The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant

Abstract

The fundamental instability of urban or urbanizing forms of settlement in the first half of the third millennium BCE, described in Chapter 3, set the stage for an extended period of regional, non-urban settlement trajectories that covers the entire second half of the third millennium BCE. This long process of urban retreat, which began as early as the first quarter of the third millennium in some regions, may no longer qualify for the sobriquet of collapse, but is nonetheless post-urban. That is, rather than representing a survival of a resilient, primeval village substratum to which urban society reverts at the end of EB III (as proposed by some of those who refuse urban status to any Levantine sites), it should be viewed as a response to the stresses and excesses of the urbanizing trends that had affected large parts of the Levant, and as a risk-minimizing strategy that expanded the resource base for a more dispersed population. A measure of the degree to which IBA settlement recognized previous centers is the peculiar choreography of settlement and burial near and within previously urban sites that will be detailed below. These testify to a persistence of memory and to the existence of a carefully constructed genealogy that underlies territorial claims and affinities of the inhabitants of the non-urban settlements. Similarly, persistent elements of material culture and technological style point to strong links between the urban and post-urban populations in most parts of the Levant.The prolonged urban exodus of EB III should therefore be understood as a redeployment that opened new avenues of opportunity while breaking down the cultural barriers that characterized the ossified landscape of fortified towns. As will be seen, these new opportunities did not lead to the reemergence of centralized polities or to aggregations of wealth. Rather, for the next four centuries, the southern Levant appears to have settled into a "comfort zone," from which it would be jolted only at the start of the second millennium BCEa small-scale, politically segmented, territorially flexible village society.

Resistance and Authority at the Beginning of Urbanism: The Case of Tel Bet Yerah Broken Maceheads

“…Despite that, little evidence of centralized administration or social stratification was found. On the other hand, during the EB III (c.2850-2500/2450 BC), prestige items became somewhat more common, fortifications became more elaborate, and palatial structures were built in several fortified centres, all elements likely testifying to a more stratified society (Philip 2008;Greenberg 2019;Ashkenazi 2020;Paz 2020). Concurrent with the transition to EB III, the first evidence for the arrival of a distinct, non-local material cultural assemblage appears at sites in the northern Jordan Valley.…”

Large Predator Hunting and Its Interpretation: Leopards, Bears and Lions in the Archaeological Record of the Southern Levant

“…Temples, palaces, public buildings and writing are among the material manifestations that constituted cities and states. Broadly stated, it was a time preoccupied with the development of managerial and administrative apparatuses (Gilboa 2014; Greenberg 2019; Joffe 2002).…”

Toward the identification of social signatures in ceramic production – An archaeological case study

“…The rebirth of urban society occurred only in the second millennium BCE (around 1900 BCE) (the Middle Bronze Age, henceforth MBA). In the transition from the EB III to the IBA, at the middle of the third millennium BCE, one of the significant changes was in the nature of the settlement, i.e., the population was now living in scattered villages [36,39]. Consequently, most of this period's available data comes from burial contexts or small settlements.…”

“…While the lmlk type dominates the Shephelah for over 100 years, in the 7 th century BCE, its presence weakens, and a new type (the Rosetta jar) emerges, dominating most of the Jerusalem area. Historically, the point in time of this ceramic-tradition change (from the lmlk to the Rosetta) can be attributed to Sennacherib's conquest in 701 BCE and subsequent weakening of the Shephelah [23,32,38,39,44,46,51,[65][66][67][68][69]. Before Sennacherib's conquest, the lmlk jars were distributed and produced in this region.…”