handles, Coins, Worked Bone and Ivory, and Glass. Qedem 30. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ariel, D., and Finkelstein, G. 1994 Stamped Amphora Handles. Pp. 183–240 in Tel Anafa I: Final Report on Ten Years of Excavation at a Hellenistic and Roman Settlement in Northern Israel, ed. S. Herbert. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 10/1. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Avigad, N. 1984 Jerusalem, “The City Full of People.” Pp. 129– 40 in Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel, ed. H. Shanks and B. Mazar. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Berlin, A. 1993 Italian Cooking Vessels and Cuisine from Tel Anafa. Israel Exploration Journal 43: 35–44. 1997a The Hellenistic and Roman Pottery: The Plain Wares—Tel Anafa 2/1. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 10/2. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. 1997b From Monarchy to Markets: The Phoenicians in Hellenistic Palestine. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 306: 75–88. forthcoming Power and Its Afterlife: Tombs in Hellenistic Palestine. Near Eastern Archaeology 64. Berlin, A., et al. 2002 Ptolemaic Agriculture, “Syrian Wheat,” and Triticum aestivum. Journal of Archaeological Science 30/1: 81–87. Bertrand, J. 1982 Sur l’inscription d’Hefzibah. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 46: 167– 74.

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Bickerman, E. 1962 From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees. Foundations of Post-biblical Judaism. New York: Schocken. Biran, A. 1981 “To the God Who Is Dan.” Pp. 142–51 in Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, ed. A. Biran. Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College. Blakely, J. 1992 Stratigraphy and the North Fortification Wall of Herod’s Caesarea. Pp. 26– 41 in Caesarea Papers: Straton’s Tower, Herod’s Harbour, and Roman and Byzantine Caesarea, ed. R. L. Vann. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 5. Crowfoot, G.; Crowfoot, J.; and Kenyon, K. 1957 Samaria–Sebaste: Reports of the Expedition in 1931–33 and of the British Expedition in 1935. London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Dar, S. 1986 Landscape and Pattern: An Archaeological Survey of Samaria 800 b.c.e.–636 c.e. London: British Archaeological Reports. 1988 The History of the Hermon Settlements. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 120: 26– 44. 1993 Settlements and Cult Sites on Mount Hermon, Israel: Ituraean Culture in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. London: British Archaeological Reports. Dothan, M. 1971 Ashdod II–III: The Second and Third Seasons of Excavations 1963, 1965. Atiqot 9–10 (English series). Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority. Elgavish, J. 1974 Archaeological Excavations at Shiqmona, Report number 2: The Level of the Hellenistic Period—Stratum H. Haifa: Museum of Art. [Hebrew] 1976 Pottery from the Hellenistic Stratum at Shiqmona. Israel Exploration Journal 26: 65–76. Fischer, M. 1987 Die Staßenstation von Horvat Mesad (Hirbet el-Qasr): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Weges von Jerusalem nach Emmaus. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 103: 117–36. Gera, D. 1995 Tryphon’s Sling Bullet from Dor. Pp. 491–96 in Excavations at Dor, Final Report, ed. E. Stern. Vol. 1B of Areas A and C: The Finds. Qedem Reports 2. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Grose, D. 1979 The Syro-Palestinian Glass Industry in the Later Hellenistic Period. Muse 13: 54–65. 1989 Early Ancient Glass. Toledo: Toledo Museum of Art/Hudson Hills press. Harrison, R. 1994 Hellenization in Syria-Palestine: The Case of Judea in the Third Century b.c.e. Biblical Archaeologist 57: 98–108. Hartal, M. 1989 Northern Golan Heights: The Archaeological Survey as a Source of Regional History. Qazin: Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums. Herbert, S. 1994 Tel Anafa, I: Final Report on Ten Years of Excavation at a Hellenistic and Roman Settlement in Northern Israel. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 10/1. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

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Herbert, S., and Berlin, A. 2003 A New Administrative Center for Persian and Hellenistic Galilee: Preliminary Report of the University of Michigan / University of Minnesota Excavations at Tel Kedesh. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 329: 13–59. Hestrin, R., and Yeivin, Z. 1977 Oil from the Presses of Tirat-Yehuda. Biblical Archaeologist 40: 29–31. Isaac, B. 1991 A Seleucid Inscription from Jamnia-on-the-Sea: Antiochus V Eupator and the Sidonians. Israel Exploration Journal 41: 132– 44. Johns, C. 1950 The Citadel, Jerusalem: A Summary of Work since 1934. Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities of Palestine 14: 121–90. Kaplan, Y. 1971 The Yannai Line. Pp. 201–5 in Roman Frontier Studies 1967: The Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress Held at Tel Aviv, ed. S. Applebaum. Tel Aviv: Students’ Organization of Tel Aviv University. Kasher, A. 1990 Jews and Hellenistic Cities in Eretz-Israel. Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 21. Tübingen: Mohr. Kelso, J. 1968 The Excavation of Bethel (1934–1960). Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 39. Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research. Kindler, A. 1978 Akko, A City of Many Names. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 231: 51–55. Kloner, A. 1993 Mareshah (Marisa). Pp. 948–57 in vol. 3 of The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. E. Stern. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Landau, Y. 1966 A Greek Inscription found near Hefzibah, Israel. Israel Exploration Journal 16: 54–70. Landau, Y., and Tzaferis, V. 1979 Tell Istabah, Beth Shean: The Excavations and Hellenistic Jar Handles. Israel Exploration Journal 29: 152–59. Lapp, N. L. 1983 The Excavations at Araq el-Emir, Vol. 1. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 47. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns/American Schools of Oriental Research. Lapp, P. 1963 Ptolemaic Stamped Handles from Judah. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 172: 22–35. Lapp, P., and Lapp, N. L. 1968 Iron II—Hellenistic Pottery Groups. Pp. 54–79 in The 1957 Excavation at BethZur, ed. O. R. Sellers et al. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 38. Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research. 1977 Discoveries in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 41. Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research. Levine, L. 1974 The Hasmonean Conquest of Strato’s Tower. Israel Exploration Journal 24: 62–69. Magness, J. 2002 The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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McNicoll, A.; Smith, R.; and Hennessy, J. B. 1982 Pella in Jordan, Vol. 1. Canberra: Australian National Gallery. Merker, I. 1975 A Greek Tariff Inscription in Jerusalem. Israel Exploration Journal 25: 238– 44. Meyers, E.; Strange, J.; and Groh, D. 1978 The Meiron Excavation Project: Archaeological Survey in the Galilee and Golan, 1976. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 230: 1–24. Meshorer, Y. 1994 Coins. Pp. 241–60 in Tel Anafa, I/i: Final Report on Ten Years of Excavation at a Hellenistic and Roman Settlement in Northern Israel, ed. S. C. Herbert. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 10, Part I/i. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Millar, F. 1987 The Problem of Hellenistic Syria. Pp. 110–33 in Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander, eds. A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-White. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mørklhom, O. 1983 The Ptolemaic Coinage in Phoenicia and the Fifth War with Syria. Pp. 241–51 in Egypt and the Hellenistic World, ed. E. van’t Dack, P. van Dessel, and W. van Gucht. Studia Hellenistica 27: Louvain: Orientaliste. Netzer, E. 1993 The Hasmonean Palaces in Eretz-Israel. Pp. 126–36 in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990. ed. A. Biran and J. Aviram. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Peters, J., and Thiersch, H. 1905 Painted Tombs in the Necropolis of Marisa. London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Raban, A. 1992 In Search of Straton’s Tower. Pp. 7–22 in Caesarea Papers: Straton’s Towe, Herod’s Harbour, and Roman and Byzantine Caesarea. ed. R. L. Vann. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 5. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Rahmani, L. 1967 Jason’s Tomb. Israel Exploration Journal 17: 61–100. Rappaport, L. 1970 Gaza and Ascalon in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods in Relation to their Coins. Israel Exploration Journal 20: 75–80. 1984 The Birth of the Hasmonean State. Pp. 173–77 in Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel, eds. H. Shanks and B. Mazar. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Redding, R. 1994 Vertebrate Fauna. Pp. 279–322 in Tel Anafa I: Final Report on Ten Years of Excavation at a Hellenistic and Roman Settlement in Northern Israel, ed. S. C. Herbert. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 10/1. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Reich, R. 1981 Archaeological Evidence of the Jewish Population at Hasmonean Gezer. Israel Exploration Journal 31: 48–52. 1985 The “Boundary of Gezer”: On the Jewish Settlement a Gezer in Hasmonean Times. Etetz-Israel 18: 167–79 [Hebrew], 71* [English]. 1988 The Hot Bath-House (balneum), the Miqweh and the Jewish Community in the Second Temple Period. Journal of Jewish Studies 39: 102–7.

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The “Boundary of Gezer” Inscriptions Again. Israel Exploration Journal 40: 43– 46.

Sellers, O. 1933 The Citadel of Beth Zur. Philadelphia: Westminster. 1968 The 1957 Excavation at Beth-Zur. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 38. Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research. Sivan, R., and Solar, G 1994 Excavations in the Jerusalem Citadel, 1980–1988. Pp. 168–76 in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. H. Geva. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Slane, K. 1997 The Hellenistic and Roman Pottery: The Fine Wares—Tel Anafa II/i. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 10/2. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Smith, R. 1990 The Southern Levant in the Hellenistic Period. Levant 22: 123–30. Stager, L. 1991 Eroticism and Infanticide at Ashkelon. Biblical Archaeology Review 17/4: 34–57. Stern, E. 1982 Material Culture in the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period 538–332 b.c. Warminster: Aris & Philips. 1995a Between Persia and Greece: Trade, Administration and Warfare in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods. Pp. 432– 45 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. 1995b Stratigraphical Summary of Architectural Remains. Pp. 29– 48 in Excavations at Dor, Final Report, ed. E. Stern. vol. 1A: Areas A and C: Introduction and Stratigraphy. Qedem Reports 2. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Stern, E. (ed.) 1993 New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Syon, D. 1992 Gamla: Portrait of a Rebellion. Biblical Archaeology Review 18/1: 20–37. Tcherikover, V. 1937 Palestine under the Ptolemies (A Contribution to the Study of the Zenon Papyri). Mizraim 4–5: 9–90. Toombs, L., and Wright, G. E. 1961 The Third Campaign at Balâtah (Schechem). Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 161: 11–54. Tsafrir, Y. 1982 The Desert Fortresses of Judaea in the Second Temple Period. Pp. 120– 45 in vol. 2 of The Jerusalem Cathedra, ed. L. Levine. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute. Weinberg, G. 1970 Hellenistic Glass from Tel Anafa in Upper Galilee. Journal of Glass Studies 12: 17–27. Wright, G. 1962 Samaritans at Shechem. Harvard Theological Review 55: 357–66. Yeivin, Z., and Edelstein, G. 1970 Excavations at Tirat Yehuda. Atiqot 6: 56–67 [Hebrew], 6* [English].

Andrea M. Berlin

Nabateans During the late Hellenistic and early Roman imperial era, an Arab kingdom centered at Petra in Edomite Transjordan established itself as one of the prominent native independent political powers in the Levant region. The territory under its control extended from southern Syria through most of Transjordan, the Negev of Palestine, the Sinai, and the northwest part of the Hijaz. The Jewish historian Josephus and the Augustan geographer Strabo provide the fullest discussions of their history and culture, but no internal Nabatean source offers an indigenous historical account of the realm. Nevertheless, the numerous Aramaic inscriptions and graffiti from the native population contribute to our understanding of their customs and beliefs. In addition, their material culture, whose remains reflect a unique and distinctive architecture and ceramics, has become identifiable to archaeologists as “Nabatean.”

The Early History The association of the Nabateans of the classical era with the Iron Age people known as the Nabaioth or Nabatu remains controversial, but linguistic and historical factors provide a basis for identifying them as the same people. Neo-Assyrian sources list them as one of the numerous rebellious Aramaean tribes in southern Babylonia in the 8th century b.c.e. From their homeland in the region of northeast Arabia adjacent to the Persian Gulf, they appear to have migrated westward in the Achaemenid Persian period to settle finally in Petra, where they established a trade route between Babylonia and Egypt directly across the North Arabian desert. In addition, Petra became the entrepreneurial clearing house for the frankincense and myrrh of South Arabia that Minaean and Gerrhean merchants transported to the Levant. By 312/311 b.c.e., the Nabateans’ fortune and reputation was already well established, attracting the interests of Antigonus the One-Eyed, one of the Successors of Alexander the Great, who sent his army to Petra in hope of confiscating its wealth, an enterprise that failed. According to the Zenon papyri of 259 b.c.e., the Nabateans also resided in the Hauran neighborhood in Syria and were active as merchants of aromatics with Ptolemaic agents in Moabite Transjordan at the time. By the 2d century and afterward, they had spread into the Hijaz, the Negev of Palestine, and through the Sinai to the borders of Egypt. Their expansion is best perceived as an extensive political alliance of various peoples united under the rule of the Petraean dynasts.

The Royal Dynasty During the Hellenistic era, a series of kings are known from literary and epigraphic sources beginning with Aretas I (ca. 170 b.c.e.), Rabbel I (?), Aretas II

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(ca. 100 b.c.e.), and Obodas I (93–85). Under Aretas III (85–62), Nabatea became a Roman client-state, and Malichus I (62–30) was involved with such notable figures as Caesar and Mark Antony. His successor, Obodas II (30–9), was an ally of Augustus, and these relations were continued by the later kings to the reign of the emperor Trajan. Under Aretas IV (9 b.c.e.– 40 c.e.), the Nabatean kingdom flourished and reached its zenith; his reign remains the best known of all the Nabatean dynasts. The reigns of his successors, Malichus II (40–70 c.e.) and Rabbel II (70–106 c.e.) are more obscure, but the common depiction of this period as one of political and economic decline remains at issue. Since the period between Pompey and Augustus is the best known, the formative character of the monarchy has been seen as a result of Roman rule. However, the Nabatean dynasty reflects all of the aspects of a typical Hellenistic Macedonian monarchy of the Egyptian Ptolemaic type. The kings adopted the traditional titulary slogans of their Hellenistic counterparts on coins and inscriptions; Aretas III was known as philhellenos; Aretas IV as ‘friend of his people’, or the equivalent of Greek philodemus, but perhaps better understood as philopatris; and Rabbel II as “the one who has given life and deliverance to his people” or the soter ‘savior’ of his people. The monarchs also adopted royal consanguineous marriages typical of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, and intermarriage with the Herodian dynasty is also known. Evidence for a royal dynastic cult is clear from the known apotheosis of Obodas and Malichus, and the cult of the other kings can be inferred from the pseudotheophoric “servant” names that were combined with the names of the kings and queens and used by many court officials, military personnel, and artisans. After the Roman annexation in 106 c.e., the royal family faded from existence and the Nabatean realm was integrated into the new province of Arabia. The Babatha family archive from the Dead Sea documents the transition from the reign of Rabbel II to Roman rule.

Political and Military Organization Titles of civil and military officials were borrowed from Greek (strategos, chiliarchos, and hipparchos) and Latin (centurion) and reflect the development of the military system along the lines of a standard professional army of the Hellenistic type. The strategoi were regional district governors and military commanders. These officials appear at Sidon in Phoenicia, Dmeir and Canatha in southern Syria, Madaba and Umm er-Rasas in Moabite Transjordan, and frequently at Hegra (Madaªin Salih) in the Hijaz of Arabia; others must have represented the Nabatean communities in Edomite Transjordan, the Negev of Palestine, and perhaps the Sinai. The best known of these emanate from the prominent family of Damasippos at Hegra: his sons Rabîbªel and Ganimu and grandson Maliku are all identified as strategoi at Hegra; another grandson, Damasi, later led a revolt against the ruling dynasty in Petra in the early years of Rabbel II’s reign. The chiliarchoi must have been in charge of infantry units of approximately a thousand men. The hipparchoi were commanders of cavalry units of approximately

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five hundred horsemen; almost all of the officials with this title are concentrated near Bostra in the far north and Hegra in the far south of the kingdom, but an individual designated the ‘chief of the cavalry’ ( rb prsyª ) is known from Petra and the title may represent the Semitic equivalent of the hipparchos or an official of inferior rank in the cavalry unit. Two individuals are designated by the Latin title centurion—one at Hegra and the other at the nearby port of Leuke Kome, evidently in charge of protecting officials charged with the collection of tariffs on trade. In addition, several individuals are designated the ‘chief of the camp’ (rb msrytª ) at Petra: Dumah al-Jandal, Luhita, and Abartaª, officials perhaps comparable to the stratopedarch or praefectus castrorum of the Roman army. In conflicts with Hellenistic armies and the Hasmonean and Herodian dynastic forces, the Nabatean royal army performed fairly efficiently, despite Strabo’s and Josephus’s castigating remarks about their effectiveness. After the Roman annexation of the kingdom in 106 c.e., most of the Nabatean army was transformed into regular Roman military units, comprising at least six regiments of cohortes Ulpiae Petraeorum and perhaps several alae regiments of cavalrymen and dromedarii, sometime between 114–16 c.e., in connection with Trajan’s Parthian campaign. Afterward, these units served in Cappadocia, Syria, and Palestine and probably their homeland of Arabia as well.

Settlement Pattern Although Petra in the Edomite heartland was central to the Nabatean dynasty, the settlements over which they ruled extended and radiated outward in all directions from Petra. To the south, the port of Leuke Kome on the Red Sea in Midian and inland settlement at Hegra (Medaª in Salih) in the Hijaz provided bases for transporting South Arabian aromatics on to Petra and elsewhere. Nabatean settlements and road stations at Aela (Aqaba), Khirbet al-Kithara, Khirbet alKhalde, Quweira, Humayma, and Sadaqa must have facilitated this traffic on its way to the royal capital. In the Negev to the west, the cities of Oboda, Mampsis, Nessana, Sobata, and Elusa formed the basis for routes to Gaza and Rhinocorura on the Mediterranean coast. To the east, a route led across the Arabian Desert to Dumah al-Jandal (modern Jauf ) to the Persian Gulf and the famous emporium at Charax Spasinou. To the north through Transjordan, the Nabateans also had a string of settlements in Edom and Moab that extended to Bosra and Damascus, where goods could be transported to the ports along the Phoenician coast. The presumed exclusion of Nabateans in the “Hellenized” Decapolis region is even to be rejected. Both Philadelphia (Amman) and Gerasa ( Jerash) were the locations of Nabatean communities, and sporadic finds of sherds, inscriptions, and temple dedications indicate the presence of Nabateans throughout the region. Much of this population must be regarded as indigenous settlers of the region, who occupied the land prior to their assimilation into the Nabatean kingdom.

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Language and Script More than 4,000 Nabatean Aramaic inscriptions have been published. The oldest dated texts are from the late Hellenistic era, from Petra [96/95 and 70/69], Bostra [51–47] in the Hauran, and Tell el-Shuqafiya [77] in Wadi Tumilat between the Suez and the Nile in Egypt, where another text recently published is dated to 35/34 b.c.e. and the reigns of both the Ptolemaic ruler Cleopatra VII Philopater and Malichus I. The largest concentration of dated texts is from the tombs of Hegra, which have provided the basis for an architectural analysis of the tombs at Petra, where only one has a dedicatory inscription. Most of these texts are merely graffiti, comprising a name, genealogy, and some formulaic greeting or dedication of a religious or funerary nature. Ironically, the largest concentration of inscriptions is in the forlorn and desolate area of Wadi Mukatteb in the Sinai, where thousands have been recorded. After the annexation of Petra by Rome in 106 c.e., there are no dated Nabatean texts at the capital city and the few dated to the Roman provincial era of Arabia are found in the desert fringe areas on the periphery of the old Nabatean kingdom. The latest of these dates to 356 c.e., in the Hijaz. Although the language of these texts is Aramaic, there are a number of Arabic loanwords for political and religious institutions, and the vast majority of personal names in the Nabatean onomasticon are also Arabic, spelled according to the peculiar orthographic practices used in imperial Aramaic of the earlier Persian period. The paleography of the script with its peculiar ligatures and style eventually developed into that of the classical Arabic script. It is also apparent that some Nabateans used the North Arabian scripts and dialects known as Safaitic and Thamudic. Recent bilingual texts in these pre-Islamic Arabic dialects and Aramaic indicate that the Nabatean community was complex, diverse, and basically polylingual, providing substantial evidence that Aramaic was only the formally adopted language of a largely Arabic population.

Economy and Society The Nabateans’ main reputation emanated from their extensive activities as traders and merchants in aromatics from South Arabia. Literary and archaeological evidence of their involvement in this trade is extensive and early. In the 4th century b.c.e., the Nabateans were already profiting greatly from this exotic commerce and their activities as merchants in these goods was still recognized by Roman writers in the 2d century c.e. Their typical painted eggshell fineware has been found along the eastern coasts near Bahrayn, the ports of Oman and Yemen, and at sites such as Qaryat al-Fau in Saudi Arabia along the incense route leading north to Petra. Their Aramaic inscriptions have been discovered scattered across the Mediterranean in such places as Tenos, Rhodes, Cos, Delos, and Miletus in the Aegean, and Puteoli and Rome in Italy. The development of agriculture in the Nabatean realm has been viewed as a late development resulting from the decline in commerce as Rome absorbed

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much of the Red Sea traffic. It was also a product of the social evolutionary anthropological model that characterizes the transition from nomadic pastoralism to sedentary life as a gradual and late development. In contrast to this cultural scheme, the earliest descriptions of the Nabateans indicate that they possessed advanced technical ability and ingenuity. Their engineering skill is revealed in their developing hydrological systems to support settlements on the desert fringe. Such achievements at Humayma in the Hisma Desert of southern Jordan are particularly impressive and date to the 1st century b.c.e., rivaling the later developments in the Negev of Palestine. In similar fashion, horse-breeding must have been a necessity for maintaining the cavalry of the Nabatean army as early as Aretas III, since both the area of Petra and Amman seem to have been prime regions for these activities during the Hellenistic era. Furthermore, art and architecture also reveal creative adaptations of classical styles.

Religion The principal national god of the Nabateans was Dushares (‘belonging to Shara’, the mountain range of Edom). Other divinities in the pantheon included the goddess Allat, Al-Uzza, al-Kutba, Shai al-Qaum, and Baalshamin. Representations of these various deities normally was in the betylic form of a rectangular stele (albeit with stylized eyes, nose, and mouth), rather than an anthropomorphic form, suggesting a cultural inhibition or even prohibition against depicting divinities in human fashion. Other sculptural representations in Hellenic iconographic form suggest that the practice was not uniform. Some of the bestpreserved sanctuaries are at Petra, Khirbet Tannur and Wadi Ramm in Edom, Qasr Rabba and Dhat Ras in Moab, and Si in the Hauran. Shrines and cultic centers are abundant throughout the realm and indicate that the Nabateans absorbed the indigenous cults of the Edomites, Moabites, and Syrians into their pantheon. Even the Egyptian cult of Isis flourished at Petra from at least the Augustan era into the later Roman imperial period. Although evidence shows that Petra came increasingly under Christian influence by the 4th century c.e., Nabatean Aramaic inscriptions reveal no traces of the new religion.

Bibliography Bowersock, G. W. 1983 Roman Arabia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Graf, D. F. 1990 The Origin of the Nabataeans. ARAM 2: 45–75. 1994 The Nabataean Army and the Cohortes Ulpiae Petraeorum. The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East, ed. E. Dabrowa. Cracow: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski. Gruendler, B. 1993 Development of the Arabic Scripts. Harvard Semitic Series 43. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

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Hammond, P. C. 1973 The Nabataeans: Their History, Culture and Archaeology. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 37. Gothenburg: Åström. Meshorer, Y. 1975 Nabataean Coins. Qedem 3. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Negev, A. 1991 Personal Names in the Nabataean Realm. Qedem 32. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Patrich, J. 1990 The Formation of Nabataean Art. Leiden: Brill. Taylor, J. 2002 Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wenning, R. 1987 Die Nabatäer: Denkmäler und Geschichte—Eine Betandesaufnahme des archäologischen Befundes. Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Zayadine, F. (ed.) 1990 Petra and the Caravan Cities. Amman: Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

David F. Graf

Classical Text Sources in the Levant Greek and Roman awareness of the Near East arose primarily as a result of imperialism, but earlier explorers and traders also provided some information. Prior to the conquests of Alexander the Great and the later Roman occupation of the Levant, only scattered references to the region exist in classical literature. From the literary perspective, contacts with the inhabitants of the Levantine coast and Near East in the Homeric world of the 8th century b.c.e. are reflected by the presence of Phoenicians and Sidonians in the Iliad and Odyssey, the poetry of Hesiod, and the Kadmos legend, but no attempt was made at a historical narrative account. The first account was Hecataeus of Miletus’s description of the peoples and towns along the Mediterranean coast produced from his travels in Asia and Egypt just before 500 b.c.e., but it is extant only in fragmentary citations. The earliest extensive treatise on the Near East is the ethnographical and geographical observations preserved in Herodotus of Halicarnassus’s history of the Persian War, but the focus is mainly Egypt, Mesopotamia, and regions outside the Levant; Syrians and Arabs appear only occasionally in the text, and there is not even a solitary allusion to the Jews. Xenophon’s Anabasis includes some details of northern Syria and the Euphrates region, but it is only with [Pseudo-]Skylax’s treatise of the mid–4th century b.c.e. that the Mediterranean littoral from Cilicia to the Canopic branch of the Nile is described in any detail. At about the same time, Aristotle’s student Theophrastus provided several botanical expositions that contain references to the plants of the Lebanese and Syrian world.

Historical and Political Narratives It is only with Alexander the Great’s campaign that the Near East becomes a focal point for a vast literature. The major accounts for the political history of the Hellenistic Levant are preserved in Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, and Appian, but these are mainly written from the Western perspective. During the Hellenistic period, local national histories of the Near East also begin to emerge in the Greek language, written by natives of the region, such as Manetho for Egypt, Berossus for Babylon, and several others for Phoenicia preserved by Philo of Byblos. Numerous Hellenistic Jewish writers also dealt with the history of early Israel, but only a few, such as Pseudo-Hecataeus, dealt with the contemporary era. Both before and after the Maccabean revolt in 167 b.c.e., Jews began to produce a vast literature in Greek of religious and political importance that continued into Roman imperial times (the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha). In the late Hellenistic era, Greeks such as Apollonius Molon and Alexander Polyhistor were writing treatises on the Jews, as did other Greeks from Abydos and Cyzikos for the Arabs.

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Both for the Hellenistic and the early Roman periods, the most important literary source for the Levant is the Jewish historian Josephus. Using an assortment of earlier classical sources, he compiled a history of the Jews before and during the Jewish War. In these works, citations appear from Posidonius of Apamea, Timagenes of Alexandria, Nicolaus of Damascus, and Justus of Tiberias. Other important works he shows awareness of, such as the memoirs of Herod and Vespasian, are known merely from his references to their titles. His account of the Herodian dynasty and the conflict with Rome is not only the most complete record of the period, but it also contains memorable episodes concerning events at Caesarea, Jerusalem, Gamla, and Masada. Latin writers such as Suetonius and Tacitus provide only occasional glimpses of the region. It is only with the Parallel Lives of Plutarch that information of a more substantial nature (notably in the biographies of Demetrius, Pompey, Caesar, and Mark Antony) can be gleaned. For the 2d and 3d centuries c.e., events in the Levant must be gleaned from the less-systematic and sporadic accounts by Dio Cassius (68 b.c.e.–229 c.e.) and Herodian (180–238 c.e.), which are at least somewhat satisfying, given that the untrustworthy and controversial imperial biographies of the Historia Augusta (117–284 c.e.) furnish the only alternative. In the 4th century, epitomes such as those of Eutropius and Rufius Festus offer a few insights into the East; but the final major work by a pagan writer is that of Ammianus Marcellinus, an Antioch aristocrat of the 4th century c.e., who wrote a history of events subsequent to those recorded by Tacitus. Unfortunately the only surviving portion for the period after 353 focuses mainly on his hero Julian the Apostate. Afterwards, it is Christian writers in Greek and Latin who replace the pagan historians.

Inscriptions and Papyri The inscriptions for the Hellenistic Levant are few, and, although papyri for the period now number over 5,000 documents, they mostly pertain to the Fayum in Egypt. The notable exception is the Zenon archive, which contains numerous references to towns and affairs in Palestine, Transjordan, Phoenicia, and Syria associated with the activities of the agent of the Ptolemaic royal financial administrator Apollonius between 260 and 240 b.c.e. It is not until the Roman era that epigraphic evidence becomes abundant, especially for the 2d century c.e., and new finds continue to accumulate at a fairly rapid rate. Such standard reference works as W. Dittenberg’s Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae I–II in 1903–5 (OGIS) and R. Cagnat’s Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes III in 1906 (IGRR) must now be supplemented by the publications of these numerous subsequent finds. For Phoenicia and Syria (exclusive of Palmyra, Dura-Europos, and the Euphrates), references are mainly gathered together in the volumes of Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie (IGLS ), begun by L. Jalabert and R. Mouterde in 1929 and continued by J.-P. ReyCoquais and other French scholars. Of similar importance for southern Syria are the Greek and Latin inscriptions published in Volume III A–B (1922–23) of the

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Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria (PAES), conducted from 1899 to 1909. For Jordan, the projected five volumes of Inscriptions grecques et latines de Jordanie (IGLJ), edited by P.-L. Gatier, M. Sartre, and F. Zayadine, are fundamental (two have now appeared). For Israel and Judaism, see J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudiacarum I–II (1936–52) and Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum I–III (1957–64). For the Negev of Palestine, A. Alt’s Griechische Inschriften der Palästina Tertia Westlich der Araba (1921) can now be supplemented by A. Negev’s Greek Inscriptions from the Negev (1981). Newly published Greek texts appear now regularly in the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum; and all earlier finds, from 1880 to the present, appear annually in L’Année épigraphique, which was issued originally as a part of Revue archéologique and now appears as a separate publication. More than 30,000 papyri exist for the Roman and Byzantine period, but almost all pertain to Egypt. Finds in the Levant have been scarce, such as at Dura-Europos for the 3d century c.e. and Nessana in the Negev for the Byzantine era. However, the Babatha archives of the Trajanic and Hadrian era from the Dead Sea area, discovered in the 1950s (N. Lewis, The Documents from the Bar-Kochba Period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri, 1989); the recent finds of public and private documents on the Middle Euphrates in Syria from the 3d century c.e. (reported by D. Feissel and J. Gascou in Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions 1989: 535–64); and the documents discovered more recently at Petra in 1994 for the Byzantine era indicate the possibility of future discoveries elsewhere in the Levant.

Geographical and Topographical Sources The Hellenistic Alexandrian geographers Eratosthenes of Cyrene (235 b.c.e.), Agatharchides of Cnidus (130 b.c.e.), and Artemidorus of Ephesus (100 b.c.e.) provide some information, preserved mainly in book 16 of Strabo’s Geography, produced in the Augustan era. The Description orbis by Augustus’s colleague Agrippa is lost, but it reputedly gave a systematic topographical survey of the Roman provinces. Isidorus of Charax’s Parthian Stations gives an account of the commercial route in the Augustan era that began at Zeugma on the Upper Euphrates in Syria and proceeded along the river valley toward the Persian Gulf, before heading east across the Iranian Plateau. Pliny’s Natural History has a gazetteer description of the Levant (Book V.66–90), with additional information about the flora, fauna, and minerals of the region. The earlier geographical data collected by explorers is preserved in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography of the mid–2d century c.e., essentially a map that locates towns, peoples, mountain ranges, and rivers by latitude and longitude, computed mainly from reports and therefore lacking exactness in all details. The Onomasticon of Eusebius of Caesarea provides a listing of the place-names of Palestine with geographical and historical comments, an indispensable guide to the topography of the Holy Land as perceived in the 4th century c.e.; Jerome later translated the work into Latin with some corrections and additions. The Peutinger

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road map (Tabula Peutingeriana in Vienna) and the Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti also describe the major official routes of the early Roman imperial highway system for the Levant and elsewhere. These road itineraries preserve the distances and names of the staging-posts and road stations between major cities. Greek and Latin milestone inscriptions found scattered across the Levant that date from the 1st to the 4th century c.e. document the exact path of these routes and even supply information about additional vicinal roads. Some important Byzantine sources from the 4th century c.e. and later also afford insight into the settlements and geography of the region in earlier periods. Stephen of Byzantium preserves the fragmentary remains from many earlier classical writers about the ethnography and toponyms of the region. The military organization of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire contained in the Notitia Dignitatum (ed. O. Seeck, 1876) probably dates to the 4th century. It lists by location the major officials with their respective shield emblems and all the military units garrisoned in each province. The 6th-century Beersheva Edict designates the fragments of an imperial military inscription discovered in 1908 that once apparently listed all the various villages of the three Palestinian provinces but is extant only for the southern regions. For the rest of the major civic centers of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, the work of Synekdemus of Hierocles (from 450 to just before 535) and the 7th-century geographer George of Cyprus’s Descriptio orbis romani may be consulted. Several mosaic maps found in Byzantine churches in Transjordan provide sites of biblical and ecclesiastical importance. The Madaba Map discovered in 1884 preserves sections of the Levant from Sarepta in Phoenicia to the Canobic branch of the Nile in Egypt, including the Sinai and Transjordan as far as Kerak. The Umm al-Rasas mosaic discovered in 1986 lists eight Palestinian cities and seven from Transjordan, balanced by ten fortified cities of the Nile Delta in Egypt.

Bibliography Avi-Yonah, M. 1976 Gazetteer of Roman Palestine. Qedem 5. Jerusalem: The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Cotton, H. M. 1995 The Papyrology of the Roman Near East: A Survey. Journal of Roman Studies 85: 211–35. Dilke, O. A. W. 1985 Greek and Roman Maps. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gatier, P.-L. 1990 Cent ans d’épigraphie grecque et latine au Proche-Orient: Le rôle des épigraphistes français (et francophones). Pp. 273–82 in Actes du colloque international du centenaire de L’Année Epigraphique. Paris. Jacoby, F. 1950–61 Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden: Brill [orig. published Berlin: Werdmann, 1923]. Mayerson, P. 1982 The Beersheba Edict. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 56: 141– 48.

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MacAdam, H. I. 1990 The IGLS series then and now (1905–89). Journal of Roman Archaeology 3: 458– 64. Millar, F. 1993 The Roman Near East, 31 bc–ad 337. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pestman, P. W. 1981 A Guide to the Zenon Archive. Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 21. Leiden: Brill. Schürer, E. 1973 The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 b.c.–a.d. 135), rev. and ed. G. Vermes and F. Millar. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Stern, M. 1974 Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 1. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Thomsen, P. 1917 Die römischen Meilensteine der Provinzen Syria, Arabia, und Palestina. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 40: 1–103. Will, E. 1979–82 Histoire politique du monde hellénistique (323–30 av. J.-C.). 2 volumes. Nancy: Université de Nancy.

David F. Graf

Jewish Art and Iconography in the Land of Israel Jewish art was created specifically for the Jewish community; its form and content were determined and executed in accordance with the spiritual and secular requirement of local congregations. The time span of ancient Jewish art begins in the Second Temple period (2d century b.c.e. through early 2d century c.e.) and continues until the end of Late Antiquity (7th century c.e.).

Art of the Second Temple Period Jewish Art and architecture of the Second Temple period begins with the remains of the Hasmonean architecture encountered in sites and structures later reconstructed or completely renewed by the Herodian architectural projects. These buildings and renovations left an enduring impression on the artists and architects of the period. Jewish art of the Second Temple period is a decorative art characterized by a mixture of native traditions and Hellenistic-Roman features. Hellenistic-Roman culture influenced the upper classes of all Near Eastern countries. Architecture, the use of the Greek language, and Greco-Roman institutions that affected many aspects of everyday life attest to this predominate influence. Politically, Palestine was first under Hellenistic and later under Roman rule. However, resistance to the intrusive culture was strong because the Jewish religion by its force and vitality completely controlled the community’s activities. Similarly, Judaism dominated the decorative art conceptually, so that neither figurative nor symbolic representations were generally depicted. The various ornamental devices and the repertoire of motifs, however, were part of the general stream of Roman art, especially its provincial and eastern tributaries. Decoration in Herodian architecture attests to the influence of both Hellenistic and Roman traditions, which, moreover, survived into the later Herodian period. One encounters a locally developed style mainly in funerary art, on tomb facades, and on ossuaries and sarcophagi. The art that developed in the Second Temple period exhibits certain motifs, oriental elements, and types of stonework that are characteristic of the period. The repertoire of ornamental aniconic motifs reflects a rigid choice of floral, geometric, and architectural patterns, some of which were adopted from Hellenistic art. Jewish art style displays many Oriental elements in the simple local art found in funerary art, palaces, and houses. It usually differs from Oriental art in the quality of execution and in the attention paid to decorative detail. Stonework, carving, and use of relief characterize Jewish Second Temple period art as well as later synagogal art. Stonework was one of the most prevalent crafts of

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Jewish art that flourished in Herodian times. It utilized the locally available stone and created a new type of ornament. The designs were sketched in by compass and ruler and carved out by chisel in a deeply incised and stylized manner. Stonework features are evident in the architecture of buildings, tombs, and funerary art, as well as objects of daily life, such as ornamented stone tables and domestic vessels. During the Second Temple period, a central Temple was built in Jerusalem. The ruling classes, although partially Hellenized, retained parts of their faith and kept some of the laws. The art of the period shows connections with GrecoRoman culture, but at the same time it withstood foreign influences by evolving strictly aniconic features. Like other arts of the period, Jewish art is characterized by highly skilled indigenous stonework, by the predominant Oriental element of endless patterns, by the element of horror vacui, by plasticity of carving, and by symmetrical stylization. Jewish art of the Second Temple period concentrates on extensive architectural projects consisting of large complexes and structures, not only in Jerusalem, where the Temple itself was rebuilt, but also throughout the country in major winter and summer palace complexes and in a magnificent harbor and other architectural installations. This art also includes the ornamentation and embellishment of the above-mentioned structures, as well as of funerary structures such as tombs, sarcophagi, and ossuaries. Decorators of buildings, palaces, houses, and bathhouses of the Second Temple period mainly focused on wall paintings, stucco-plaster mouldings, and ornamental floor pavements. The strictly aniconic and nonsymbolic art characterizing the Second Temple period is the outcome of Judaism’s struggle against what were regarded as paganism and idolatry. By the strict observance of the prohibition against animate images, Jews retained their own distinctive identity.

Jewish Art in Late Antiquity In Late Antiquity, profound political and social changes occurred; in 70 c.e., Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, and the center of Jewish life shifted to the Galilee. These changes influenced the art and architecture of this period. For example, the prevailing architectural structure was now the synagogue, which in many ways replaced the Temple as the center of Jewish religious, national, and social life. In addition, the decline of paganism and the rise and expansion of Christianity caused a change in Jewish attitudes toward its art; it now expressed ornamentation and decorative architecture by figurative and symbolic means. With the destruction of the Temple, a need for a concrete visual image was strongly felt. Thus only during this period did the Temple implements take on a symbolic significance in synagogal and funerary art.

Synagogue Architecture The synagogue functioned as an assembly hall for the local congregation as well as a spiritual, religious, and social center (fig. 113). Its use as a community

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Fig. 113. Plans of synagogues with (a) aedicula, (b) niche, (c) apse.

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assembly center determined its architectural plan. The synagogues in Palestine were not built according to one stereotypical plan, nor were they designed according to an authoritative law. Synagogue building plans can be classified in two distinct categories. The first category consists of a longitudinal, columnated stone structure with benches and a characteristically richly decorated stone facade (the Galilean and Golan synagogues). In the second, broadhouse or basilical buildings contain an axial court and narthex in front of the prayer hall, thus obviating the need for a decorated facade. These buildings are usually constructed of concrete and typify most of the synagogues in the land. Generally the internal plan of the synagogue building consists of two rows of stone columns that divide the main hall lengthwise into a central nave and two side aisles. The majority of synagogue plans are oblong, and all have longitudinal axes. The most important features are the Torah shrine, the facade (usually with three portals), and the gallery. The major architectural feature of the synagogue was the Torah shrine. From its inception following the destruction of the Temple, the Torah shrine became a permanent fixture in the synagogue. Built on the Jerusalem-oriented wall, it took the form of an aedicula, a niche or an apse. Most Torah shrine repositories were made of stone. They were normally elevated and therefore usually approached by steps. The Torah shrine was the receptacle for the Art of the Scrolls, which had several forms and was probably made of wood. The preponderance of the aediculae as a Torah shrine found in excavated Galilean and Golan synagogues indicates that the aedicula was the characteristic structure for containing the Ark in these regions. Chronologically, the aedicula is the earliest type of Torah shrine; it was already in existence by the 2d century c.e. and was the most popular type in Galilean and Golan synagogues. In the 6th century c.e., the apse was an integrally planned structure. However, neither apse nor bema has been generally found in any of the Golan or Galilean synagogues. The aedicula, on the other hand, although built to be used as a permanent structure, was an addition built onto the original internal wall only after the synagogue building had been constructed. These typological differences in the forms of the Torah shrines—the aedicula, the niche and the apse—should be attributed to local preferences, historical development, the social standing of the donors, the financial means of the congregation or the local construction traditions, and practices of the craftsmen and masons involved in the construction. It appears that construction of most of the synagogues in Palestine took into consideration local topography; however, the Jerusalem-oriented Torah shrine structure still determined the orientation of the synagogues. The differences in synagogue orientation were due to local traditions regarding the location of the Torah shrine. For example, most Galilean synagogues have both their facade and Torah shrine on the same Jerusalem-oriented wall, whereas the Judean synagogues of Eshtemoa, Susiya, and Maon have their niches on the northern Jerusalem-oriented wall and entrances on the east side wall. Most of the 6th century

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Fig. 114. The Ark and menoroth panel, Hammath Tiberias synagogue mosaic floor.

apsed synagogues are oriented with their apses on the Jerusalem-oriented wall, while their entrances are on the opposite wall.

Jewish Symbols and Iconography Specific Jewish symbols such as the menorah, the Ark, and other ritual objects are found in both synagogal and funerary art. These symbols expressed profound and significant values distinctly associated with Judaism and thus were used frequently throughout Late Antiquity by Jews everywhere, including the Diaspora, where they held a prominent place in the vocabulary of Jewish art. These chosen Jewish religious symbols derived from the Temple and from synagogue rites and ceremonies. Many other symbols and images were taken from the contemporary Hellenistic-Roman world; however, most of the forms that were borrowed were divested of their original meaning. Essential Jewish symbols are the menorah, the Torah shrine and Ark, the four ritual utensils (the shofar, lulav, ethrog, and incense shovel), and the conch. Some motifs and emblems in Jewish art were borrowed from the pagan world for their decorative effect only, and consequently they were used without their original meaning or were given a different significance. Other motifs and designs had new symbolic meaning attributed to them. For example, the zodiac signs and the sun god served as a calendar, and lions symbolically guarded the Jewish symbols—the menorah and the Ark. An interesting example of the way an image developed into a symbol may be seen in the case of the menorah. During the Second Temple period, the menorah

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signified the sacred Temple vessel, along with another vessel, the shewbread table; but it was also a professional sign of the priests, their duty, and office. Only after the destruction of the Temple did the menorah image change from a specific official, limited emblem to the principal Jewish symbol, one that particularly symbolized Judaism. The Torah shrine and ark, also part of the symbolic repertoire of Jewish art, carried much deeper connotations. Since the Torah—placed in the Ark of the Scrolls—was an integral part of the focal point of Jewish worship, it thus symbolized the place of the Scriptures and their study and prayer in Judaism. Renditions of the Torah shrine and Ark are also encountered on tomb walls, doors, and clay lamps. On mosaic floors the Torah shrine and Ark is depicted in many cases with two menorahs flanking it; this probably represents the actual position of the Torah shrine and menorahs in their prominent place in the synagogue building (fig. 114). Depictions of the more elaborate Torah Shrine, flanked by menorahs and ritual objects, came to symbolize participation in the annual pilgrimages, that is, the Feast of the Tabernacles (the most important annual festival), and, by association, the Temple and its eventual rebuilding.

Figurative Art Jewish figurative art was an extensive and essential part of the Jewish art in Late Antiquity. A major change occurred at the end of the 2d century c.e. and particularly during the 3d century c.e., when representational art began to flourish. It was at this time that the barriers within which Judaism protected itself against foreign influences were being shattered. During this period, Jews acquired some of the customs and decorative elements from surrounding cultures and began to develop their own figurative and representational art, using various motifs, figures, and animals for both synagogal and funerary art. Figurative art became possible for several reasons. On the one hand, the attitude of the rabbis became more tolerant. The changes reflected in Talmudic literature were the result of political, economic, and social circumstances. On the other hand, the influence of the surrounding cultures, from which certain pagan and mythological motifs were taken, became much stronger, as well as Jewish literature, legends, and midrashim, which also influenced artistic traditions. The Jewish figurative repertoire included themes such as biblical narrative scenes, the zodiac calendar, mythological designs, motifs of animals and human figures also occurred in Jewish poetry. Biblical Scenes. Biblical scenes found so far do not seem to have a common denominator as regards style or origins. Biblical themes found to date on synagogue mosaics seem to be selected from a relatively small number of biblical stories: the Sacrifice of Isaac (fig. 115) on the mosaic at Beth Alpha and Sepphoris; Noah’s Ark on the mosaic of Jerash; Daniel in the Lions’ Den, on the mosaics at Naaran and Susiya; the Twelve Tribes on the mosaic at Japhia; King David as Orpheus on the mosaic at Gaza; David with Goliath’s weapons on the mosaic at Marous; and

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Fig. 115. Sacrifice of Isaac panel, Beth Alpha synagogue mosaic floor.

the consecration of Aaron on the service of the Tabernacle and the daily Offering at Sepphoris. They were depicted in simple narratives, although some of the scenes may have had symbolic meanings, such as the illustration of the theme of salvation and the association with prayers offered in time of drought. Biblical scenes were considered appropriate subject matter for synagogue pavements. Furthermore, they were trodden upon, even when the pavements included the Hand of God and the ritual objects. This was done intentionally, i.e., if these depictions could be stepped on, they may not have been considered “sacred.” Thus there was no danger that the worship of graven images could arise. The Zodiac Cycle Panel. Five of the ancient synagogues discovered so far in Israel, ranging in date from the 4th to the 6th centuries, contain mosaics showing the exact same form of a zodiac cycle: Hammath Tiberias, Beth-Alpha (fig. 116), Huseifa, Naaran, and Sepphoris. A sixth synagogue, at Susiya, did at one time contain a zodiac mosaic floor, but it was later changed into a geometric pattern. A seventh synagogue, the mosaic at ºEn-Gedi, yielded a Hebrew inscription that includes the names of the Zodiac signs followed by the names of the corresponding Jewish months, replacing, it seems, the illustrated zodiac of the other mosaic floors. The zodiac cycle in all of the synagogues occupies the center of a threepanel mosaic floor. The design consists of a square frame containing two concentric circles. The corners of the square frame portray the four seasons as bursts of jeweled women, accompanied by the inscriptions naming the season in Hebrew (at Sepphoris the name in Greek is added). The outer, larger circle depicts the twelve zodiac signs, each sign being accompanied by its name in Hebrew; the

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Fig. 116. The Zodiac panel, Beth Alpha synagogue mosaic floor.

signs represent the Jewish twelve months, as the Sepphoris zodiac clearly indicates by the inclusion of the name of the month in Hebrew. The innermost circle shows the sun god (at Sepphoris only the sun) in a chariot, with a crescent moon and several stars in the background representing day and night. This recurrence of the zodiac design in a number of synagogue mosaics indicates its relevance to religious thought and its importance in synagogal art. It seems clear that the Jewish community was not interested merely in a strictly decorative design for its floor. The fundamentally “pagan” zodiac cycle came to serve the Jewish community as a popular, symbolic Jewish calendar (consisting of the four seasons, the twelve months, the day and night) and was employed as a significant framework for the annual synagogue rituals.

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Other Motifs of Jewish Art. Popular motifs in Jewish art indicate marked preferences in Jewish ornamentation. The motifs include: flora, geometric motifs, fauna; human figures; mythological motifs; genre motifs. Sources for the motifs used in Jewish art include: tradition and the continuation of popular motifs descending from Jewish art of the Second Temple period; selected decorative patterns and motifs taken from other contemporary cultures (Greco-Roman, Syrian, and Nabataean) but devoid of their symbolic content and significance; chosen motifs from pattern books; and motifs of iconographic and symbolic significance for Judaism. Definite tendencies reveal themselves in the persistent selection by the Jews of Late Antiquity of heraldic and antithetic symmetrical design, such as lions, bulls, Nikae, eagles, peacocks, and other birds; horned animals, dolphins, and rosettes. These are depicted on sarcophagi in funerary art and on synagogue lintels, friezes, and mosaic floors. A common source for the motifs in Jewish art was, most likely, a pattern book. This is indicated by the stylization of pose and posture, as well as the patterning for the representations of animals, plants, and other ornaments; it is less likely that the motifs were copied directly from nature. Jewish art is based on the ability and skill with which the artists related to the needs and requirements of their patrons, whose prerequisites were based mainly on traditional and decorative demands. A limited selection of symbols and subjects was chosen by the Jewish community and by its donors, who probably made their choice from available pattern books. Certain original aspects of ancient Jewish art may be explained as the result of the specific needs of the Jewish community, of its traditions, and of artists’ innovations. Jewish art was essentially a decorative art, with both ornamental and iconographic functions. it was an art that consisted of an indigenous local tradition but also appropriated from the surrounding Graeco-Roman and Christian cultures. It possessed an Oriental style and was characterized by the use of specific symbols, motifs, and iconography. Despite elements borrowed from neighboring cultures, Jewish art retained the fundamental beliefs, customs, and traditions of the Jewish people.

Bibliography Avigad, N. 1983 Discovering Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Shikmona. Avi-Yonah, M. 1981 Art in Ancient Palestine. Jerusalem: Magnes. Goodenough, E. 1953–68 Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Vols. 1–13. New York: Pantheon. Gutmann, J. (ed.) 1975 The Synagogue: Studies in Origins, Archaeology and Architecture. New York: KTAV. 1981 Ancient Synagogues, the State of Research. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press. Hachlili, R. 1988 Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel. Leiden: Brill. 2002 The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Synagogal Art: A Review. Jewish Studies Quarterly 9: 219–58.

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Hachlili, R. (ed.) 1989 Ancient Synagogues in Israel. British Archeological Series 499. Oxford: BAR. Levine, L. I. 2000 The Ancient Synagogue. New Haven. Yale University Press. Levine, L. I. (ed.) 1981 Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1987 The Synagogue in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research. Weiss, Z., and Netzer, E. 1996 Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum.

Rachel Hachlili

Synagogues in the Land of Israel Introduction The English word synagogue is derived from the Greek sunagoge, an assembly or place of ‘coming together’. It is equivalent to the Rabbinic Hebrew beit ha-knesset and the Palestinian Jewish Aramaic knishta or beit knishta ‘house of assembly’. Synagogues flourished throughout the land of Israel during the Roman and Byzantine periods, continuing well into Islamic times. The purpose of this essay is to present the essential archaeological evidence for Jewish synagogues in Palestine during this period, with reference to contemporaneous literary sources. The growing corpus of Samaritan synagogues in the land of Israel will be discussed in brief, with reference to Samaritan literature.

Jewish Synagogues The origins of the synagogue are unknown and will probably remain so due to the non-revolutionary nature of this institution. Some scholars have placed the origins in preexilic times, basing themselves in literary traditions that are at best opaque. By the 1st century of the Common Era, Jewish synagogues existed throughout the land of Israel. Synagogues are mentioned in the writings of Josephus and of Philo of Alexandria, in the New Testament, and in rabbinic sources. In Jerusalem some are said to have served specific expatriate diaspora communities (for example, Acts 6:9; Tosefta Megillah 2.12; Josephus, Against Apion 2.175). Literary sources are virtually unanimous in presenting 1st-century synagogues as places where Jews gathered to read and study Scripture. The clearest archaeological evidence for synagogues during the latter 1st century b.c.e. through the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 c.e. is found in an inscription recovered from a cistern in Jerusalem’s “City of David” by R. Weill in 1913–14. The ashlar stone bearing its monumental Greek inscription measures 75 x 41 cm. The text translates: Theodotos, son of Vettenos the priest and synagogue leader (archisynagogos), son of a synagogue leader and grandson of a synagogue leader, built the synagogue for the reading of the Torah and studying of the commandments and as a hostel with chambers and water installations to provide for the needs of itinerants from abroad, which his fathers, the elders, and Simonides founded.

The synagogue of Theodotos, of which little remains, served a Greek-speaking synagogue community. The functions of the synagogue are described clearly in this inscription and include the reading and study of Scripture, a hostel for foreign visitors, and a “water installation,” presumably a mikveh for ritual purification. Missing from this description is mention of synagogue prayer. This feature

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is lacking from all sources that describe Palestinian synagogues at this time, either because Jews did not yet pray as communities in synagogues, or, more likely, because communal prayer was not a feature peculiar to Jewish assemblies, and so went unmentioned. The reading and study of Scripture were apparently the unique features of Second Temple period synagogues. The proximity of the Theodotos synagogue to the nearby Temple Mount is significant and suggests a coexistence of the synagogue and the Temple. Rabbinic sources suggest that there was even a synagogue on the Temple Mount. A tradition preserved in the Tosefta (a rabbinic collection redacted ca. 250 c.e.) reflects the seamless relationship between the Temple and the ancient synagogue: Said Rabbi Joshua son of Hananiah: All the days of the Celebration of the Water Drawing we never saw a moment of sleep. We would arise in time for the morning daily whole offering [in the Temple]. From there we would go to the synagogue, From there to the additional offering [in the Temple], From there to eating and drinking, From there to the study house, From there to the Temple for the whole sacrifice at dusk, From there to the Celebration of the Water Drawing. (t. Sukkah 4.5)

A number of buildings from the latter Second Temple period have been identified as synagogues. These include structures at Masada, Gamla, Herodion, and recently at Qiryat Sefer, Modiºin, and Jericho. The difficulty in identifying synagogues in this period is that no specifically Jewish symbols or distinctive furnishings appear within any of these buildings, and no inscription identifies any of these structures as synagogues. What unifies the buildings at Masada, Gamla, and Herodion is that each building is a large meeting room surrounded by benches. Philo of Alexandria describes the synagogues of the Essenes as having such benches (Every Good Man Is Free, lines 81–82). The building at Gamla is a large, freestanding, rectangular structure (16 x 20 m) built on the western side of the low flank of Gamla next to the city wall. The main entrance was on the west, with an exedra and an open courtyard before it. A ritual bath, or mikveh, is located to the right of the court. The center of the hall was unpaved and surrounded (except for the main entrance) by stepped benches. The Gamla synagogue was constructed after 40 b.c.e. The synagogue of Masada is located on the northwestern casement wall. The room is rectangular in shape, 15.0 x 12.0 m. Benches with four tiers were built on three sides of the room. On the fourth side, at the northwestern end of the building, a large, protruding room (measuring 3.6 x 5.5 m) was constructed, within which biblical scrolls were buried “while the synagogue was still in use.” Fragments of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel were discovered in two pits excavated there. The room at Herodium was also fitted with benches during the First Jewish War. On the basis of the similarities between these benches and those at Masada, some scholars have identified this room as a synagogue.

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Archaeological remains that pertain to synagogues from the latter 1st or 2d century c.e. have been reported by E. Meyers and C. Meyers, who suggest that a 2d-century synagogue existed, the first phase of which is extant, at Nabratein in the Upper Galilee. They report that this building has four columns, a possible reader’s lectern suggested by an imprint in the plaster floor, and is aligned toward the south in the direction of Jerusalem. The difficulty in identifying synagogues during this period lies in the general lack of excavated Jewish public architecture and the lack of a specifically Jewish symbolic repertory. Tannaitic literature, reflecting the late 1st through the early 3d centuries, provides sources for synagogues within communities that were influenced by the rabbinic sages. Mishnah Megillah 3:2 assumes that synagogue buildings were not so clearly distinguished that they could not be converted for use for another communal or industrial purpose (such as a bath house, a tannery, a ritual bath, or a lavatory). Mishnah Nedarim 9:2 assumes that a private house could be transformed into a synagogue, thus paralleling Christian house churches, as well as the 3d-century synagogue at DuraEuropos in Syria and elsewhere in the Diaspora synagogues. Some Tannaitic sources suggest that the idealized synagogue in distant Alexandria (t. Sukkah 4.6) and others closer to home were built originally as synagogues. These structures incorporated characteristics reminiscent of rabbinic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple. Tosefta Megillah 3.21–23 suggests that the ideal synagogue, like the Tabernacle/Temple, should be built “at the high point of the town,” its doors open to the east. The interior of the synagogue was to be directed toward a scrolls box (teva) that was set on the wall aligned with Jerusalem: How do the elders sit? Facing the people, their backs to the qodesh (lit., ‘the holy’, Jerusalem). When they set down the [scroll] chest—its front is toward the people, its back to the qodesh. The hazan ha-knesset (community leader) faces the qodesh. All the people face the qodesh.

No synagogue that fits this ideal has been discovered, although this arrangement clearly influenced later synagogue design. Literary evidence presents synagogue buildings as having been a common feature on the Palestinian landscape by the 3d and 4th centuries c.e. The well-known rabbinic tradition describing 480 synagogues in 1st-century Jerusalem, each with a primary and a secondary school, is actually a projection of the ubiquitousness of synagogues in Late Antique Jewish Palestine onto the latter Second Temple period (Palestinian Talmud Megillah 3.3, 74a and parallels). The plethora of synagogues in Jewish Palestine was noted by Jerome (Commentary to Isaiah 57:12) and is evidenced by the over 100 synagogues known from archaeological sources, and many more that are known from rabbinic literature. The number of excavated synagogues undoubtedly belies the true number of synagogues in the land of Israel, specifically during the 2d through the 4th centuries, but later as well. House

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synagogues undoubtedly continued throughout our period. Few synagogues were built “at the high point of the town,” but rather were built at the town center. Monumental synagogue buildings have been discovered in the regions of Jewish occupation in Late Antique Palestine. Remains are especially concentrated in the Golan Heights, the Eastern and Upper Galilee, the Jezreel Valley, the Jordan Rift Valley, and the Mt. Hebron region of Judea. Synagogues have also been discovered in the cities of the coastal plain, in the Shephelah, and in Gerasa in Transjordan. Some scholars have attempted to treat the Gerasa synagogue as a Diaspora synagogue, although this approach reflects more about modern politics than the situation in antiquity. Three basic “types” of synagogue buildings have been discovered in the land of Israel. These are the broadhouse, longhouse basilicas, and Galilean-type basilicas. The principle of sacred orientation may be observed in all of these types, and platforms supporting Torah shrines were placed on the Jerusalem-aligned wall in the vast majority of cases. Exceptions to this rule appear, for example, at Huseifa and Sepphoris. From the 5th century onward, longhouse basilicas were often apsidal. While regional and chronological distribution of synagogue types is apparent, these “types” in no way reflect a strict geographical or chronological typology. Often synagogues of different “types” existed in close proximity to one another, the best example being the broadhouse synagogue at Khirbet Shema and the nearby Galilean-type basilica at Meiron. Broadhouse type synagogues have been discovered at Khirbet Shema in the Upper Galilee and at Eshtemoa and Khirbet Susiya in the Mt. Hebron region of Judea. Meyers and Meyers report a broadhouse at Nabratein, in phase 1. The broadhouse-type synagogue receives its designation because its wall of orientation is one of the longer, or broader, walls, as opposed to the shorter end in the basilica. A Torah shrine was placed on the broad wall, aligned with Jerusalem. Longhouse basilicas generally consisted of an atrium, sometimes a narthex, and a nave, the focal point of which was a Torah Shrine set on a platform (bima) on the Jerusalem-aligned wall. The Torah Shrine (called an arona or beit arona in inscriptions and literary sources) was sometimes flanked by seven branched menorahs. These menorahs not only forged a connection between the synagogue and the Jerusalem Temple but they also provided light necessary for the reading of biblical scrolls and served to emphasize the ark platform. The basilica form was adapted by both Jews and Christians during the 4th century c.e. Variety in architectural patterning and ornamentation is accompanied by the rather common placement of the Torah Shrine on the wall facing Jerusalem. This arrangement is first reflected in the synagogue mosaic at Hammath Tiberias B, in level 2a. Synagogues of the late 5th and 6th centuries and later, including Naªaran and Beth Alpha, often included an apse on the Jerusalem wall that housed the Torah Shrine. This feature, together with the entire arrangement and many of the furnishings of the building, was borrowed from contemporary churches. The apse and bima were sometimes separated from the nave by a screen, often incorrectly

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called by modern scholars a “chancel screen.” The screen is called a geder la-bima ‘partition for the podium’ in a recently identified source from the Cairo Genizah. The screen served to emphasize and distance the area of the Torah Shrine from the assembled community, though it does not seem to have taken on the significance of the Christian “chancel screen.” Jewish and Christian screens sometimes derived from the same workshops. The most ornate chancel screen yet discovered appears in the broadhouse synagogue in Khirbet Susiya. Within this synagogue a broad enclosed area was set out before the Torah Shrine. The panels of the screen include images of a Torah shrine, a menorah, and a very fragmentary narrative scene in which the hand of God reaches down from the Heavens holding a scroll. The naves of longhouse and apsidal basilicas and the hall of the broadhouse at Khirbet Susiya were often paved with highly intricate mosaics. In a number of cases they included images of the Torah Shrine area, the zodiac wheel, biblical imagery, and numerous dedicatory inscriptions in Aramaic, Greek, and occasionally Hebrew. Images of the Torah Shrine, flanked by two menorahs, appear at Hammath Tiberias, Sepphoris, Beth Alpha, Beth-shan A (which may actually be a Samaritan synagogue), Naªaran, and Khirbet Susiya. These mosaic panels were laid before the bemot of these synagogues, and were imprecise mirror images of them. The pediment of a Torah Shrine very similar to the one at Beth Alpha was discovered at Nabratein (although at Nabratein the pediment is flanked by lions, and not birds, as at Beth Alpha). A large three-dimensional menorah was discovered at Hammath Tiberias A, and fragments of large menorahs were found at Maon ( Judea) and at Khirbet Susiya and Eshtemoa. A three-dimensional lion similar to those flanking the bottom of the ark in the Beth Alpha synagogue mosaic was discovered at Chorazin. This reverse mirror-imaging of the furnishings of churches in mosaics set before them may be found in Christian contexts as well, as in the Church of the Priest John on Mt. Nebo. The zodiac wheel within synagogues relates to Jewish conceptions of the heavens, particularly to notions of time. The earliest zodiac wheel was found at Hammath Tiberias. There we find the signs of the zodiac individually labeled in Hebrew, with the seasons personified in each corner. In the center is the sun god Helios. Helios is the only image in this composition (which is clearly borrowed from Roman models) that, perhaps instructively, goes unlabeled. At Sepphoris, about a century later, the zodiac wheel includes both the signs and personifications of each month, clearly labeled with the name of the month (fig. 117). The Chariot of Helios appears, but Helios himself does not. At ºEn-Gedi the names of the months and zodiac signs appear in a long textual inscription, but they are not illustrated. This reflects the attitudes of various communities to possibly idolatrous imagery. The zodiac at Naªaran was defaced by iconoclasts (as were images at Khirbet Susiya and other sites) during the centuries after its construction, reflecting changing Jewish attitudes toward visual representations. The reasons for this changing attitude are complex and reflect the strengthening of intrinsic Jewish ambivalence toward “graven images,” perhaps in response to

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Fig. 117. The Sephoris Synagogue Mosaic, illustrating the Hebrew month of Kislev, zodiac sign: Sagittarius. Photo: author.

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Fig. 118. The Chorazin Synagogue. Photo: author.

Christian icons and iconoclasm and certainly in response to Moslem aniconism within mosques. Biblical scenes appear with regularity, including the Binding of Isaac at Beth Alpha and Sepphoris; the Angels’ Visit to Abraham and Sarah and Aaron before the Tabernacle at Sepphoris; Noah’s Ark at Gerasa; Daniel in the Lion’s Den at Naªaran, and perhaps Khirbet Susiya, and David playing his harp at Gaza. All of these images appear in Christian art as well and seem to have been adopted for synagogue ornamentation from the general context. The inhabited scroll mosaics of the Maon (Nirim) synagogue near Gaza and of the nearby Shellal church reflect the close relationships between artisans and tastes across communal divides. Of particular interest, due to their concern for the sacrificial system, are images of Aaron before the Tabernacle and assorted elements of the Jerusalem Temple sacrificial cult in the Sepphoris mosaic. Each of these biblical images parallels themes that are common in Jewish liturgical poetry and other literature from Late Antiquity. Particularly significant is a mosaic pavement from the narthex of the 6th-century synagogue at Re˙ov in the Beth-shan region. This 29line inscription directly parallels texts that appear in rabbinic literature. This inscription is the earliest extant textual exemplar of rabbinic literature.

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Galilean-type basilicas include the synagogues at Capernaum, Chorazin (fig. 118), Meiron, Nabratein, and Kfar Baram, Umm al-Qantar, Arbel, and in some ways Meroth. The dating of these structures has been debated for over two decades. Dated to the 2d or 3d century by E. L. Sukenik and M. Avi-Yonah, the synagogue at Capernaum has been newly excavated by Italian archaeologists and dated to the 5th century. This date has been questioned by Jodi Magness, who suggests a “second half of the 5th century or first half of the 6th century” date. Magness’s approach puts the date of these buildings in line with synagogues in the Golan Heights. Whether the 5th- or 6th-century dating is preferred, the Galilean-type synagogues represent a type of monumental architecture that is unknown elsewhere in the land of Israel. The emphasis on the decoration of the external facade of the building is closely related to church architecture in Syria. The “U”-shaped arrangement of the columns within the synagogue stresses the importance of the Jerusalem-wall within the synagogue interior. Typical of this group is the structure uncovered at Meiron, where the triple facade faces southward toward Jerusalem. It is likely that the Torah Shrine was placed between the portals of this structure, as at Meroth in the Upper Galilee and as has been conjectured at Capernaum and Chorazin. Some scholars have posited the existence of portable Torah chests that were brought into the synagogue for communal Scripture reading and have argued that the image of a wheeled carriage (qoron, carucca) at Capernaum represents such a portable chest. There is no evidence to corroborate this romantic notion. Both the alignment of the basilica and the suggested location of the ark necessitated that the worshiper enter the synagogue through one of its three main portals and turn around to face the Torah Shrine and Jerusalem to the south.

Samaritan Synagogues Samaritan synagogues have recently come to the forefront of scholarship, with the preliminary publication of impressive synagogue remains in Samaria. Samaritan synagogues in the land of Israel are mentioned for the first time in the Samaritan Chronicles, apparently dating to the period of Emperor Commodus (180–192 c.e.). There we read that “he bolted shut the Synagogues” and “forbade the Samaritans to open a Synagogue for themselves to pray or to read (the Torah) in it.” The reopening and construction of synagogues during the 4th century is attributed to the great Samaritan leader and reformer, Baba Rabba. Samaritan synagogues at Tel Qasile and Shalavim near Tel Aviv and perhaps in Beth-shan date to the Byzantine period. Synagogues in Samaria at el-Khirbe, Khirbet Samara, Mt. Gerizim, Zur Natan (Khirbet Majdal), Hazan Yºaqub in Nablus, and Kfar Fahma were excavated during the 1980s under the overall direction of Y. Magen. These buildings, which reflect no unifying architectural structure, are dated by Magen to the 4th and 5th centuries. Mosaic pavements and stone reliefs bearing images of a shrine, menorahs, and other symbols were uncovered in the synagogues of Khirbet Samara, el-Khirbe, and Kafr Fahma.

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This iconography bears striking resemblance to Jewish iconography, though the lack of the lulav bundle and ethrog in Samaritan mosaics, appurtenances used by Jews for the festival of Sukkot but not by Samaritans, seems to reflect distinctly Samaritan religious sensibilities.

Bibliography Primary Literature Palestinian (Jerusalem) Talmud 2001 Talmud Yerushalm: According to Ms. Or 4720, ed. J. Sussman. Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language. Pesiqta de Rav Kahane 1962 Ed. B. Mandelbaum. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary. Philo of Alexandria 1929–62 The Complete Works, trans. F. H. Colson et al. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Shisha Sidrei Mishnah 1979 Ed. C. Albeck. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik / Tel Aviv: Dvir. Tosefta 1962–88 Ed. S. Lieberman. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary.

Epigraphic Corpora: Lifshitz, B. 1967 Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les Synagogues Juives. Paris: Gabalda. Naveh, J. (ed.) 1978 On Stone and Mosaic: The Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions from Ancient Synagogues. Israel: Maariv. [Hebrew] Roth-Gerson, L 1987 Greek Inscriptions from the Synagogues in Eretz-Israel. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak BenTsvi Press. [Hebrew]

Secondary Literature Adler, E. N., and Séligsohn, M. 1902 Une nouvelle chronique samaritaine. Revue des études juives 45: 85. Baumgarten, J. M., and Fine, S. (ed.) 1970 Art in the Synagogue: Some Talmudic Views. Judaism 6: 196–206. Revised version in Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue. London: Routledge. Chiat, M. J. S. 1982 Handbook of Synagogue Architecture. Chico, Calif.: Scholars. Fine, S. 1997 This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of Synagogues during the Greco-Roman Period. Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. 1998 “Chancel” Screens in Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues: A Source from the Cairo Genizah. In Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, ed. H. Lapin. Potomac: University of Maryland Press. Forthcoming Jewish Archaeology. In Art and Judaism during the Greco-Roman Period.

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Fine, S. (ed.) 1996 Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999 Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue. New York: Routledge. Hachlili, R. 1988 Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel. Leiden: Brill. Levine, L. I 2000 The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press. Levine, L. I. (ed.) 1982 Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1987 The Synagogue in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research. Magen, Y. 1993 Samaritan Synagogues. In Early Christianity in Context: Monuments and Documents, ed. F. Manns and E. Alliata. Jerusalem. Meyers, E. M. 1979 The Cultural Setting of Galilee: The Case of Regionalism and Early Judaism. Pp. 686–702 in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römische Welt II/19. 1980 Excavations at En-Nabratein, Upper Galilee: The 1980 Season. American Schools for Oriental Research Newsletter 2: 3–11. Pummer, R. 1999 Samaritan Synagogues and Jewish Synagogues: Similarities and Differences. Pp. 118–60 in Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction during the Greco-Roman Period, ed. S. Fine. London: Routledge. Sukenik, E. L. 1934 Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece. London: Oxford University Press.

Steven Fine

Golan Synagogues Historical Background Jewish settlements in the Bashan ( Batanea) are first alluded to in the days of Judas Maccabaeus (164 b.c.e.; 1 Macc 5:9–29). The major phase of Jewish settlement in the Golan, however, started only after the conquest of this region by Alexander Jannaeus (81 b.c.e.; J.W. 13.393–94). Gamla, a fortress created by the local tyrant Demetrius at the end of the 2d century b.c.e., became the capital of Jewish Golanitis (Mishna ºArakin 9:6). In the 1st century c.e., under Herod and his descendants Philip, Agrippa I, and Agrippa II, the Jewish settlement reached its highest level of material culture, evident in the excavations at Gamla and especially its synagogue (fig. 119). The active part taken by the Jews in the First Revolt against the Romans and the destruction of Gamla in 67 c.e. brought about the desertion of most Jewish villages in the central and southern Golan ( J.W. 4.1–81; Mishna So†a 9:16). Their revival came only after about two centuries, as a result of the political and economic recovery of Palestine during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, at the end of the 3d/beginning of the 4th centuries c.e. Several generations of intensive agricultural activity and olive oil production elapsed before the construction of lavish synagogues from the 450s through the 520s c.e. The Golan reappears then, as Klima Gaulames, in an administrative list of the Byzantine Empire (Georgius Cyprios, Descriptio Orbis Romanii 1041); the heading indicates a rural area without a central city. Data from excavations and surveys indicate that most Jewish settlements were reabandoned at the end of the 6th/ beginning of the 7th centuries c.e. as a result of the deterioration of the Byzantine regime. Some settlements, however, such as Qasrin and el-Ahmadiyye, continued through the earthquake in 749 c.e. at the end of the Ummayid period.

Geographic Information The 26 sites in which synagogues were discovered (out of about 15 settlements in the subdivision Central Golan) are located in a narrow strip about 6 miles to the east of the Jordan River and only 15 miles from the north to the south (from Nahal Gilbon to Nahal Samak). Most of this strip of land is covered by basalt, overlaid with grumusol soil. The topography is that of a plateau, gently sloping toward the southwest, cut through by deep canyons. Only in the south do wide riverbeds expose limestone sediments covered by alluvial soils. The natural vegetation is mostly Tabor Oak (Q. Ithaburensis) forest and annual herbs. The area is unsuitable for plough cultivation except in small tracts, although small springs are abundant. No major thoroughfares cross it, but a few local roads connect Galilee to the Bashan. The area can in general be defined as a fringe and frontier territory.

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Fig. 119. Plan of the Synagogue at Gamla, Israel (early 1st century c.e.). Note the bent-axis entrance, meant to conceal the activity in the hall from the street; the prayer hall, with benches on four sides; the women’s room in the far end and its separate approach from the lower street. The design, a fusion of a basilica and a bouleterion, is probably derived from Hellenistic examples in Alexandria.

Exploration The synagogues of the Golan were discovered in the 1880s by L. Oliphant and G. Schumacher, who recognized their similarity to the Galilean synagogues, followed in 1905 by H. Kohl and C. Watzinger, and in 1932 by a Hebrew University team led by E. L. Sukenik. By that time remains of synagogues were known at six sites: er-Rafid, ed-Dikke, el-Ahsenniyeh, Kanaf, Umm el-Qanatir, and elAhmadiyye. Following the 1967 war, C. Epstein, S. Gutman, D. Urman, Z. Ilan, and others located dozens of ruined synagogues. At Gamla in 1976–77, S. Gutman excavated the only Second Temple synagogue known outside Judea. An in-

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tensive survey and excavations of synagogues were conducted by Z. Maºoz in 1977–1982. Except for Gamla, the 25 villages with synagogue remains include 17 sites with structures; in other cases only foundations are discernible; the rest yielded only scattered architectural fragments. In five sites—Kanaf, ºEin Nashut, Dabiyye, Qasrin, and Dayr ºAziz—archaeological excavations have produced data for the dating of the buildings, their development, and their possible elevations.

Excavations The synagogue complex at Gamla, constructed in the early 1st century c.e., is located next to the eastern city wall and is surrounded by incoming streets. Its plan (82 x 57 ft.) comprises an entrance chamber on the west, followed by a small internal courtyard, a large central prayer hall and various rooms on the east and north. The prayer hall (65 x 50 ft.) is divided by four Doric colonnades set in a rectangle into four aisles and a central nave that has a square of columns, facilitating a raised roof with lantern windows. Each of the four aisles (14 ft. wide) has four tiers of benches between upper and lower landings. A room in the back of the complex, with a separate entrance on the street and several tiers of benches facing a large window opening into the center of the hall, probably served as the women’s room. The design suggests that the plan—a combination of bouleterion and basilica—was imported from Alexandria via Jerusalem.

Late Antiquity The Late Antique Golan synagogues are different from synagogues in Galilee in both structural and decorative details; ashlar walls frame spacious halls divided by column rows into a nave with an aisle on each side. The columns, connected by architraves, support a second story of columns, galleries, and a wooden truss-roof covered by clay tiles. Two or three stepped benches are arranged along the walls, and a stone-and-wood-built Torah shrine is built against the south or west wall, beside the entrance (which in some cases was shifted off-center). The facades, topped by gables, are richly decorated, with molded portal frames, windows, friezes, and cornices. Over the three generations of synagogue-building in the Golan (450s–520s c.e.), covering the reigns of the Byzantine Emperors Leo I, Zeno, and Anastasius I, the style of architecture and decoration gradually changed. The assemblage can be divided into several closely dated style groups. The earliest group, constructed in the 460s c.e., comprises five synagogues in and around the Bethsaida Valley: el-Ahsenniyeh, Jaraba, er-Rafid, Kh. Khawkha, and ed-Dikke (fig. 120). They have facades toward the west, pierced by three entrances (following the Galilean tradition and unlike all the others in the Golan that have only a single entrance). The central portal, higher and wider than the side portals, carries above the lintel a richly sculptured entablature comprising a frieze with acanthus scroll filled by rosettes, an architrave with hollowed tongues, and a Corinthian cornice (geison), above which there is a molded relieving arch. Above the side doors, windows are set, famed by columnettes supporting a conch

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Fig. 120. The Synagogue at ed-Dikke, Israel, a typical example of the Bethsaida group (460s c.e.), restoration drawing of the “baroque” west facade.

in a Syrian gable. The facade’s lower story is terminated by a sima cornice; the upper story is perforated by a large, double, arched opening with a window on each side. The pediment is framed by a frieze with acanthus scroll interspersed with animals, and a Corinthian cornice. The facade is decorated by additional animal reliefs: lions flanking the main entrance and above the windows, and eagles on the keystone of the relieving arch and at the top of the pediment. The synagogue at ed-Dikke (the only one excavated) exhibits a rectangular hall (35 x 46 ft.), divided by two rows of four columns and two engaged pillars. Two stories of columns are set one on top of the other; the lower columns stand on pedestals and carry Corinthian capitals, while the upper columns are Doric. this synagogue also exhibits a lintel with a relief of a wreath flanked by two winged victories. At erRafid and Jarabe, Ionic capitals were used on the interior. The somewhat later synagogue at ºEin Nashut (38 x 50 ft.) has a single entrance on the south, shifted off-center to accommodate the Torah shrine constructed to

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the side of the door. Otherwise its facade is similar to the Bethsaida synagogues, except that the pediment is framed by sima cornices. The interior columns stood on pedestals and were crowned by four-sided Ionic capitals; the second-story capitals were Corinthian. Stone architraves (8 ft. long) ran over the lower columns, one of which carried the inscription of the donor, “Abun bar-Yoseh.” Three stepped benches ran along the walls on four sides, broken only by the Torah shrine base and a side entrance leading to an annex room. The ark stood on a podium approached by three steps flanked by a pair of half-lions (front part) sculpted in the round. An orthostat faced the side of the podium along the entrance, carrying a relief of Daniel in the lions’ den and eagles. The building is exceptionally rich in sculptures of animals: two eagles in high relief, engaged sculptures of a lion and a lioness flanking the portal; and several miniature reliefs of lions, eagles, birds, and snakes on various architectural fragments. A unique Ionic capital exhibits reliefs of symbols on all four sides; a pair of eagles, a nine-branched menorah, a sevenbranched menorah, and an altar. The other synagogues constructed in the second half of the 5th century c.e., such as at Bet Lavi (44 x 36 ft.), Zumaimira (62 x 48 ft.), Zawitan (44 x 50 ft.), Batra (43 x 24 ft.); and Dabiyye (50 x 44 ft.) are simple, less-decorated versions of the Bethsaida style: a single molded entrance; the lintels at times exhibiting a wreath or a lion; no conch windows or pediment geisons; and only Ionic and Doric capitals on the interior. The synagogue of Umm el-Qanatir, erected toward the end of the 5th century c.e., is the southernmost synagogue found in the Golan. The ground plan is a rectangle (63 x 43 ft.) with the facade to the south. The single portal (shifted offcenter) has a molded but undecorated frame, surmounted by a relieving arch. In front of the gate there was a small portico, covered by a gable roof supported by columns crowned by “basket capitals” (a low relief of a net). Two Syrian-gabled windows pierced the lower story of the facade, while the upper story had a large central opening framed by pilasters supporting an arch with relief, consisting of narrow bands, each with a single pattern: circles, triangles, and geometric motives. The pediment outlines were marked by sima cornices, and the peak carried an eagle with spread wings. The interior was divided by three rows of columns crowned by impost capitals on the lower and Doric capitals on the upper orders. The Torah shrine, to the right side of the entrance, is noteworthy. A lion and a lioness (front part only) sculpted in the round flanked the steps to the podium, and each supported on its back miniature columns crowned by a hybrid Ionic capital with a relief of an eagle. The concept is probably derived from the image of a divine or royal throne in the biblical-Phoenician tradition. The synagogues erected in the Golan in the first quarter of the 6th century c.e. exhibit four contemporary architectural styles, three of which may be regarded as derivatives of former examples in a simpler, more severe style, while one is different and new. The two neighboring and very similar synagogues at Kanaf (53 x 44 ft.) and Deir ºAziz (60 x 36 ft.) have facades toward the west with a single portal placed in the

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center. Side doors leading out are placed in the north (Kanaf ) or east (Deir ºAziz) walls. The portal at Kanaf is unique: the lintel and jamb stones are decorated by a continuous frame consisting of a low relief of a vine scroll emerging from an amphora, bead-and-real, egg-and-dart, acanthus leaves, and guilloche. The lintel stone carries the donor’s inscription: “Bless Yoseh bar-Halfo bar-Honio, who made it.” Over two jamb stones, on both sides of the entrance, two medallions are portrayed in sunken relief, the first with a star encircled by entwined squares, the other with a conch surrounded by a double-meander band interspersed with undefined symbols. The lintel at Deir ºAziz carried only a wreath. Otherwise the facades are undecorated, pierced only by rectangular windows and a small circular opening in the framed pediment. The lintel of the side entrance at Kanaf carried a bas-relief of a vine scroll with four birds pecking the grapes. The interior of these synagogues had two rows each of four columns crowned by Doric capitals on both lower and upper stories. The gallery level was decorated on the inside by semicolumns placed between the windows, capped by Ionic half-capitals, on one of which a small, three-branched menorah was engraved. The synagogue at et-Tayibe faced south and exhibited a unique lintel over the portal: a high-relief of a central wreath flanked by two pie-shaped medallions with geometric rosettes and palm branches. Consoles were placed on both sides of the lintel, one covered with acanthus leaves, and the other with a palmetto. The interior, however, carried only bossed-Ionic and Doric capitals. Both of the synagogues of Salabe (35 x 33 ft.) and el-Khashe (32 x 30 ft.) are small, single-story structures, with only four columns on the interior, caped by bossed-Ionic or simple Doric capitals. They bear no decoration whatsoever and a minimum use of smoothly-dressed ashlars. The last architectural style in the Golan is represented in a cluster of four sites, Qasrin (57 x 51 ft.), ºAsaliyye (53 x 60 ft.), Qusibiyye, and Yahudiyye, only the first of which has been excavated. All have identical portal moldings, Attic column bases, and specific Ionic capitals. The door frame stands on Attic pilaster bases on both sides, and the moulding consist of a convex band, egg-and-dart, and kymation. The lintels exhibit various combinations of a central wreath tied by Herculean knot, amphorae, vine and ivy scrolls, rosettes, and even an eagle. The main architectural difference between this group and the other synagogues in the Golan, however, is that these did not carry an upper story of columns and galleries; instead, the elevation exhibited a raised clerestory over the nave—the design of the usual Byzantine basilica. At Qasrin, two stepped benches ran along the interior walls, and a stepped Torah shrine podium was built against the south wall, decorated by a pair of double minature columns, whereas the main entrance was in the center of the opposite wall. At ºAsaliyye, the entrance was on the south, and at Yahudiyye probably on the west. Qasrin also showed two side doors, one leading out west (with a geometrical design over the lintel), the other to an annex room in the southeast. Except for the portal frame, the facades of these buildings were undecorated. Qasrin showed, however, a relieving arch above the

spread one line short

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lintel (as does ºAsaliyye), a double-arch window on the clerestory front, and sima cornices along the sloping roofs.

Assessment The wealth of the finds from the synagogues in the Golan allows a thorough study of diversified artistic currents colored with spiritual and religious notions in a very limited region. The amazing phenomenon is that both in the early Roman and in the Byzantine periods, highly sophisticated building designs, derived from the cultural centers on the Levantine coast, appear in an inland region at the northeastern fringe of Palestine. Whereas Gamla was politically and culturally connected to Jerusalem, the Jewish villages in the Byzantine period seem to have drawn influences from the cities on the coast of northern Palestine and Phoenicia. Classical architecture—the galleried Roman basilica, with all its moldings and decorations—was adopted for the synagogue design, no doubt echoing the former Galilean examples. The five luxurious synagogues of the Bethsaida group, erected in the 460s c.e., indicate not only prosperous times and favorable political conditions in Palaestina Secunda in general, but perhaps also the strong Jewish leadership in Tiberias that may have initiated or facilitated their construction. The other 5th-century c.e. synagogues seem to be projects of local initiatives on a smaller, less-luxurious scale. They do, however, testify to the continuous prosperity of these villages and their stable social structure through the early 6th century c.e. All 6th-century c.e. structures reflect a marked decline in the quantity of decoration and its simplification: gone are the pedestals, friezes with rinceaux, rich geisons, molded windows, and most of the animal sculpture. Of the last, only eagles, lions, and some birds survive. The decoration is now confined to the main entrance and to lintels and capitals; geometrical motifs are preferred. Some buildings carry no decoration. This phenomenon, evidenced also in the churches of the Hauran, probably reflects changing art trends in the eastern Mediterranean in general. Jewish symbols, in contrast, seem to have been more abundant in the 6th century c.e. To the emblem of the menorah, the symbol of the Torah shrine was now added, and the wreath was still current. It seems that the Jewish population in the Golan, surrounded on three sides by Christian villages, took great pains to distinguish themselves architecturally and artistically from their neighbors.

Bibliography Gutman, S. 1981 The Synagogue at Gamla. Pp. 30–34 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. L. I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Maºoz, Z. U. 1981a The Synagogue at Gamla and the Typology of Second Temple Synagogues. Pp. 35– 41 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. L. I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1981b The Art and Architecture of the Synagogues in the Golan. Pp. 98–115 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. L. I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.

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Ancient Synagogues of the Golan: An Introduction. Biblical Archaeologist 51: 116–28. 1991 Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue at Dabbiye (Final Report). ºAtiqot 20: 49–65. 1992 The Synagogue in the Second Temple Period: Architectural and Social Interpretation, Eretz Israel 23 (Biran Volume): 331– 44 [Hebrew]. Forthcoming Ed-Dikke and the Synagogues in the Bethsaida Valley. Vol. 1 of Ancient Syna– gogues in the Golan. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Maºoz, Z., and Kellebrew, A. 1988 Ancient Qasrin: Synagogue and Village. Biblical Archaeologist 51: 5–19. Schumacher, G. 1888 The Jaulan. London: Bentley.

Zvi ªUri Maºoz

Early Christian Iconography Early Christian iconography concerns the description and interpretation of art associated with the early Christian church. Its most problematic period remains the formative years prior to the Edict of Milan (313 c.e.), the official recognition of the church by Constantine. During this period a syncretism of religious and cultural thought helped to provide some of its visual character. Artists worked with indigenous materials in sculpture, wall-painting, mosaic, and minor arts reflecting the contemporary style. As Christianity spread, its art was subject to influence from all aspects of culture, both East and West. Figurative motifs common to Judaism and Hellenism visually described aspects of this new faith. As a result, fragments removed from the archaeological context present interpretive problems, despite seemingly Christian themes. The iconographer considers all material and textual resources, including archaeological data; production techniques; inscriptions; Old and New Testament; apocryphal texts; patristic, Jewish, and classical literature; and liturgical, cultic, mythological, and cultural mores. Artists and workshops were commissioned by all members of society. Consequently economic or patronage concerns may have been responsible for the intrusion of non-Christian elements in some early compositions. Intent is the determining factor in interpreting art from this period as Christian or not. Early Christian art—the visual material—along with text and ritual constituted the instructional methods utilized by the early church. Many times the visual content is concentrated, eliminating all but essential forms. Thus it may be characterized as narrative and didactic, two features that together distinguish it from pagan art. The oldest school of interpretation developed as a result of the extensive archaeological excavations in Rome. These explorations of the labyrinthine underground Christian burial grounds termed catacombs have yielded a host of inscriptions, paintings, and sculpture dating from the early 3d century. The excavation and publication of this material began in the 17th century and continue to the present under the aegis of the Vatican. The “Roman” school sought to affirm the patristic and ecclesiastical texts through the excavated material. Extensive exploration of the biblical lands did not occur until the 19th century, due to linguistic and topological difficulties. Here again, the data were explained as support for biblical texts. Recent scholarship, influenced by sociology and anthropology, attempts to disengage the material data from contemporary texts and study them from the viewpoint of the early Christians themselves. To date, few examples of ante pacem art have been found outside of a funerary context. One of the earliest is a piece of textual advice given by Clement of Alexandria (200 c.e.) to Christians choosing a design for their signet ring. He suggested using “a dove or fish or a ship in full sail or a musical lyre . . . or a ship’s

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Fig. 121. The raising of Lazarus (left). The Good Shepherd (right). The Evangelium (far right).

anchor . . .” (Paed. 3.11.59.1). Another was brought to light in 1931–32 during a joint American-French excavation in the Syrian desert site of Dura Europos. On this site, the earliest Christian house church with a painted baptistery was unearthed. It contained a cycle of Old and New Testament wall paintings dating to 240–256 c.e. This discovery was no less startling than the slightly earlier painted synagogue uncovered at the same Roman military outpost. These paintings, along with a 2d-century painted Mithraeum, attest to the continuity of an established tradition of wall painting in the Near East. The baptistery paintings included representations of the Good Shepherd, Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, miracle scenes from the life of Christ, and a partially destroyed scene of the women approaching the tomb. These narratives as well as the signet ring designs are represented in various media in the Roman catacombs. The selection and similarity of some early Christian representations, despite vast geographical distances, has led scholars to consider various influences such as the use of pattern books or illustrated copies of the Old and New Testament, and in some cases monumental wall painting. One of the more popular early Christian figural representations was the Good Shepherd. Artists depicting Christ in this symbolic role were inspired by the contemporary representations of Hermes Criophorus, who embodied the attribute of philantropia. The iconographic parallels to this pagan god are represented throughout the Eastern and Western Christian world during the 2d and 3d

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centuries. However, the tradition of depicting a male figure carrying an animal around his shoulders derives from a Near Eastern figural representation. A bas relief dated to the mid–8th century b.c.e. was carved on an orthostat from the citadel gate of the north Syrian site of Zinjirli. One of the earliest representations in sculpture, found at Mari, has been dated to approximately 1000 b.c.e. The attributes connected with this powerful image throughout antiquity provided a basis for an even stronger continuity in the Christian context. The parable of Luke depicts Christ placing the lost sheep across his shoulders and carrying it back to rejoice with the community (Luke 15:4–6). However, it is the additional words of Christ through John that ante pacem Christians celebrated in their art. Christ would lay down his life for his sheep; he would give them everlasting life ( John 10:11, 15, 28). The depiction of the Good Shepherd provided a solution for the visual representation of the death of Christ during the period before Constantine. It is the theme of resurrection and eternal life that resounds throughout ante pacem figural representation. The resurrection of Christ as narrated in the Gospels was visually conceived through a depiction of the Evangelium or the Good News (Galate 1997: 16, 17; see fig. 121 above). The Gospels recount the role of Mary Magdalene and a small group of women as first witnesses to the empty tomb and first to proclaim the risen Christ, the pivotal belief of Christianity (Matt 28:11, 7–8; Mark 16:1, 7, 9; Luke 24:1, 10; John 20:1–2, 17–18). Aside from the role of the Virgin Mary, this was the most distinctive and prominent role of women in the New Testament. Artists chose to illustrate the first witness proclaiming the risen Christ to the apostles. In its most popular and abbreviated composition, a standing, frontal woman, generally veiled, extends her arms with outstretched hands. Her posture and gesture imitates Christ’s on the cross. The Christian greeting before the Peace of the Church seems to have been this signal/code gesture, which identified one as a member of the faith (Galate 1997: 108–9). Archaeologists did not connect this figure to scriptural illustration but termed her an “orant” or praying figure, suggesting that she was allegorical and represented the deceased soul or the church itself. In the catacombs early Christians observed the death and resurrection of Christ through the Good Shepherd and Evangelium compositions, both depicted in all media, next to or in close proximity to each other and the deceased (fig. 121). On a primary level, they illustrated New Testament events. Yet Christians were also moved to consider two fundamental precepts of their own faith: Christ died for them, and through his resurrection they also would be delivered. More compelling is that this bold pairing of a shepherd, the first to witness the birth of Christ (Luke 2:8-12) and a woman, first to acclaim his resurrection, ruptured the most traditional aspect of Jewish law, according to which, neither shepherds nor women were allowed to be a witness in the Jewish court of law (Mishna III.74, 75). In a nonfunerary setting, a painting of the Good Shepherd appears in the Dura baptistery along with another composition illustrating the women at the tomb.

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Fig. 122. Drawing of Painted Images in Jebel el Jôfeh tomb. In F. Zagadine, “Jebel el Jôfeh: une tombe byzantine peinte,” Syria 62 (1985) 153, fig. 9 after C. Vibert-Guique.

The latter represents an Eastern variation of the resurrection illustration. Many late examples, including a 6th-century pyxis possibly from Antioch, are representative of the theme of the women at the empty tomb of the resurrected Christ. Three of the five women are depicted in the sign of the cross gesture. Later, when the visual representation of the death of Christ would admit a cross, it was paired with the scene of the women at the tomb in a 6th-century ampulla from Palestine. Miracle scenes from the Old and New Testaments and the lives of the martyrs added to the resounding theme of a personal faith in the joy of resurrection and the sharing in paradise. During this period, similar thinking is evidenced in contemporary Judaism and in some of the pagan philosophers. The majority of narrative depictions in the catacombs are taken from the Old Testament. Scholars have cited the influence of Jewish funerary prayers, although early Christians understood events in the Old Testament to prefigure events in the New Testament. In 1981, the first painted Christian tomb in Jordan was excavated in the hills of Jebel el-Jofeh and dated to the 8th century (fig. 122). The central image in the frieze above the arcosolium is a cross surrounded by a wreath. Flanking it on either side are laden grape vines. On the right wall, Greek letters identify the figure of Christ, his hands outstretched over another figure. On the left wall is another depiction of Christ near a figure obliterated by humidity but identified by the name “Lazarus” in Greek above it. The encircling of a cross with a wreath, influenced by the victory wreaths in Roman triumphal art, reminded Christians of the victory of Christ over death. The grape vine, however, was an image used throughout Judaism both in text and in the visual arts; it was the vine of Yahweh, sculpted on the sanctuary gate of the

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Temple in Jerusalem (Isa 5:1–7). Josephus described it as carved in gold with grape bunches the size of a man (The Jewish Wars 6). It was carved on sarcophagi and found painted on the walls of a 1st-century Jewish tomb in Jericho. In the pagan world it was connected to the cult of Dionysus. Early Christians assimilating this image rendered it synonymous with Christ. He was the true vine, the true Israel ( John 15:1–7). This complex symbol also had sacramental connections with baptism and the eucharist. The graphic quality of the vine rendered it a particularly popular motif in hundreds of mosaic floors in Christian churches, chapels, and monasteries dating to the 5th and 6th centuries throughout Syria and Palestine. In most cases the grape vine flowed from an amphora forming circular medallions in which animals, birds, or other objects were represented. Christians understood the symbolism inherent in the grape vine, yet the vine motif in Near Eastern art cannot be isolated from connections to the tree of life, a figural theme predating Christianity by a millennium. One of the most popular Old Testament narratives during the ante pacem period was the story of Jonah. It was rendered in all major media. Jonah prefigured the resurrection of Christ. After three days he was delivered from the belly of the sea monster, just as after three days Christ would rise from the dead (Matt 12:40). Many times artists depicted a naked Jonah at rest, a reminder to early Christians of the mercy of God and their own eternal rest in paradise. A 6th-century Near Eastern pyxis depicts the biblical narrative and includes the scene of Jonah resting under a gourd vine. Viewing the latter, followers of Christ rose from the simple recounting of a story to a spiritual level, replete with the tenets of their faith. After the Peace of the Church, the story of Lazarus assumed even greater visual importance throughout the Christian world (see fig. 117). It was represented in biblical cycles painted on church walls. It was carved on sarcophagi and was depicted on liturgical objects and on loca sancta. The calling forth of Lazarus, his deliverance by Christ, was understood to prefigure every Christian of faith. An unusual combination of the prefiguration themes appears on a 5thcentury Roman ivory diptych illustrating the women at the tomb (Weitzmann 1979: 504). Two kneeling women, their hands outstretched in proclamation, gaze on an angel seated before them. In back are the doors of Christ’s tomb, the right one slightly ajar. They are inset with carved panels, one of which depicts the raising of Lazarus. The symbolism inherent in the figure of the first witness and its sister scene, the women at the tomb, was twofold. It first affirmed Christ’s resurrection and then that of His followers. The inclusion of the Lazarus story seems to emphasize the transition made by the early Christian from the belief in the resurrection of Christ to their own deliverance assured through the omnipotence of the Son of God. After 313 c.e., pilgrimages to the Holy Land and its sanctuaries became widespread. Representations at these holy sites and on mementos carried home by pilgrims enriched the visual imagery associated with traditional Christian themes. Elements associated with loca sancta have been introduced in compositions geographically far removed.

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Interpretation of early Christian art admits levels that go beyond the visual representation. Narratives include elements not mentioned in the text. A cycle may present an overall theme, yet scenes within it indicate another reason for their presence. The 2d-century philosopher Origen suggested that scripture was to be read in a threefold manner corresponding to the body, soul, and spirit of man (De Prin. 4.1.11). Perhaps the early community of faith had similar thoughts when gazing at the art that decorated their tombs and ecclesiastical edifices. The representation of divinely inspired biblical narratives may have recalled the spiritual precepts of their new faith strengthened by its liturgy and ritual. Or perhaps they were reminded of a moral application learned through catechetical lessons, letters, and commentaries by the early church fathers. The interpretive challenges lie in discerning these levels and their specific importance to a congregation and hierarchy in a particular location and at a specific point in time.

Bibliography Avi-Yonah, M. 1981 Art in Ancient Palestine. Jerusalem: Magnes. Danielou, J. 1964 Primitive Christian Symbols. Baltimore: Helicon. Finney, P. C. 1994 The Invisible God. New York: Oxford University Press. Galate, L. S. 1997 “Evangelium”: An Iconographical Investigation of an Ante Pacem Image. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan. Jensen, R. M. 2000 Understanding Early Christian Art. London: Routledge. Lowrie, W. 1969 Art in the Early Church. New York: Norton. Matthews, T. F. 1999 The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Murray, C. 1977 Art and the Early Church. Journal of Theological Studies 2/28: 303– 45. Tristan, F. 1996 Les premières images chrétiennes. Paris: Fayard. Weitzmann, K. (ed.) 1979 Age of Spirituality. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Linda Sue Galate

Early Christian Churches in Israel To date the remains of more than 350 churches have been discovered in Israel. The first monograph on this topic, pertaining also to churches on the other side of the River Jordan, was published over 60 years ago by J. W. Crowfoot (1941). The next effort at a synthesis was published 30 years later by B. Bagatti (1971). The essential information up to the early 1980s was collected by A. Ovadiah (1970), with three supplements published together with C. G. de Silva (1981, 1982, and 1984). Finds of more recent years were published by Bottini, Di Segni, and Alliata (1990); and by Y. Tsafrir (1993, including a map). Of particular interest are the studies on the Negev churches by Renate Rosenthal (1982), A. Negev (1974; 1989), and S. Margalit (1987); and on the western Galilee churches by M. Aviam (1990). Several final reports on the excavations of the churches of Shavei Zion, Nahariya, Tabgha (Heptapegon), Beth-Yerah, Kursi, Mamshit (Mampsis), Avdat, Nessana, Re˙ovot in the Negev, Óorvat Berachot, and several churches in Jerusalem and its vicinity, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, enable us to evaluate the results of the excavations in a more critical manner and to base the conclusions on firmer grounds. The comprehensive study of the Judean Desert monasteries (Hirschfeld 1992) gave a wealth of information about the monastic churches. The most up-to-date map and bibliographical references are to be found in Tsafrir, Di Segni, and Green (1994). The epigraphical material was collected, indexed, and analyzed by Meimaris (1986) and studied more critically recently by Di Segni (1997), pertaining to churches with dated inscriptions. A comprehensive study of the baptismal installations was undertaken by Ben Peshat (1989). The emperor Constantine, encouraged by his mother, Helena, was the first to erect churches in the Holy Land. Earlier Christians did not have a prayer house with distinctive architectural features. Their place of assembly was a domus ecclesiae—a domestic building that was adjusted to serve the religious, administrative, and charitable needs of the congregation. The best example of such an early Christian community house, dated to the mid–3d century c.e., was found at Dura-Europos—a small town of a Hellenized community on the Euphrates, in Syria. The complex, originally a typical house, comprised three halls and an open exedra surrounding a central courtyard. The main hall, rectangular in shape, served as a place of assembly for prayers and for the communal meal—the agape. Another hall, smaller in size, served as a baptistry. It had a tub-like pond, set against the wall under an arched canopy. The mural in the lunette above the pond depicted Christ as the Good Shepherd; other murals in the hall depicted scenes from the life of Christ. The painted ceiling resembled a dark blue, starry sky. The third room, between these two, served perhaps for the instruction of catechumens. A staircase led to the second story, where other rooms and offices of this community center were located. All of the halls and rooms were roofed with

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wooden beams. V. Corbo excavated another domus ecclesiae in Capernaum, on the traditional site of the house of St. Peter. The complex, surrounded by a precinct wall and dated to the 4th century c.e., comprised of a main hall, the roof of which was supported by a single transversal arch. The hall was surrounded by courtyards and several service rooms. The erection of churches in the Holy Land was a major domain of imperial enterprise. Four churches were erected by Constantine: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Church of Nativity at Bethlehem, the Eleona Church on the Mount of Olives, and the church of Abraham’s Oak at Mamre. Other emperors and empresses who engaged in ecclesiastical building in Israel (Armstrong 1967) were Eudoxia (Gaza, on the site of the previous temple of Marnas—the principal deity of Gaza), Eudocia (St. Stephen in Jerusalem and other churches), Zenon (Mt. Gerizim, on the site of a Samaritan synagogue), Anastasius (St. John the Baptist near the Jordan, on the site of the baptism of Christ), and Justinian (Church of the Nativity, the Nea in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Holy Bush in Sinai). But most churches were erected by wealthy patrons, both male and female; bishops and other members of the clergy; pilgrims; or members of the congregation itself; and leading townsmen and monks, as we learn from the dedicatory inscriptions (Meimaris 1986). Even villages and small towns, such as the towns in the Negev, had several churches. Besides memorial churches (memoria), erected over sacred sites (loca sancta), associated with events mentioned in the New and Old Testaments, and martyrs’ shrines (martyria) that were major sites of pilgrimage, most churches were parish churches, supplying religious services for the local congregations. Monastic churches constitute a separate group. The larger monasteries held several churches within their compounds. The Constantinian Eleona Church was a quite simple basilical hall (see below) with an apse on its eastern side. The state of preservation of the Constantinian basilica at Mamre is quite poor. In the Nativity Church an octagonal structure above the Nativity Cave was attached on the eastern side of the basilica. A circular opening in the floor, surrounded by an ambulatorium, enabled pilgrims to see and admire the underlying cave. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was a moresophisticated complex, comprising a huge basilica (called the Martyrion of Constantine) and to its west a concentric structure (called Anastasis—‘resurrection’ in Greek), built over the sepulchre of Christ. The Martyrion was oriented to the west, and its facade faced a forecourt (atrium) to its east. Another courtyard, with porticoes on three wings (east, north, and south), separated the Martyrion and the Anastasis. The basilical church was the most prevalent type throughout the Christian world. Yet there are significant differences in the liturgical disposition in the various parts of the Christian world. The Christian basilica was derived from Roman architecture—be it the civic forum basilica, the palace basilica, or the assembly halls of some eastern cults, including the Jewish synagogue. While there is no doubt that the religious policy of Constantine and his building projects in Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople (demonstrating a large diversity among

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themselves) gave a great impetus to the profusion of early Christian architecture and the adoption of the basilica as the principal type of Christian church, one should bear in mind that this type was adopted in the east prior to its conquest by Constantine in 324 c.e. The cathedral of Paulinus, Bishop of Tyre, consecrated in 316/317 and described in detail by Eusebius of Caesarea, was a huge basilica facing east, with its apse to the west. Similarly, the 3d-century Jewish synagogues were of basilical type, indicating that the Jews borrowed and adapted the Roman basilica to serve as their house of prayer already before Constantine. It seems that this was also the case with the Christians, at least in Phoenicia and Palestine. The early Christian basilica in the Holy Land was an elongated structure, oriented east–west, with a gabled roof of tiles supported by a wooden construction. This roofing was light enough to be supported by columns, arranged in two rows of trabeated colonnades, or more elegant arcades, that divided the internal space into a central lofty nave flanked by two narrower aisles of lower elevation. In rare cases (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity) there were four rows of columns and two aisles on either side of the nave. Light came in through windows set in the upper parts of the nave walls and in the apse, and through the doorways when open; light was thus another means to emphasize the east–west axiality of the internal space. Three doors on the west led in—the central and larger one to the nave, and the lateral portals to the aisles. The narthex, on the west, generally comprising the eastern wing of a forecourt (atrium), surrounded by porticoes, and since the mid–5th century shaped like a closed, or partially open, lateral hall, seemingly was the place for the catechumens. A cistern was located under the atrium, with its opening in the center. According to the Testamentum Domini (a mid–5th-century collection of Early Christian ecclesiastical regulations preserved in Syriac), other structures located in and around the atrium of an episcopal church were: the dwelling of the bishop (episcopos), dwellings for the clergy (priests and deacons), and dwellings for widows who served in the church. A hostelry was recommended as well. The apse, on the eastern end of the nave, was flanked by spaces of different shape, located at the end of the aisles. These lateral spaces were either rectilinear or apsidal, but in some rare cases the aisles ended in a plain wall, or there were only openings (Kh. el-Beiyudet; St. Theodre in Gerasa; the northern church in Avdat). The apse could protrude outside or be inscribed. The triapsidal type was popular in the Negev. In the northern part of the country it is encountered in Beth-Yerah (Kh. Karak), Tiberias, and Nahariya. The lateral, closed rooms served as sacristies (pastophoria in the Apostolic Constitution—an early Christian collection of ecclesiastical regulations from ca. 400 c.e.), where the elements of the Eucharist were kept. According to the Testamentum Domini, one of these rooms served as an office where the names of the faithful who donated offerings to the church, or the names on whose behalf offerings were donated, were written down by the clergy. These names were to be commemorated in the liturgy; hence the term commemoratorium for this room. One of the lateral rooms could also serve as a baptistry (see below). In the Negev (and in Petra, the capital of the province of

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Palaestina Tertia), lateral apses took the place of the lateral rooms after the second half of the 5th century c.e. The lateral apses were dedicated to the cult of martyrs (see below). This architectural transformation in the layout of the sanctuary reflects a liturgical change in the celebration of the Eucharist, as well as an increased popularity of the cult of relics. The synthronon, a construction of two to three rows of benches arranged in a semicircle, with the Bishop’s throne slightly elevated above the upper row, was located in the apse along its semicircular wall. The bema, a rectangular area surrounded on the north, west, and south by a chancel screen approximately three feet high, extended in front of the apse to one or two intercolumnation intervals within the nave. Its floor had the same elevation as the floor of the apse, or it was one step lower, but it was two or three steps higher then the floor of the nave. Entrance to the sanctuary—the apse, bema and lateral spaces—was for the clergy alone. A narrow central opening in the western chancel screen permitted access from the nave. Sometimes, if it was required by the liturgy, there were also lateral openings in the chancel screen, leading to the aisles. The central entrance was sometimes emphasized by a pair of screen colonnets that were higher then the regular screen posts. The altar, in a shape of a four-legged table, or a masonry box covered by an altar plate, was located in the bema, under a canopy of four columns (ciborium). An elevated pulpit (ambo) projected into the nave from near the northwestern corner of the bema. Depressions in the floor of the bema near the chancel screen suggest the existence of one or two secondary tables that served for the placement of the books—the Old and New Testaments. It seems that the bema furnishings—altar, ciborium, secondary tables, ambo, and chancel screen—were in many churches first made of wood, which was later replaced by fixed furniture made of local stone or imported marble. But stone and marble furniture had already been common since the 4th century c.e. It was carved and engraved by local artists, or (in case of the marble pieces) imported from several production centers along the Mediterranean. The same pertains to the columns’ capitals. Limestone floors were common in the churches of the Negev, but mosaic floors were much more prevalent throughout the country, depicting a large variety of patterns—geometric, floral, and animated. Opus-sectile floors, made of pieces of colorful stone and marble arranged in geometric and even more sophisticated patterns, and pavements of marble plates, were prevalent as well. The walls were plastered, or revetted by marble plates. The upper portions, especially in the apses, were adorned by frescoes and delicate wall mosaics. The best preserved example is in the Justinianic Church of the Holy Bush in St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, depicting the Transfiguration of Christ in an artistic style reflecting the imperial art of Constantinople. The frescoes or wall mosaics had didactic purpose, not just aesthetic. The ceiling might have been of coffers, or open, so that the wooden construction of the roof could be seen. In the most elaborate churches (Holy Sepulchre), the ceiling coffers were gilded. Galleries above the aisles were quite rare, yet they were not restricted to the big cities. Besides being attested in the detailed description of the Holy Sepulchre

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Church by Eusebius, they also occurred in some village and town churches, as in the southern and northern churches at Shivta and in Óorvat Beer Shema in the Negev; in the northern and central churches at Herodion in the central part of the country; and Óorvat Hesheq in the Upper Galilee. They might have served for the prayer of the women and the catechumens. But women usually occupied one of the aisles, and men the second aisle; the genders were not mixed during the prayer. The literary sources (Didascalia; Apostolic Constitutions) also indicate that not only the clergy, but the laity as well, had their seats in the church. In some cases benches were found along the walls (Avdat, St. Theodore church; Gerasa, the Cathedral; Kh. el-Beiyudat). But there are no finds to suggest parallel rows of seats facing east in the prayer hall. The basilica was flanked by chapels and annexes of various shapes and functions—sacristies, martyria, baptistry, stores, etc. Quite common is a chapel with an apsidal or a rectilinear sanctuary on the northern or southern side of the basilica, which according to the Testamentum Domini served for the presentation of offerings by the faithful to the deacons (hence, the reference to this chapel as diakonikon in the Testamentum Domini, although the term prothesis chapel, used by some scholars, is an appropriate term as well) and for the display of these gifts, including gifts for the eucharist. This chapel served as a starting point of the Great Entrance—a procession for the transfer of gifts to the main altar. This procession started only after the dismissal of the catechumens from the basilica and the conclusion of the first part of the rite (the Liturgy of the Word), at which their attendance had been permitted. Architecturally, besides the basilical type (on which the majority of the churches were based); there were three other church types: chapels, churches with a central plan (either circular or octagonal), and churches with a cruciform plan. Besides the diakonikon or prothesis chapels mentioned above, which were annexed to a basilica, and besides baptismal chapels, or martyria (to be discussed below), the monastic chapels constitute a distinct group (Hirschfeld 1992: 112-30) comprising a single apsidal hall annexed on one side by a second hall or room called a diakonikon, which served as a sacristy and presumably also as a prothesis chapel in the procession of the Great Entrance. Another type of monastic church was the cave church. The architectural concept of a church with a central plan was derived, with adaptations, from Roman prototypes of funerary architecture or palatial reception halls. Having a circular ambulatory around the center, generally although not always the location of a sacred object, these churches also had a sanctuary with an apse oriented to the east. Churches of this type were thus not necessarily martyria (consecrating sacred relics), or memoria (consecrating a sacred site); they could serve as a parish church as well. To this group belong, besides the octagon of the Church of the Nativity, the octagonal churches of the Cathisma (ca. 456 c.e.), over the rock on which St. Mary sat to repose on her route to Bethlehem; the Mt. Gerizim Church (484 c.e.); the church on the site of St. Peter’s house at Capernaum (mid–5th century); the church overlooking the harbor of Caesarea

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(ca. 500 c.e.), perhaps the Martyrion of St. Procopius mentioned in the literary sources. Of circular shape were the church on top of the ancient mound of Bethshan (Scythopolis), and the Ascension Church on the Mt. of Olives. The Church of the Resurrection, circular with three apses on the inside and polygonal on the outside, also belongs to this group. Of extraordinary shape—a circle with four diagonal niches inscribed in a square—is the Church of St. John the Baptist in Gerasa. Two churches at Bostra, in Syria, also belong to this group. The cruciform church type—a Byzantine innovation first introduced by Constantine in his Church of the Apostles in Constantinople, where he was interred—is quite rare. The Church of Jacob’s Well near Shechem, St. Mary Tomb in Jerusalem, and presumably the church built by the Empress Eudoxia in Gaza belong to this group. The Church of the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs in Gerasa is a cross inscribed in a rectangle. A transept basilica also has a cruciform central space. Such is the Justinianic phase of the Church of the Nativity, where the Constantinian octagon was replaced by a trefoil sanctuary comprising a north–south transept terminating in two apses with a third apse to the east. The trefoil sanctuary was also recognized on the outside. Another transept basilica is the Church of Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha, on the Sea of Galilee. The cult of relics of martyrs and saints was another rite that took place in the church besides the daily prayers and the celebration of the Eucharist. Relics were generally held in a special stone or marble container, shaped like a tiny sarcophagus—a reliquiarium. Generally the relics were placed under the main altar, but more than one saint could be venerated in a single church, and then one or both of the lateral rooms or apses, flanking the central apse, could have been used for this purpose. This is indicated by such finds as in the Mamshit eastern church and in other churches of the Negev, and in Óorvat Hesheq in Upper Galilee (Negev 1974; 1989; Aviam 1990). In the lateral spaces the reliquiarium was put under an altar or in an elevated niche. In major sites of pilgrimage, and if the resources permitted, an underground crypt was constructed under the bema, with two staircases leading down from the aisles. Such was the case in the rural church at Óorvat Berachot to the north of Hebron (Tsafrir and Hirschfeld 1979) and in the Northern Church at Re˙ovot-in-the Negev (Tsafrir et al. 1988). The baptismal rite was another function associated with the church. Ben Pechat (1989) has recorded 53 baptismal installations in 42 sites. The baptisteries were always attached as a chapel or a room annexed to the body of the church. They were simple in shape, not independent buildings of octagonal or cruciform plan and sophisticated architecture. The font is generally located near the eastern end of the baptistry. It can be either masonry built, or monolithic, either partially sunk into the floor, or standing on it. Nine basic types were defined, according to the shape of the font’s interior rim: rectangular, hexagonal, semicircle, cruciform, mushroom-like, trefoil, circular, oval, or quatrefoil. The most prominent types are the quatrefoil (21 fonts), mostly monolithic, with four variants; and the cruciform (10 fonts), mostly masonry built, with three variants.

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Burial inside the church, either in cist tombs under the floor or in underground vaulted burial chambers, was not rare, but burial was more often extra-mural.

Bibliography Armstrong, G. T. 1967 Imperial Church Building in the Holy Land in the Fourth Century. Biblical Archaeologist 30: 90–102. Aviam, M. 1990 Horvat Hesheq: A Unique Church in Upper Galilee—Preliminary Report. Pp. 351–78 in Christian Archaeology in the Holy Land, ed. G. C. Bottini, L. Di Segni, and A. E. Alliata. Jerusalem: Franciscan. Bagatti, B. 1971 The Church from the Gentiles in Palestine: History and Archaeology. Jerusalem: Franciscan. Ben Pechat, M. 1989 The Paleochristian Baptismal Fonts in the Holy Land: Formal and Functional Study. Liber Annuus 39: 165–88; pls. 27–34. Bottini, G. C.; Di Segni, Leah; and Alliata E. 1990 Christian Archaeology in the Holy Land—New Discoveries: Essays in Honour of Virgilio C. Corbo. Jerusalem: Franciscan. Crowfoot, J. W. 1941 Early Churches in Palestine. London: Oxford University Press. Di Segni, L. 1997 Dated Greek Inscriptions from Palestine from the Roman and Byzantine Periods. Ph.D. Dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Fiema, Z. T., et al. 2001 The Petra Church. Amman: The American Center of Oriental Research. Forsyth, G. H., and Weitzmann, K. 1970 The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Church and Fortress of Justinian. Vol. 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Hirschfeld, Y. 1992 The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period. New Haven: Yale University Press. Krautheimer, R. 1975 Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. Baltimore: Penguin. Margalit, Sh. 1987 The North Church of Shivta: The Discovery of the First Church. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 119: 106–21. Meimaris, Y. E. 1986 Sacred Names, Saints, Martyrs and Church Officials in the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Pertaining to the Christian Church of Palestine. Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity. Negev, A. 1974 The Churches of the Central Negev: An Archaeological Survey. Révue Biblique 81: 400– 422. 1989 The Cathedral of Elusa and the New Typology and Chronology of the Byzantine Churches in the Negev. Liber Annuus 39: 129– 42; pls. 15–20. 1997 The Architecture of Oboda. Qedem 36. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Ovadiah, A. 1970 Corpus of Byzantine Churches in the Holy Land. Bonn: Peter Hanstein. Ovadiah, A., and de Silva, C. G. 1981–84 Supplement to the Corpus of Churches in the Holy Land. Levant 13: 200–261; 14: 122–70; 16: 129–65. Rosenthal-Heginbottom, R. 1982 Die Kirchen von Sobota und Dreiapsen-Kirchen des Nahenostens. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Tsafrir Y., and Hirschfeld, Y. 1979 The Church and Mosaics at Horvat Berachot, Israel. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33: 293–323. Tsafrir, Y., et al. 1988 Excavations at Rehovot-in-the-Negev, Vol. I: The Northern Church. Qedem 25. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Tsafrir, Y. (ed.) 1993 Ancient Churches Revealed. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Tsafrir Y.; Di Segni, L.; and Green, J. 1994 Tabula Imperii Romanum: Judaea/Palaestina. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Tzaferis, V. 1983 The Excavations of Kursi–Gergesa. ºAtiqot 16. Jerusalem: Department of Antiquities and Museum.

Joseph Patrich