Several modern studies and the Assyrians themselves have claimed not only the extreme military measures but also substantial geo-political impact of Assyrian conquest in the southern Levant; however, examples of Assyrian violence and control are actually underrepresented in the archaeological record. The few scholars that have pointed out this dearth of corroborative data have attributed it to an apathetic attitude adopted by Assyria toward the region during both conquest and political control. I argue in this dissertation that the archaeological record reflects Assyrian military strategy rather than indifference. Data from three case studies, Megiddo, Ashdod, and the Western Negev, suggest that the small number of sites with evidence of destruction and even fewer sites with evidence of Assyrian imperial control are a product of a strategy that allowed Assyria to annex the region with less investment than their annals claim. Furthermore, Assyria’s network of imperial outposts monitored international highways in a manner that allowed a small local and foreign population to participate in trade and defense opportunities that ultimately benefited the Assyrian core.

In 2007 the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) was established as a joint research endeavor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among the project’s diverse aims is the publication of numerous excavations conducted in Jaffa since 1948 under the auspices of various governmental and research institutions such as the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and its successor, the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project. This, the first volume in the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project series, lays the groundwork for this initiative. Part I provides the historical, economic, and legal context for the JCHP’s development, while outlining its objectives and the unique opportunities that Jaffa offers researchers. The history of Jaffa and its region, and the major episodes of cultural change that affected the site and region are explored through a series of articles in Part II, including an illustrated discussion of historical maps of Jaffa from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Recent archaeological discoveries from Jaffa are included in Part III, while Part IV provides a first glimpse of the JCHP’s efforts to publish the Jacob Kaplan and Haya Ritter-Kaplan legacy from Jaffa. Together the twenty-five contributions to this work constitute the first major book-length publication to address the archaeology of Jaffa in more than sixty years since excavations were initiated at the site.

Series: Monumenta Archaeologica 26

The role of iron in the emergence of Iron Age states in North Africa and the Near East has been poorly understood due to a paucity of contemporary, diachronic ferrous archaeometallurgical data. Excavations at Phoenician and Punic Carthage in the 2000s recovered one of the largest and most diverse corpora of Iron Age iron production material culture from North Africa and the Near East, spanning the entire history of Carthage from its Tyrian colonial foundations to its destruction by Rome (historical dates 814-146 BC). Analysis of the materials employing metallography, portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF), and variable pressure scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy x-ray dispersive spectroscopy (VPSEM-EDS) indicates that Carthaginian smiths were smelting and smithing wrought iron and steel as an exchange good or tribute commodity to Tyre and the Assyrian empire, as well as producing, refining, and consuming tin and arsenical bronzes, leaded bronzes, lead, and cobalt. Archaeological evidence demonstrates a state industry of iron production, including the commissioning, decommissioning, and outsourcing of metallurgical precincts. There is an overwhelming difference exhibited between output capacity at industrial and household production sites. Epigraphic evidence in Punic illustrates the inherent economic and familial affiliations between the Carthaginian state and metalworkers. Ironsmiths, bronze casters, and goldsmiths were privileged engineers of one of the state's most strategic industries, and were stratified in a hierarchy of technical specialties and ranks. In order to conserve fuel and succeed in properly vitrifying ore or bloom impurities into slag, they recycled industrial byproducts in the form of murex shells from purple dye production as a metallurgical flux and lined the furnaces with quartz-rich heat insulation. Carthage was one colony in the Phoenician commodity procurement network, whose task it was to convert iron blooms into final products. By the time this colony became independent of Tyre ca. 650-550 BC, the smiths of Carthage already had around a century of expertise in the production of iron and steel implements which gave the state a competitive advantage in the strategic arena of ferrous technologies and the formation of empire.

Metal played an important role in developing the regional economies of the southern Levant and Egypt. However, very little is known about the contexts in which knowledge of extractive metallurgy was procured by these communities and thus how the learning process may have contributed to shaping local identities, power structures, and systems of belief. In the last decade, research has expanded available datasets to begin refining timelines and interpretations. By combining anthropological game theory with a communities of practice approach to learning and identity, this study surveys the transformation of economic cooperation between communities in the southern Levant and Egypt around the mining and production of copper. I propose possible contexts in which production-related knowledge may have been transmitted between members of socially differentiated groups and explore the significance of those exchanges as they relate to the rise of the early Egyptian state. The dissertation argues that copper production played a central role in fostering economic cooperation among communities in the Nile Valley, southern Levant, and southwest Asia during the fifth millennium, creating a shared landscape of ritual praxis and knowledge that would last for millennia. I propose that core symbols of an elite Egyptian political identity were the product of active participation in early metalworking communities in southwest Asia during the fifth and fourth millennium, and further explore the central role of copper in the economic foundation of the early Egyptian state and ideological system which legitimized its authority. The study of the contexts and subsequent implications of metallurgical knowledge transfer via cooperation between communities of practice allows us to move toward a more nuanced understanding of the social environments in which new practices, identities, and power structures were forged.

Archaeological excavations in the northeastern Negev region of southern Judah identified significant amounts of “foreign” archaeological material culture in contexts dating to the late Iron Age (late eighth to early sixth century BCE). This iconic material culture consisted of highly identifiable ceramics, evidence of non-Yahwistic cult featuring the deity Qws, and non-Judahite inscriptions. Identified as associated with the kingdom of Edom to the east, this material culture assemblage was quickly interpreted to be the result of an Edomite “invasion,” understood as occurring during the late Judean monarchy (late seventh to early sixth centuries BCE) in tandem with Babylonian aggression and the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, as was promoted by certain readings of the biblical text. This study challenges the monocausal interpretation of an invasion, recognizing both the longevity of this material culture’s presence in the northeastern Negev, its frequent production within the northeastern Negev, and the contexts in which it was excavated that reveal a material culture footprint inconsistent with an invasion. I argue that the Edomite material culture came to be present in the region through a long and sustained pattern of culture contact, migration, and social entanglement, in large part the result of activity associated with the lucrative South Arabian trade that traversed the region en route to the Mediterranean. Framing the region through a borderlands approach, three case studies explore each of the iconic “Edomite” datasets, 1) foodways, 2) ritual behavior, and 3) inscriptions. I present each dataset in relation to patterns of human behavior and interaction, and especially the ways that they may be used as proxies for different types of social identities. Ultimately, this study delivers a new narrative of social entanglement for a misrepresented region. While the end of this period may have been marked by violence, the previous century and a half indicates a lengthy pattern of cross-cultural interaction, political ambition, economic enterprise, and social entanglement.

This dissertation presents a synthesis of settlement patterns in the central coastal plain of modern Israel from the onset of the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age (ca. 2000–539 B.C.E.). The ancient mound of Jaffa, situated on the southern Levantine coast south of the outlet of the Yarkon River, was the closest maritime outlet for Jerusalem and other highland centers in ancient times. Jaffa has the distinct status of being one of the few ports on the southern Levantine coast featuring an almost continual occupation history from the Middle Bronze Age through the modern era. Yet a lack of inclusion for Jaffa and other hinterland sites in archaeological and historical studies of the coastal plain is evident. In light of renewed excavations on the ancient mound of Jaffa, new analyses of the site’s and region’s material culture recovered from excavations conducted over the last sixty years necessitate the current examination of regional settlement patterns and systems to elucidate the potential economic and cultural connections between the port and inland sites, both urban and rural in nature by providing a regional perspective for material culture recovered at Jaffa. Additionally, a reconstruction of the variety of local terrestrial, aquatic, and anthropogenic biomes of the Bronze and Iron Ages as represented in the archaeological record is presented.

It is argued here that the fundamental connections between all the sites in various periods can be interpreted through the framework of a maritime cultural landscape. Thus situated, Jaffa served as a gateway for the coastal plain and the highlands, connecting inland sites with materials from the coast and acting as a transit point for commodities produced inland that would be transshipped to other gateways in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite fluctuations in Jaffa’s prominence resulting from changes in political control, shared material culture with inland sites illustrates the strong connections that Jaffa forged with its hinterland as a unique central place within the settlement system of the coastal plain.

During the Late Bronze Age (c. 1640/1540 – 1100 BCE), the installation of Egyptian garrisons throughout the southern Levant made Egypto-Levantine interaction the primary discursive relationship defining cultural expression in the region. To date, focus has predominantly been on how elites navigated the new imperial system, a product of the types of data published by early modern excavations. To expand upon this past work and assess Egypto-Levantine interaction across a broader socio-economic spectrum, I utilize new data from the garrison site of Jaffa (modern Israel) in a practice-based analysis of garrison foodways. From archaeobotanical and ceramics data, I demonstrate human entanglements that occurred at the site over the course of more than three centuries of occupation, discussing how interaction unfolded on a day-to-day basis in the imperial periphery. Specifically, I articulate the presence of multiple communities of practice with roots in both Egyptian and Levantine modes of doing. At no point in the history of the site did one tradition dominate, but rather garrison foodways were a complex product of acceptance, accommodation, indifference, and rejection, resulting in a hybrid foodways inseparable from the colonial system. The greater part of food preparation was purely Levantine in character, likely signifying the entanglement of the local population in the sustenance of the colonial system. And yet, certain modifications to traditional Levantine foodways seem designed to accommodate Egyptian tastes. Other elements of foodways—namely ceramics production/consumption and beer production—attest to a complex cha�ne op�ratoire with roots in Egypt, with their expression suggesting a tension between top-down forces provisioning the garrison and local, bottom-up consumption practices. This especially manifests with dining practices, as shifting patterns in the use and appreciation of locally manufactured Egyptian-style or Levantine ceramics correlate with violent disruptions at the site. While it is not always possible to tie foodways to specific identities, they reveal a complex picture of mutual transformation that cannot be separated from the colonial context of the site, detailing entanglements between locals and imperial personnel wherein actors from all sides episodically drew upon foodways to navigate life in an unstable imperial periphery.

The Early Bronze IV (EB IV, c. 2500-2000 B.C.) in the ancient Near East was a period of rapid and systemic change. Towards the end of the third millennium B.C., much of the population abandoned villages and cities across the Levant. For the past 50 years this period has been characterized as a “collapse,” even though the veracity of this has been questioned in recent years. The reality of this period is more nuanced. This dissertation examines how local populations adapted to changes in economic systems, specifically changes in trade routes and subsistence regimes. This started with the establishment of the so-called “urbanization” of the Early Bronze II-III (EB II-III, c. 3000-2500 B.C.) and resulted in a drastic shift in settlement patterns and a deurbanization in the EB IV. This study will explore alternative explanations that situate people as active agents in a resilient socioeconomic system. The changes in settlement locations, a reflection of economic and political systems, were conscious choices, shaped and limited by various factors. Rather than a sudden collapse of the previous social structure due to catastrophic climatic change disrupting agricultural production, it appears that the EB IV transition was the logical consequence of individuals actively responding to their steadily changing environment. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is used to show that settlement locations in the Levant were strongly influenced by environmental factors including a flooding of the coastal plain and an aridification of inland valleys in addition to shifts subsistence patterns. There was a shift in the location of sheep rearing to the liminal zones at the edges of dry-farming, in agriculture from centralized locations around tells to a more ruralized, village based system and a shift north of olive and grape production, from the southern to the northern Levant. Data was extracted from satellite imagery and environmental models to determine agricultural and pastoral zones as well as settlement patterns at the local level. Results illustrate that populations during the EB II-III became so entrenched in their previous modes of living, overexploiting the landscape and available resources, that it was no longer sustainable, and communities moved into different environmental niches to survive.