This report presents the architecture of the storage rooms found during the 2013 and 2015 excavations within the Middle Bronze Age Canaanite palace at Tel Kabri in present-day Israel, as well as the ceramic finds within them, and the initial results of the petrographic and organic residue analyses. We hope that this detailed preliminary report can supply some insights into a few of the activities conducted within this Canaanite palace during the early second millennium B.C.E. 1 introduction Tel Kabri, located 5 km east of Nahariya in the Western Galilee of modernday Israel, has been the focus of two large-scale expeditions: the first led by Kempinski and Niemeier from 1986 to 1993 and the second led by Cline and Yasur-Landau from 2005 to the present. The initial excavations by Kempinski and Niemeier uncovered the palace and its painted floor with additional wall fragments but came to an untimely halt because of the premature death of Kempinski in 1994. 2 As we have written elsewhere, including in this journal, 3 during the Middle Bronze Age and specifically in the first half of the second millennium B.C.E.

This paper explores the different types of cultic spaces that appear in the southern Levant dur- ing the Middle Bronze Age. The site of Megiddo provides a perfect case study for investigating the diver- sity attested within local Canaanite cultic architectural traditions, diachronic changes in temple types and forms, and the relationships between temples, their surrounding settlements and landscapes, and society at large. Megiddo’s strategic location and high degree of connectivity to both the coast and the in- land Jordan Valley make it a microcosm for the rich diversity of cultic traditions within Canaan at large.

Astragali, the knuckle or ankle bones of mammals, have been collected, used and modified by humans in different parts of the world for millennia. Large hoards dating from Iron Age IIA (tenth–ninth centuries BC) are attested at a number of sites in the southern Levant, and a recently discovered hoard of 406 astragali at Tel Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel presents an opportunity to investigate this phenomenon, shedding light on the function of these bones and why they bore special status and meaning that crossed cultural and temporal boundaries. In this study, the zooarchaeological analysis of the astragali provides the basis for an extensive discussion of the hoard’s formation process and function that explores ethnographic literature, archaeological data and ancient Near Eastern and classical documentary sources. The findings of this study demonstrate that while the individual bones had many different functions, once deposited together the astragali took on a new meaning, possibly related to divinatory practices.

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