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Other Archaeological Sites / The Neolithic of the Levant (500 Page Book Online)
Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times
Winner of the 1993 Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology
Excerpts and Definitions and Addendums:
Throughout the entire Neolithic and the earlier Chalcolithic, Palestine (Canaan) supported a rather backward culture. The Ghassulian Culture (mid fourth millennium BC) was the main phase of the Palestinian Chalcolithic period ...... The Early Bronze Age I, II, III in Palestine had witnessed the flowering of an indigenous culture developing "in continuum" with limited external influence ...... THE END OF EARLY BRONZE AGE PALESTINE The archaeological record provides a clear picture of the close of EB III. Sites in Cis-Jordan for the most part do not survive as settlements into the subsequent transitional phase from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age (EB IV - MB I) or First Intermediate Period ...... The EB IV is a period of urban decline and seminomadism at the end of the third millennium BC; and MB I is a period of complete nomadic culture to the exclusion of city living ...... Population movement is detectable from large fortified tells to smaller centers. Some destruction is in evidence, but in many cases the historian is justified in using no more than the term abandonment. In EB IV only Trans-Jordan, parts of the Jordan valley, and later the Negev Desert exhibit limited settlement; and while there is a clear cultural continuum between EB III and IV, there has come about a marked change in the economy of society. In place of the semi industrialized society of EB III, which could indulge in international trade, nought is left but rustic pastoralism in which stockbreeding looms large at the expense of agriculture ...... As in northeast Africa, a climatic change may have brought progressive desiccation to Palestine and resulted in famine and perhaps disease. (Also) it would be blind to deny that the increase of a nonurban, transhumant economy in post EB III Palestine could be put down in large measure to the depredations of the Egyptian armed forces (purposeful demolition and burning of city-states, towns, and villages) ...... Following the impoverished MB I, with its sparse population of elusive transhumants, there comes the birth of a new cultural phase, which is not descended from MB I ...... The four century span called MB II A, B, C is a sedentary culture identified by artifacts (largely ceramic) and architecture of single inspiration and autochthonous evolution. MB IIA represents the introduction into the Levant of a culture with contacts from the north and northeast ...... The warlike tendencies of the Amorite successor states are clearly reflected in the town architecture of MB IIA and B. To accomodate an increase in population -- the population in Palestine in MB IIA has been estimated at 100,000; that of MB IIB at 140,000 -- cites were enlarged and (in MB IIB) fortifications introduced ...... These new provisions for defense can only mean that new tactics had been devised in the art of warfare somewhere in the Near East; and the increased use of transit corridors in the Levant and the concomitant unsettled politics necessitated their introduction in Palestine's MB IIB. It has from time to time been suggested that the introduction of the horse and chariot from the north and northeast, and the revolution this effected in mobile warfare, lie behind the evolution of this type of military architecture. A much more likely catalyst in the development of new techniques of defense is the siege engine developed in central Mesopotamia and perfected by the Hurrians ..... One gains the distinct impression that by the end of MB IIA Palestine and southern Syria had been irrevocably drawn into the ambit of the warring Amorite states of the north and east ..... The lands of the Levantine littoral had long since displayed a sophistication of culture and politics. Canaanite society of the Late Bronze Age had taken shape around a number of medium sized but amorphous metropolitan states: Hazor in the upper Jordan Valley, Kadesh on the upper Orontes, Tunip in central Syria, the Nukhashshe lands south of Aleppo, Ugarit on the coast -- to name but a few. Each of these controlled a teritory comprising farmland, towns, and and occasionally subjugated cities ... |
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