New Vistas on the EB IV ("MB I") Horizon in Syria-Palestine

Dever, William G.

doi:10.2307/1356506

Cited by 69 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…Bunimovitz and Greenberg (2006) have described the way in which scholarly views on the EB IV period have followed shifting paradigms in wider disciplinary thinking. For example, studies in the 1980s (Dever 1980;Richard 1980) emphasized the strong connection of EB IV ceramics to those of the local EB III. As a result, the evidence for the adoption of items of material culture of Syrian inspiration, including those ceramic and metal forms that had shaped Kenyon's concept of 'Amorite' invaders (e.g.…”

Section: Early Bronze IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

et al. 2014

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This paper employs data from selected sample survey areas in the northern Fertile Crescent to demonstrate how initial urbanization developed along several pathways. The first, during the Late Chalcolithic period, was within a dense pattern of rural settlement. There followed a profound shift in settlement pattern that resulted in the formation of large walled or ramparted sites ('citadel cities') associated with a more dynamic phase of urbanization exemplified by short cycles of growth and collapse. By the later third millennium BC, the distribution of larger centres had expanded to include the drier agropastoral zone of northern and central Syria, termed here the 'zone of uncertainty'. This configuration, in turn, formed the context for Middle Bronze Age settlement, and the pattern of political rivalries and alliances that typified the second millennium BC. Evidence is marshalled from archaeological surveys and landscape analyses to examine these multiple paths to urbanization from the perspectives of (a) staple production within major 123J World Prehist (2014) 27:43-109 DOI 10.1007/s10963-014-9072-2 agricultural lowlands; (b) the shift towards higher risk animal husbandry within climatically marginal regions; (c) changes in local and inter-regional networks (connectivity); and (d) ties and rights to the land. Textile production forms the core of the proposed model, which emphasizes how the demand for wool and associated pasture lands opened up new landscapes for agro-pastoral production and settlement. The resultant landscapes of settlement are then compared with the picture in the southern Levant where a more restricted zone of uncertainty may have limited the opportunities for agro-pastoral production.

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Section: Early Bronze IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

et al. 2014

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“…Ethnographic studies of sedentary and mobile groups indicate that anticipated mobility accounts for more variability in the material record than any other factor, including actual mobility, economic subsistence, permanence of built features and diversity (Kent, 1991(Kent, , 1993. While the effects of anticipated mobility are difficult to quantify in archaeological settings, the heuristic value of this concept may hold some potential for the southern Levant where contradictory variables frequently impede our efforts to reconstruct the function of sites and the activities of the groups that occupied them (for example Cohen and Dever, 1981;Dever, 1980). Such difficulties are particularly evident in the persistent employment of economic subsistence as the pre-eminent variable for interpreting site function and occupation strategy, despite its often murky and ambiguous relationship to levels of permanence (see Esse, 1991 for a fine elucidation of this tendency and its associated problems).…”

Section: Settlement and Society In The Middle Bronze Age Of The Southmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the basis of such reasoning, farming activities often are associated with sedentary occupations in the southern Levant while pastoralism has been associated with non-sedentary occupations (for example Cohen, 1999;Dever, 1980Dever, , 1992Dothan, 1959;Kenyon, 1979;Perrot, 1984;Rowton, 1977). However, mobile groups commonly practice farming, and most sedentary groups practice some form of pastoralism (Finkelstein, 1991;Lees and Bates, 1974;Martin, 1999;Saidel, 2002;Rosen, 2003).…”

Section: Settlement and Society In The Middle Bronze Age Of The Southmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Combinations of occupation strategies and subsistence economies have coalesced into social regimes ranging from incipient forms of pastoral nomadism (Rosen, 2003) to semi-sedentary pastoralism (Cohen, 1999;Dever, 1992), transhumance (Levy, 1992;Prag, 1985) and fully sedentary agricultural villages (Edelstein et al, 1998;Horwitz, 1989;Maeir, 1997). But as a result of the difficulties associated with characterizing the material remains of mobile or semi-mobile groups, investigators have often been tempted to simply equate economic strategies such as pastoralism with non-sedentary peoples, and agriculture with sedentary peoples (Cohen, 1999;Dever, 1980Dever, , 1992Dothan, 1959;Kenyon, 1979;Perrot, 1984;Rowton, 1977). These associations however, have not only proved misleading because of their failure to admit the complex interplay of sedentary and mobile elements within the same social group, but they have also been plagued by the uncertainty surrounding accurate reconstructions of ancient economic strategies (Finkelstein, 1992).…”

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Signs of sedentism and mobility in an agro-pastoral community during the Levantine Middle Bronze Age: Interpreting site function and occupation strategy at Zahrat adh-Dhra‘ 1 in Jordan

Berelov

2006

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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“…The impetus behind this dramatic settlement oscillation is unclear, though scholars have variously associated the phenomenon with changing political (e.g., Kochavi 1967), demographic (e.g., Kenyon 1951;Prag 1985), socio-economic (e.g., Dever 1980), and climatic conditions (e.g., Rosen 1987;Frumkin 2009). …”

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confidence: 99%

Geoarchaeological Investigation at the Intermediate Bronze Age Negev Highlands Site of Mashabe Sade

et al. 2016

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Massive settlement activity characterizes the arid Negev Highlands during the Intermediate Bronze Age (ca. 2500(ca. -1950. However, the underlying subsistence basis of this population is poorly understood. Recent microarchaeological work at Iron Age sites in the Negev Highlands has shown the potential for recovering direct evidence for subsistence practices through analysis of the microscopic plant remains in degraded animal dung. Following these methods, this paper reports new macro-and microarchaeological results of two sites near Mashabe Sade: a central Intermediate Bronze Age site, and for comparison, an ephemeral site in the immediate vicinity. At the central site, dated to the Intermediate Bronze Age by pottery and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL), evidence is absent for any sort of food production. In contrast, identification of ancient livestock dung at the ephemeral site suggests that it was sustained by animal husbandryyet the OSL results suggest these degraded dung deposits date to the Iron Age. Taken together, the Intermediate Bronze Age results from Mashabe Sade bolster arguments suggesting that central sites were supported mainly by trade and other alternative subsistence practices. Keywords Mashabe Sade, Negev Highlands, Intermediate Bronze Age, MicroarchaeologyAfter nearly a century of research, the Intermediate Bronze Age is still an enigmatic period in the settlement history of the southern Levant. Traditionally dated to ca. 2300-2000 BCE (e.g., Palumbo 2001), the Intermediate Bronze Age is characterized by the cessation of * Co-directors of the Negev Highlands Project. urban activity throughout the region, and a unique wave of settlement in the arid zones, especially the Negev Highlands. The impetus behind this dramatic settlement oscillation is unclear, though scholars have variously associated the phenomenon with changing political (e.g., Kochavi 1967), demographic (e.g., Kenyon 1951;Prag 1985), socio-economic (e.g., Dever 1980), and climatic conditions (e.g., Rosen 1987; Frumkin 2009).Until very recently, debate over the nature of the Intermediate Bronze Age had mellowed into a general consensus that the period was characterized in the north of modern Israel by a shift from urban life to rural agro-pastoralism (Finkelstein 1995: 88), and in the Negev, to subsistence practices characterized by animal husbandry and opportunistic agriculture (Dever 1985;Cohen 1999;Palumbo 2001). Hoards of copper ingots found at sites throughout the southern Levant, and the recent discovery of an Intermediate Bronze Age copper production centre in Wadi Faynan, suggest that a developed copper trade economy supported the Negev settlement system Recently, an analysis of radiocarbon determinations from secure archaeological contexts redated the Intermediate Bronze Age to ca. 2500-1950 BCE (Regev et al. 2012. This changes the equation between the Intermediate Bronze Age and Egyptian history and hence forces a re-evaluation of the Intermediate Bronze Age in general, and the role of Negev settlement systems wi...

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New Vistas on the EB IV ("MB I") Horizon in Syria-Palestine

Cited by 69 publications

References 2 publications

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

Signs of sedentism and mobility in an agro-pastoral community during the Levantine Middle Bronze Age: Interpreting site function and occupation strategy at Zahrat adh-Dhra‘ 1 in Jordan

Geoarchaeological Investigation at the Intermediate Bronze Age Negev Highlands Site of Mashabe Sade

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