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The Castle of Dor occupied a strategically important location on the Carmel Coast in Israel. This little-known castle has been identified by modern scholarship with Crusader Merle. A new excavation...

Black Wheel Made Ware (BWMW) is a distinguished pottery-type of the Intermediate Bronze Age (EB IV) in the Levant, a period dated to the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Considerable research...

Some scholars view Philistine settlement in the southern Levant as the dominant, colonizing imposition of a new urbanism following a period of small cities and structural realignment during the Lat...

This paper presents evidence relating to the Early Bronze Age combed vessels of southern Canaan, based mainly on data from Tel Yarmuth. Neglected in previous studies on ‘Combed Ware’, this evidence...

Two different types of monumental architecture arise as part of the urban landscape of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in the southern Levant: palaces and temples. While these architectural feats s...

This article describes and discusses a stamped sealing found at Middle Chalcolithic Tel Tsaf (5th millennium BCE). This is the earliest stamped sealing found in the southern Levant. The article des...

In the forward to this varied and stimulating collection of essays on the archaeology of the southern Levant from the Palaeolithic to the present day, Thomas Levy (p. xvii) recalls how his 1998 edi...

Recent excavations of Khirbet Kerak Ware contexts at the type site of Khirbet el-Kerak/Tel Bet Yerah and re-investigation of earlier finds from this site have permitted the technological and typolo...

Levantine adaptive water subsistence and exploitative water management studies concerning late pre- and proto-history have intensified since 2000. This comes in the wake of findings concerning dome...

A closely controlled radiocarbon sequence for the EB I–III, compiled over six seasons of excavations at Tel Bet Yerah, Israel, provides new information on the EB I–II and II–III transitions. These ...

This paper explores the late 3rd millennium BC goblet corpus from Tell Nebi Mend in the upper Orontes Valley, Syria, by comparing the form, size, petrographic and chemical composition of these drinking vessels. The available evidence suggests that Tell Nebi Mend belongs to its own distinct ceramic-culture province, which shares a greater affinity with the Beqa‘ Valley and the Black Wheel-made Ware of the southern Levant than with the traditional heartland of the Syrian ‘Caliciform’ culture.

Hazor, a key Iron Age II site in the southern Levant, was excavated by Yigael Yadin in the 1950s and subsequently by Amnon Ben-Tor. The Iron Age II stratigraphic sequence established proved very in...

We present detailed accounts of the archaeobotanical remains recovered from the excavations of the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site of Dhra‘, including metric and morphological analysis of barley grains. Comparisons with other early Epi-Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites indicate that the Dhra‘ grains are larger than recorded wild specimens, but fall at the lower range of domestic species, consistent with intermediary pre-domestication cultivation status. We contextualize these results in relation to associated evidence for food storage at Dhra‘, as well as the ecology of wild plants and early crops, and processing technologies across the Levant.

For decades, archaeologists and historians have debated explanations for the socio-cultural transitions that occurred throughout much of the Near East around the turn of the 2nd millennium BC. One culture-historical explanation that was popularized more than half a century ago is cultural diffusion via mass migration, particularly of the Amorites, an ambiguous population whom some consider responsible for initiating and spreading Middle Bronze Age culture. Although today’s scholarly consensus has, in the main, departed from such perspectives, the spectre of the Amorites persists. The present work scrutinizes the textual and material records upon which assumptions of Amorite ethnicity and shared material culture are based. Based on a longue duree contextual approach to the archaeological record, we test the problematic Amorite Hypothesis and underlying assumptions. We argue for mainly long-term indigenous trajectories toward social complexity from the perspective of the southern Levant.

The climate factor has become a focus of much historical and archaeological investigation, encouraged recently by improvements in palaeoclimatic techniques and interest in global climate change. This article examines correlations between climate and history in the Byzantine southern Levant (c. 4th–7th centuries AD). A proposed 5th century economic downturn attested to by numismatic trends is shown to coincide with palaeoclimatic evidence for drought. We suggest a climatic ultimate cause for the apparent economic decline. In addition, the relationship between the Dust Veil Index (DVI) and annual precipitation in Jerusalem suggests the likelihood of increased precipitation following the 536 AD volcanic dust veil. This prediction is borne out by high-resolution precipitation reconstructions from Soreq Cave speleothems and by sedimentation records of extreme flash flooding. These finds complement palaeoclimatic reconstructions from Europe showing a drop in precipitation after 536 AD. Drought in Europe and flo...

To the memory of Trude Dothan 1922–2016During trial excavations carried out in 2013 on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a seemingly isolated clay coffin with anthropoid lid, containing a...

Pebble stone installations are commonly found at various Early Bronze Age sites in the southern Levant. However, their function is often assumed or unknown. Thirteen circular pebble installations w...

The sealing of receptacles and storage facilities is one of the most conspicuous features related to early administration in the protohistoric Near East. It has been known and discussed for decades in the context of the northern Levant and Mesopotamia. Until recently, this phenomenon had not been attested in the southern Levant. However, in this paper the authors present an assemblage of sealings discovered in the excavations of Pre-Pottery Neolithic layers at Munhata, Pottery Neolithic deposits at Sha‘ar Hagolan and Middle Chalcolithic remains at Tel Tsaf, all located in the Beth-Shean Valley. We propose here, definitions of protohistoric sealings and their typology and function, and discuss the significance of this phenomenon for early administrative activity in the ancient Near East.

We report results of palynological investigation of a core of sediments extracted from the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. The core was sampled at high resolution for both palynological analysis (a sample was taken c. every 40 years) and radiocarbon dating. The article focuses on the Early Bronze and Intermediate Bronze Ages, c. 3600–1950 BC. The results enable reconstruction of the vegetation and thus climate in the lake's fluvial and alluvial catchment, which includes large parts of northern Israel and Lebanon and south-western Syria. The study sheds light on topics such as changes in olive cultivation through time and regions, processes of urbanization and collapse and settlement expansion and retraction in the arid zones.

This paper discusses a unique vessel of the Early Chalcolithic Wadi Rabah tradition of the 6th millennium BC, uncovered at Ein el-Jarba, Israel. Technical skill and iconographic language set this hole-mouth jar apart from other decorated vessels of the period. While the shape of the vessel fits well with the typology of the Wadi Rabah assemblage, its iconographic motifs can be traced back to ceramic traditions of northern Levant, and, we argue, even Caucasia and south-eastern Europe. The Ein el-Jarba hole-mouth jar adds a further layer to the still poorly understood trans-regional interaction between the Early Chalcolithic societies of the southern Levant and other cultural entities, indicating that its creator was familiar with the aesthetic traditions of distant communities.

The tabun is a clay oven that was common in rural areas in the southern Levant in the 20th century AD; linguistic and literary sources, ethnographic information and archaeological remains offer insights into the manufacture and use of this female-gendered baking installation. Despite its earliest attestation in the writings of medieval Palestinian geographer al-Muqadassi, the term tabun has been adopted by archaeologists to describe any ancient oven in excavation reports. This has both obscured our understanding of ancient ovens and resulted in the dissemination of erroneous information about ancient baking and cooking in popular works about daily life in biblical times.

Chambered gatehouses were monumental structures that played a central role in the city gate complex – the public forum – of towns in the Iron II southern Levant. The pier-and-chamber floor plan of such gatehouses was ubiquitous in the region for over four centuries and is well known to researchers, but the specific purpose of this architectural plan has received little scholarly attention. Most commonly, the pier-and-chamber design is thought to be military in nature, either adding further defensive barriers to the city's main entrance or creating space for the guards at the gate. Recently, the chambers have also been described as horse-hitching stations for war chariots. In this paper, I critique these suggestions and propose my own explanation for the chambered gatehouse's structure, based on the remains of excavated gatehouses and parallels in ancient near eastern architecture.

The deserts of the Southern Levant host a wealth of material remains of ancient mobile pastoralists. Rosen, in the work under review here, has been among the first to study the potential of this da...

Ain Mallaha-Eynan is one of the most prominent open-air sites of the Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian in the southern Levant. Most recently excavated by Francois Valla and Hamoudi Khalaily between 199...

The southern Levant has to be regarded as an important centre of early metallurgy; in this region, the rise of this technological innovation appears closely connected to intensified exchange networks of increasing significance. Recent fieldwork and research undertaken by the University of Jordan and the Orient Department of the German Archaeological Institute in the southern Wadi Araba near Aqaba (Jordan) has revealed new insights into the structure and progress of Late Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age economic processes in the southern Levant. The sites of Tell Hujayrat al-Ghuzlan and Tell al-Magass produced a rich material culture that attests to the existence of an important centre of early copper metallurgy in the region, thus proving that technological and social innovations in the late 5th, early 4th millennia bc were not limited to north-western regions of the southern Levant. Material culture analogies from contemporaneous sites in the wider region, going beyond metallurgical activities and lithic in...

As archaeologists, we are accustomed to the appearance of lots of new information that constantly requires us to adjust, or change, our understanding of the period, region or subject in which we are interested. But we are much less competent in upgrading or revising the frameworks within which we form those understandings. Here, I take terms like Neolithic, Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), that were formed as extensions into the southern Levant of Gordon Childe’s mid-20th-century culture-history methodology, and show that they are now outdated and unhelpful; indeed, I argue that they are obstacles to the formation of a general understanding of the complex processes in which we are interested. The culture-history framework was spatial as well as chronological; and too much of the discussion with which our learned journals are clogged derives from the pointless quest to continue the tradition of the spatial mapping of cultures. Here, I argue that we need (a) a simpl...

The camel and equid remains from a copper-smelting site — Site 30 at Timna in the southern Arabah excavated by Rothenberg in the 1970s and recently re-dated to the Iron I/Iron II — are analysed in relation to recently published data on the domestication of the dromedary and on the morphology of the various equid taxa present in the Middle East. It is concluded that camels and donkeys were employed in the distribution of copper from Timna and from mines in the eastern Arabah, prior to the large-scale utilization of camels in the incense trade between the Levant and southern Arabia in Iron II.

The social organization of regional settlement systems in the Southern Levant during the mid 4th millennium (EB IA) is addressed through a new interpretation of the spatial patterning of houses and agglomerations in the Syrian Leja. The implications of an explanation which treats residential mobility as a major factor in the spatial and social structure of settlements are first explored at the level of the Leja and subsequently extended to the Southern Levant.

The broad picture of the cultural and chronological succession from the Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic in the southern Levant is generally well understood. However, at a more detailed, local level, many questions remain unanswered. In this paper we examine the archaeological record of cultural developments in southern Jordan and the Negev. Focusing on a series of 14C dates from the early occupation of the PPNA site of WF16, we provide a critical review of dating evidence for the region. This review suggests that while the 14C chronology is ambiguous and problematic there is good evidence for a local historical development from the Harifian variant of the Natufian to the early PPNA, well to the south of any core Mediterranean woodland zone. This stresses the importance of considering developments at local scales of analysis, and that the Neolithic transition occurred within a framework of many interacting sub-regional provinces.

Female plaque figurines are the dominant type of anthropomorphic clay figurines in the Southern Levant of the Late Bronze Age. Unfortunately, there is no updated catalogue. The close study of fragments (the vast majority of the corpus) and of basic aspects (such as production modes, techniques, patterns of use/disposal) is at times overshadowed by the heated debate about the interpretation — the religious significance — of these figurines. We publish two newly excavated fragments of a unique type of plaque figurine, limited in distribution to northern Palestine. Unlike other plaque figurines, it is moulded on both sides. We present a detailed list and a study of the type and suggest that it is not double-moulded, as assumed by all former scholars, but produced by the double use of single moulds (hence, 'twice moulded'). Indeed, this does not tell us whether such figurines are goddess/es, mortal worshippers or something else. Trying to answer this question before the basic data is collected and ana...

The Early Bronze I (henceforth EB I) is a formative era in the Southern Levant. Modern research has thrown light on many aspects of this period: its long duration, its spatial and temporal subdivisions, its settlement pattern, its socio-economic characterizations, and the phenomenon of Egyptian colonization in southern Palestine (e.g. Stager 1992, 28–34; Joffe 1993, 39–62; Braun 1996). Among the prominent discoveries related to the later part of EB I (denoted here EB IB) are the monumental temple at Megiddo and the notion that certain sites were fortified. These features may require us to change the way in which we conceive of socio-political developments during the late 4th millennium BC, in particular in northern Palestine.In the present paper, we present two phases of an unusual EB IB building excavated at Tel Beth Shean. The stratigraphy, architecture and finds from this building raise intriguing questions concerning architectural traditions, function, economy, social complexity and regionalis...

This study deals with storage jars/amphorae from the Late Roman and Byzantine periods found in the salvage excavations at the site of Horbat Castra, located at the foot of the Carmel Ridge across from Kfar Samir. The excavation was carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority and directed by Z. Yeivin and G. Finkielsztejn. Numerous storage jars/amphorae were found at the site. Horbat Castra functioned mostly in the Byzantine period (4th–6th centuries AD) and seems to have been a main centre for wine and oil production, supplying its immediate neighbourhood, the general region and overseas destinations. Following the analysis of the amphorae types at Horbat Castra, an interesting quantitative picture emerges. From among the imported amphorae there are a number of the LRA 1, LRA 2 and LRA 10 types. There are also Tunisian amphorae. For the closed regional forms we have the Bag-shaped Jar, which is the most common jar in the region. The ceramics are then compared to the storage jars/amphorae found...

Trees yielding hard-shell fruits were part of the former landscape of the Southern Levant. Among these, oaks were one of the most prominent features of the Mediterranean woodlands, covering large parts of the landscape. Nevertheless, their possible importance as a food source in past economies of the Southern Levant has been underestimated in comparison to other plant resources. Furthermore, the appearance of stone pounding and grinding tools (frequently mentioned in ethnographic accounts as acorn processing tools) in the Epipalaeolithic and the Early Neolithic has been mostly seen as associated with cereal processing and the transition to agriculture based economies. This paper summarizes past work on oak and acorns and explores their role in the past economies of the Southern Levant. It suggests that processing methods and the spatial location of the preparation of acorns for consumption might explain why the contribution of this widespread, high-energy nutritional resource has been underestima...

A new examination of the results of the excavations by Moshe Dothan at the cemetery of Azor (1958, 1960) is presented, indicating a variability in burial practices in a relatively small area. The different types of burials are discussed as well as the finds from the graves, which date to the late Iron I and Iron IIA. The variability of burial customs is evaluated in relation to the quantity and character of burial goods, and possible cultural, ethnic and socio-economic differences within the population. While other evidence on late Iron I–IIA burial customs is quite limited in the southern Levant, similar phenomena appear in somewhat earlier cemeteries as at Tell es-Sa'idiyeh. Thus, at Azor a continuation of Late Bronze II burial customs may be combined with certain components of Philistine material culture.

This paper reports on a use-wear analysis of late Epipalaeolithic (Natufian) chipped stone artefacts from Ain Rahub, Salibiya I and Hayonim Cave, focussing on the study of geometric and non-geometric microliths. Using the synthetic approach of combined low- and high-power analysis a high variation in wear traces was observed, which correspond to a range of functions for different types of stone tools. Some of the findings expand on the detailed technological and typological studies that have been carried out on late Epipalaeolithic assemblages in the southern Levant in recent years, and add to an expanding picture of late Epipalaeolithic stone tool function.

Throughout much of its history, Early Bronze Age Bet Yerah (Khirbat al-Karak) was massively fortified. Using previously unpublished data, three superimposed fortification systems are described: the earliest (Fortification A), dated EB II (and possibly late EB I) is a massive mudbrick fortification including a paved direct-entry gateway and gate shrine; the latest (Fortification C), dated to late EB III, is an extraordinary stone and brick system furnished with numerous round and square towers. Between the two lies a rather poorly preserved, though by no means insubstantial, stone and mudbrick wall (Fortification B), also ascribed to EB III. Each of the fortification systems both reflected and reinforced important trends in the urbanization of Tel Bet Yerah and of the southern Levant throughout much of the third millennium BCE.

During much of the Early Bronze Age in the southern Levant, cylinder seals were used, albeit sparingly, for impressing pottery prior to firing. Actual seals are quite rare for this chrono-cultural milieu and most evidence derives from impressions on potsherds. This catalogue presents 14 additions to a growing corpus of glyptic related objects, seal impressions and bone imitations of cylinder seals from four sites in Israel. These objects are described in detail and their significance discussed with reference to the archaeological record and in a context of social development in the Early Bronze Age.

The article deals with the absolute chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant and the Aegean world. It first discusses the chronological gap between the conventional dating of Protogeometric pottery in Greece, and its appearance in the Southern Levantine assemblages. The question then asked is whether the Low Chronology recently proposed by Finkelstein will free us from the difficulties raised by the prevailing dating. A brief examination shows that one cannot use the accepted dating of Greek Protogeometric and Geometric pottery to support the ‘Finkelstein correction’, but rather his Low Chronology provides, for the first time, a basis for the absolute chronology of the Dark Age in Greece. At the end the article proposes a common denominator to reconcile the differences of opinion between major chronological approaches. These may be explained by the differences in the length of existence of the relevant strata.

This article discusses the biogeography of Persian wild goat in an attempt to identify the most likely early centres of goat domestication in the Levant. It is suggested that Persian wild goat may have been first domesticated in or immediately adjacent to the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains during the mid-tenth millennium BP (uncalibrated), approximately a millennium earlier than has been previously assumed. Goat domestication may therefore have first occurred at approximately the same time as early Neolithic sedentary agricultural communities first emerged in the moist steppe zones of the central and southern Levant.

The article explores the nature of Chalcolithic burial practices, in particular by a detailed consideration of the offerings which accompanied the dead. The vessels placed in the tombs are shown to be divided into two groups, some specifically identified as votive, while others belong in the context of daily life. Chalcolithic burial rites and beliefs thus revealed by archaeology are related to ethnographic records.

A building of rural character was excavated at Khirbat al-Khurrumiya in the Upper Galilee, Israel. The pottery found there represents a household assemblage from a short occupation that can be dated to the eleventh century. The pottery types for this period in the southern Levant are not well known. This assemblage is important for helping to establish a typology of local wares from the Fatimid period.

As information from survey and excavation projects in the southern Levant accumulates, the archaeological map of the Early Epipaleolithic becomes a more complex mosaic of regional entities. Ground stone is one aspect of material culture that can be used to examine important aspects of site variability. Here, ethnographic examples are used to generate a series of expectations for plant processing tools. Applying these expectations to Early Epipaleolithic ground stone assemblages reveals several broad regional patterns, including one which is described as ‘flexible’ both in terms of mobility strategies and resource processing range.

Examination of the domestic architectural remains from the Early Bronze Age in the southern Levant shows that rectangular buildings with rounded outer corners were an outstanding characteristic during the transition from the fourth to the third millennium BCE. Numerous such buildings have so far been found at fifteen sites throughout Canaan during the Early Bronze IB and Early Bronze II periods (3300–2650 BCE; chronology follows Stager 1992). The deliberate and uniform construction of rounded corners in the outer corners of rectilinear buildings implies a specific concept of building tradition. The constant recurrence of this type of house within a defined geographical region and during a limited time span of the EB I–II transition indicates that this form of construction is to be seen as a distinct architectural tradition characteristic only of this period.The first appearance of this distinct architectural plan is concurrent with the initial stages of urbanization in Canaan and may be seen as a ...

Thirteen Syro-Palestinian copper-alloy weapons from good EB-MB and MB I contexts were analysed by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry, in order to amplify our knowledge of copper metallurgy around 2000 B.C. The results raise several important points regarding alloying practices, and the factors governing alloy selection. Regional differences in alloy use within the southern Levant during the EB-MB period are clarified, while a hitherto unsuspected alloy, leaded-bronze, appears at Hama, where it was used for MB I weapon types. Other groups of contemporary analyses are discussed, and an attempt is then made to consider the influence of non-technical factors on alloy selection.

(1990). The Southern Levant in the Hellenistic Period. Levant: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 123-130.