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Tell es-Safi/Gath I: The 1996–2005 Seasons. Vol. 1: Text; Vol. 2: Plates. By Aren M. Maeir. Ägypten und Altes Testament, vol. 69. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. vii + 628, illus.; xii + plates. €168.

1 Kings 4 relates that Dor, the major port-town on Israel's Carmel coast, constituted part of the Solomonic state. This formed the basis for several historical reconstructions. Here, for the first time, we examine all the relevant archaeological data available after three decades of excavations at Tel Dor. We conclude that indeed, archaeology supports a scenario whereby Dor passed from Phoenician to Israelite hands, but that this happened in the second half of the 9th century BC. This shift involved a significant change in the role of Dor and its harbour, exemplified by changes in urban layout, ceramic production, and in commercial and other interaction spheres.

The account of Jephthah’s battle against the Ammonites in Judg 11:12–33 contains glaring inconsistencies. Negotiations preceding the battle invoke Israelite conflicts with Amorites and Moabites—none of which pertain to Ammon. An archaeological survey of the vacillating fortunes of Transjordanian Moab, Ammon, and Gilead suggests historical contexts and approximate dates for periods of territorial contention between Israel and its neighbors. Reading the invocation of war against Sihon/Moab (early ninth century) in the context of later conflicts with Ammon (late ninth or eighth century) explains some of the apparent inconsistencies and dates the historical contexts invoked in this and other biblical texts that pit Israel against these Transjordanian nations. Archaeological remains from Ḥesban (Heshbon) and Dhiban (Dibon) add datable parameters for texts or the updating of passages that feature these sites. So, for example in the Judges text, celebrating Heshbon rather than Dibon as Sihon’s capital city likely dates this version of events to the seventh or perhaps the sixth century.

From archaeological and textual perspectives, scholars Israel Finkelstein and Baruch Halpern respectively have argued for systemic changes in Judahite society brought about by the Assyrian invasions of the late eighth century BCE, changes involving the growth of the state and increase in the role of the individual. Will a scrutiny of Judahite interments reveal these abrupt societal changes or will they tell a different story, one of evolution rather than revolution?

Earliest Israel remains terra incognita, literally and from the ground down. The Merneptah Stela Stanza VIII proclaiming Egyptian suzerainty in the southern Levant documents Israel as a noteworthy foreign enemy by the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E.1 Except for this mention, neither contemporary epigraphic nor archaeological evidence explicitly points to a latethirteenth-century B.C.E. "Israel." However, conservatively dated biblical and archaeological evidence has been invoked to attest to Israel in the twelfth to eleventh centuries B.C.E. Frank Cross and Tryggve Mettinger, among others, date the Bible's earliest testimonials, the Song of the Sea (Exod 15) and Song of Deborah (Judg 5) to the late twelfth or early eleventh century B.C.E.2 Ironically, it was Israel Finkelstein, now leading a revisionist contingent, who claimed to validate the early dates with archaeological evidence. In his central highlands survey, Finkelstein identified as "Israelite" the hundreds of hamlets and farmsteads founded in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C.E.3 Although the Iron I material culture, cultic practices, burial customs, and architecture continued Late Bronze Age "Canaanite" traditions, the founding population was readily identified as Merneptah's "Israel" and biblical "Israel."4 Nearly two decades later, not a single feature of those settlements maybe conclusively identified as exclusively "Israelite." Aside from the founding of new settlements in territory allegedly settled by Israel, nothing decisively links the new settlements to Merneptah s Israel or biblical Israel. In view of this impasse, this article pursues an alternate route in search of ethnic Israel of the premonarchic period. After demonstrating the limitations of the Culture Area approach to ethnicity currently employed by most archaeologists, I will present the Meaningful Boundaries approach, stemming from Fredrik Earth's work. This model will, in turn, be expanded to incorporate Jonathan Hall and Stephen Cornell's work on a group s Grafting of its history as a process that fosters ethnic identity. Based on the new model that weds archaeology and text, the Tell-Tale approach, datable archaeological features with biblically attested significance will be proposed to indicate the Grafting of Israel's history from as early as the twelfth to eleventh century B.C.E. The biblical and archaeological evidence of Israelite interaction with the Canaanites and Philistines shows that the process of formulating collective memory regarding the Philistines differed from that of fashioning reminiscences of the Canaanites. Two distinct literary processes may underlie the varying accounts. I. Two Archaeological Models of Ethnicity Defining Ethnicity An ethnos is a group of people larger than a clan or lineage claiming common ancestry. While cultural or biological kinship may reinforce the bond, a fabricated "collective memory of a former unity"5 or "putative myth of shared descent and kinship"6 ultimately conjoins the various lineages. Primordial as well as circumstantial traits, both self-ascribed and promulgated by others, define the group. Primordial features are perceived by the group to have existed from the beginning; in other words, they are the "collective memory of a former unity" or a common heritage. Kinship, territory, or select traditions, including religion, often define the group's origins. In contrast to primordial traits, circumstantial factors are variously activated in response to changing situations. Material culture or relations with other groups exemplify circumstantial factors. Though self-ascribed identifying features may change, shifting social constructs distinguishing "us" from "them" shape continuing ethnic affiliation.7 Ethnicity is, in A. Gidden's words, "a dialectic of 'structure' and 'agency.'"8 The quest for early Israel is a study of ethnogenesis. "Shared interests," often political or economic, spur often unrelated clans or lineages to amalgamate into the nucleus of an ethnos. …