Archaeology of Ancient Israel Research Papers (original) (raw)

A new analysis of the cult places in Palestine and Transjordan of the first millennium B.C. has been performed despite the many existing studies on the history and archaeology of Iron Age Palestine and Transjordan and on the religion of this period. This research was carried out in attempt to identify the main architectural development trends (it is difficult to say typologies) of Iron Age sacred architecture based on the documentation and analysis of all the cult places brought to light in the Southern Levant.
According to the Old Testament, the Israelites settled in Palestine during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-586 BC). They established the monotheistic cult of Yahweh and fought against their neighbours over territorial as well as cultural and religious issues. The Bible has been, and still is of great historical and political importance for the reconstruction of the roots of our civilisation, so much that even today biblical texts are considered historical documentation. The main issue is to verify the historicity of the events described by the Bible and to build, if possible, a history of Iron Age Palestine and Transjordan based on archaeological documentation independent from biblical tradition. The aim of this work is to be instrumental in developing a historical analysis of this subject and attempt to provide an objective archaeological documentation of the Iron Age cult places of Palestine and Transjordan.
The first part of the book illustrates the archaeological evidence. Data are arranged site by site, along with a brief history of the excavations. It also reports different interpretations by archaeologists of the material discovered based on re-examination of the documentation of past excavations, and, in some cases, contains additional remarks by the author. In this way, the available data and possible interpretations are kept apart, thus providing readers with a clear documentation and allowing them to choose the interpretative course they wish to pursue.
An initial difficulty encountered in this research is the inaccuracy of the data produced by the excavations. Archaeology is not an exact science, since human interpretation is always inevitably superimposed on documentation. Data provided by excavations of the first half of the 20th century are often confused in many respects, as there were no modern technologies of stratigraphic investigation and the current knowledge of the characteristics of pottery assemblage of every single period was not available. This documentation must be re-examined in the light of recent information, such as stratigraphic sequences obtained from new excavations at the same sites, or from comparison with recently discovered materials at other sites. Nonetheless, also data collected by recent archaeological researches can be distorted by the historical perspective of the archaeologists who dug and published the materials and structures that were brought to light.
The sites included in the analysis are grouped into four main geographical areas: Northern Palestine, Southern Palestine, the Southern Palestinian coast and Transjordan. It is inevitably an arbitrary subdivision, followed mainly to provide an initial idea of the geographical distribution of Iron Age cult places brought to light by archaeological excavations. No distinction was made between historical territorial areas, such as Philistia, Judah, Israel, Ammon, Moab and Edom, because these political organizations varied in extent considerably over the course of time and also rose at different times. Therefore, this approach prevented structures of a definite site phase from being attributed to a kingdom or a culture the site did not belong to, either because the kingdom or culture had not risen yet, or because its borders had shifted.
The documentation in the first part of the book is the outcome of a first important choice reached using criteria that help to identify what can be regarded as a cult place. The remains of Iron Age cult places in Palestine and Transjordan are in effect fairly poor, there being only few monumental structures whose architectonical and spatial plan, as well as use and function in the community, are clear. Diversely, there are many poorly preserved small buildings or simple installations whose sacred nature is much more difficult to define. For example some cult activities could share the same space used for other daily activities (such as in domestic sacella), thus producing difficult to interpret documentation. On this subject the teachings of Colin Renfrew have proven very useful to single out some elements of the archaeological context that can show the occurrence of sacred rituals. The presence of some of the indicators mentioned by Renfrew reveals a cult space even when it is clearly not a temple building that is easily identified by its architectonic plan and the materials collected inside. Other two elements that can help to identify a sacred place are the uninterrupted use of the same area for ritual purposes and the possible analogy of architectonic plan, characteristics and disposition of sacred furniture with other obvious cult structures. As M.D. Coogan observed, the religious sphere is in general conservative, so in multi-periodical sites the sacred area was possibly maintained on the same location for a long time, and cult structures followed traditional typologies.
The second part of the book tried to distinguish the presence of architectural and spatial typologies adopted in Iron Age cult places in Palestine and Transjordan, and hence to identify the common architectural traditions in the area. This level of research widened the reference geographical area and historical period and included some structures of Bronze Age sacred architecture (in particular buildings of Late Bronze Age) of Palestine and Transjordan, as well as some temples of the neighbouring lands connected with the Southern Levant during the Iron Age, i.e. Cyprus, Phoenicia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Egypt. This broadened horizon explained the origins of many characteristic elements of architectonic typologies documented in the area, whose development often did not strictly adhere to local customs but absorbed suggestions and accepted the architectonic and spatial traditions of neighbouring civilizations.
Many scholars have studied the sacred architecture of this period. In particular, Y. Shiloh’s analysis of the cult spaces of Palestine during the Iron Age stressed the presence of small cultic corners placed inside residential buildings as well as sacred structures like temples and sanctuaries, which, until then, had been regarded as almost the only examples of cult places existing in Iron Age Palestine. This consideration undermined the previous idea of a religion that was strictly organised within official public sacred areas and shed light on the presence of a variety of cult places with different functions and appearances.
The perspective proposed by A. Mazar paved the way to research on the comparison of architectonic traditions in the areas surrounding Palestine, in particular Cyprus and Syria. His conclusions sparked off a lively debate and are still a starting-point for future research.
J.S. Holladay’s analysis of regions ruled by the kingdoms of Judah and Israel during the Iron Age II provides many useful elements for understanding the complexity of cult forms and their architectonic expressions. The distinction between domestic and corporate cult places is particularly interesting and, within the latter, between sacred areas devoted to an established worship and those devoted to a “nonconformist” worship. The identification of a plurality of sacred spaces helped to reconstruct a more complex and complete picture of peoples’ religious life than the one offered by biblical accounts.
The third and last part of the book reviews the conclusions made in the previous two sections within a wider historical perspective, analysing the distribution of different cult place typologies during the various historical phases of the Iron Age. On one hand, the archaeological data gathered so far provide important data on the reconstruction of the religion, society and culture of the areas studied, while, on the other, the historical events themselves help to confirm the value of some interpretative hypothesis. Why particular typologies of cult place arose and what their function was in the societies of Palestine and Transjordan during the Iron Age, or why and how architectonic traditions and suggestions from other regions of the Near East and Mediterranean were adopted, can only be understood within the framework of a wider historical context. The extraordinary variety of cult spaces documented in this research seems to become readable and to make sense if the particular historical, social and political situation of the area is taken into account. The pattern of sacred architecture during the Iron Age appears to be coherent with the division of the Palestine-Transjordan region during this period into many political and cultural “niches” that were nevertheless open to suggestions coming from a wide international scenario (Egypt, Cyprus, Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria). There was neither a common cultural tradition in the region nor was there a dominant strong power, and this hindered the development of a coherent and univocal architectonic language, a tradition. And, the various “niches” of the area often adopted architectonic solutions that had been conceived by the neighbouring civilisations, i.e. in the coastal plain of Palestine, where elements of Cypriote architecture were often accepted, in Judah, where the Solomon temple followed a well established North Syrian tradition and some Phoenician inspirations, and in other areas of Palestine and Transjordan that were influenced by neo-Assyrian architecture.
This research identified some characteristic features of the whole area. In the first place, the articulation of populations’ religious life on several levels is evident, as previously mentioned by Holladay. The religious experience was not limited to participation in public official ceremonies, nor to private worship in the houses, but also took place in different cult spaces spread throughout the settlements, for example in quarter-sanctuaries or cult installations placed in public squares or next to fortified gates, or also in extra-urban sanctuaries. Secondly, it was possible to recognize the constant cohabitation of official worship and “Nonconformist” religion: the former generally took place in temples built by government institutions, while the latter was performed in simpler cult structures which often were less codified in their architectonic and spatial plan. Lastly, another feature shared by the numerous cultures documented in Palestine and Transjordan during the Iron Age was the persistence of a polytheistic religion, only partly stemmed by the emergence of some national gods, like Yahweh in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, Milkom in Ammon, Kemosh in Moab and Qos in Edom. A strict monotheistic doctrine developed mainly in Judah and Israel, yet it did not manage to wipe out the other popular cults.
However, local originality and a new architectonic language can only be found in unofficial cult structures, in smaller temples, and in extra-urban and regional sanctuaries. These include the Iron Age temple of Tell ‘Arad, and the Hellenistic and Persian temples of Lakish and Beersheba based on the “Four-Room House” plan typical of Iron Age Palestine, the road-sanctuaries of Ḥorvat Qitmit and ‘Ain Ḥazeva and other extra-urban sanctuaries which followed a functional architectonic plan designed to delimitate a sacred area suitable for corporate rituals and to receive the offerings of travellers journeying along the trade roads.