Early Iron Age Kinneret: An Urban Center at the Periphery (original) (raw)

Kleiman, A. 2022. Beyond Israel and Aram. The Archaeology and History of Iron Age Communities in the Central Levant (ORA 49). Tübingen.

In this study, Assaf Kleiman discusses the settlement history and material culture of complex communities that flourished in the shadow of Israel and Aram-Damascus. A detailed examination of the finds from the Lebanese Beqaa, through the Sea of Galilee, to the Irbid Plateau, offers an exceptional portrayal of the developments experienced by these communities, before and after the emergence of the territorial kingdoms; these advances include the rise and fall of local polities, the adoption and rejection of certain cultural traits, and even the background for the dissemination of writing. The study provides, therefore, a new and exciting way to look at the political relations and cultural exchange between the indigenous communities and the elites that ruled over them. Rather than interpreting the local populations simply as "Israelites" or "Aramaeans," the archaeological record reveals their diversity and highlights the discrete historical trajectories they followed from the 12th to 8th centuries BCE. See details in: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/book/beyond-israel-and-aram-9783161615436?no\_cache=1

A Village from the Israelite Settlement: The Iron Age Remains at Khirbet el-Maqatir (NEASB 65 (2020): 25-42)

Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin, 2020

Recently concluded excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir north of Jerusalem revealed, in part, remains of an agricultural village dating mostly to Iron Age I, during the time of Judges. Although the majority of the village was destroyed by later building at the site, the extant remains reveal much about another of the several hundred known settlement sites established in early Iron Age I in Israel’s central highlands. The Iron Age remains at KeM reflect the general characteristics of these villages, with one exception. For reasons that are not clear, the few extant homes are markedly simpler in design and much smaller than those in nearby contemporary sites at et-Tell, Beitin, Khirbet Raddana, and the slightly later Khirbet ed-Dawwara. This article will summarize KeM’s Iron Age architectural remains, pottery, small finds, and fauna, and compare them with those of other relevant sites.

Finkelstein, I. and Gophna, R. 1993. Settlement, Demographic and Economic Patterns in the Highlands of Palestine in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Periods and the Beginning of Urbanism, BASOR 289: 1-22.

BASOR, 1993

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The central hill country of Palestine, from the Jezreel Valley in the north to the Beer-sheba Valley in the south, has been almost fully surveyed in the last two decades. The article summarizes the archaeological data on the sites and settlement patterns in the region in three phases of the fourth and third millennia B.C.E.-the Chalcolithic, the Early Bronze I, and the Early Bronze II-III-and compares them to the settlement patterns in the lowlands of the country. The highlands, which form the best-suited part of Palestine for horticulture-based economy, experienced a dramatic settlement and demographic growth in EB I. This wave of settlement was contemporaneous to the establishment of Egyptian trading communities in the southern coastal plain. The demographic expansion to the hill country was apparently stimulated by the growing demand for Palestinian horticulture products in Egypt. The intensification of agricultural specialization in the highlands and in other parts of the country played an important role in the urbanization process in the southern Levant, which also commenced at the end of EB I. 1 2 ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN AND RAM GOPHNA BASOR 289 settlement in the Early Bronze Age was the first of its kind in the history of occupation of the highlands, and as such it began the long and complex process of the "conquest" of that mountainous ecological frontier of the southern Levant for human exploitation. Synchronic and diachronic comparisons shed light on some of the fundamental mechanisms in the history of the southern Levant in the protohistoric periods. Especially important are the tantalizing questions of the beginning of large-scale fruit growing, the trade relations of the region, the urbanization of Canaan, and the possible emergence of political systems that embraced large territories.

Khirbet Qeiyafa – A View from Tel Kinrot in the Eastern Lower Galilee

Silvia Schroer and Stefan Münger (eds). Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Shephelah (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 282). Fribourg (CH): Academic Press, 2017

This paper reviews selected aspects of the material culture unearthed at Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Shefelah through the lens of the Early Iron Age finds and findings from Tel Kinrot on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The Iron Age I in the Levant: A View from the North. Prologue

The Iron Age I in the Levant: A View from the North (Part 1), H. Charaf and L. Welton, eds. Archaeology and History in the Lebanon 50-51, p. 2-7, 2019

In the last two decades, an increasing amount of attention has been paid to the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age I in the Northern Levant, with a variety of articles, edited volumes, and workshops emphasizing aspects of both continuity and change in the political situation, social structure, and archaeological materials6. As in other regions, reconstructions of society in the Iron Age I in the Northern Levant have until recently, whether implicitly or explicitly, assumed that the influence and lasting effects of the “Sea Peoples” were similar in the north to their manifestations to the south. This can be at least partially attributed to fragmentary publication of many sites in the Northern Levant, but the underlying assumption has rarely been critically evaluated. This question, however, has significant implications for reconstructions of social processes affecting the whole Eastern Mediterranean during this pivotal period. In a series of four sessions organized at the American Schools of Oriental Research Annual Meetings between 2015 and 2017, we therefore aimed to bring together the researchers working at sites throughout the Northern Levant (Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey). This varied group of scholars combined to provide a perspective on the Late Bronze Age-Iron Age I transition from a more holistic northern viewpoint, and to examine more comprehensively sites from both the inland and coastal regions to discuss their relationships to each other and to other regions during the Iron Age I. We intended to focus on evidence from material culture and subsistence patterns as a means of addressing themes such as the continuity of Late Bronze Age traditions into the Iron Age I, the introduction of new influences (with or without possible newcomers) and settlement changes in the Iron Age I, and evidence for (or against) cultural regionalism during this transition.