"This is the final report on Bennett's excavations at Tawilan, an Iron Age site in southern Jordan, known as the biblical Kingdom of Edom. Paying particular attention to the cuneiform tablet and gold jewelry hoard (the first to be discovered in Jordan), Bienkowski provides a comprehensive analysis of the stratigraphy, ceramics, and other finds, and an overview of the development and nature of the site. This long-awaited volume sheds light on an important aspect of biblical history."--Book jacket.

Situated south of the Dead Sea, near the famous Nabatean capital of Petra, the Faynan region in Jordan contains the largest deposits of copper ore in the southern Levant. The Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) takes an anthropological-archaeology approach to the deep-time study of culture change in one of the Old World's most important locales for studying technological development. Using innovative digital tools for data recording, curation, analyses, and dissemination, the researchers focused on ancient mining and metallurgy as the subject of surveys and excavations related to the Iron Age (ca. 1200-500 BCE), when the first local, historical state-level societies appeared in this part of the eastern Mediterranean basin. This comprehensive and important volume challenges the current scholarly consensus concerning the emergence and historicity of the Iron Age polity of biblical Edom and some of its neighbors, such as ancient Israel. Excavations and radiometric dating establish a new chronology for Edom, adding almost 500 more years to the Iron Age, including key periods of biblical history when David, Solomon, and the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I are alleged to have interacted with Edom. Included is a 7 gigabyte DVD with over 55,000 files of additional data and photographs from the project.

This final report on an Iron Age site in southern Jordan, the biblical kingdom of Edom, is the first ever to be published. Particular attention is paid to the cuneiform tablet and gold jewellery hoard, the first to be discovered in Jordan. The stratigraphy, ceramics and other finds are alsocomprehensively analysed by Piotr Bienkowski and other specialists, and an overview of the development and nature of the site is provided. This long-awaited volume sheds light on an important aspect of biblical history.

In Excavations at Tall Jawa, Jordan: Volume 3, The Iron Age Pottery, Michèle Daviau presents a detailed typology of the Iron Age pottery excavated from 1989 to 1995. She looks beyond the formal changes to an in-depth analysis of the forming techniques employed to make each type of vessel from bowls to colanders, cooking pots to pithoi. The changes in fabric composition from Iron I to Iron II were more significant than those from Iron IIB to IIC, although changes in surface treatment, especially slip color, were noticeable. Petrographic analysis of Iron I pottery by Stanley Klassen contributes to our growing corpus of fabric types, while Peter Epler documents typical Ammonite painted patterns and Elaine Kirby and Marianne Kraft present a typology of potters’ marks.

This volume presents a functional and typological study of the Iron Age artefacts recovered during six years of excavation at the site of Tall Jawa, in central Jordan.The introduction presents information on the recording and classification system used to identify artefact types. The main chapter presents each category of artefact with examples of the most representative items, and their parallels from sites in Israel and Syria. Examples include jewellery, figurines, weapons, food processing tools, and tools used in a variety of crafts and industries. A CD-ROM is included, containing the database and illustrations of all registered items dating to the Iron Age (100-600 BC).

"This volume comprises all but one of the papers presented at the workshop Unearthing the Wilderness : Workshop on the History and Archaeology of the Negev and Edom in the Iron Age, held at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem, on 12 December 2010. It is supplemented with studies from scholars who were unable to attend the conference but were eager to contribute to this book."--Preface.

Burton MacDonald presents an in-depth study of the archaeology and history of human presence over the past five-six thousand years in the southern segment of the Transjordan/Edomite Plateau and the Dead Sea Rift Valley to the west. The evidence from archaeology for the area spans the entire period though the time for which literary evidence is available is only the past 4000 years, from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 BC). Once literary evidence is available, however, it complements the archaeological record and, as can be amply demonstrated, the written records can be clarified only through the archaeological data. These two sources are, thus, used to describe environments, resources, industries, settlement patterns, and the lifestyles of the inhabitants of this pivotal region. The result is a “story” of the people who lived in the area from the Bronze Age through the Islamic period. What is evident is that there were differences in certain archaeological periods in settlement patterns, as well as lifestyles, between those who lived on the southern segment of the Plateau and those who lived in the Dead Sea Rift Valley or in the lowlands immediately to the west. Moreover, it is obvious that when there were periods of trade and industry, for example, the spice trade and copper mining and processing, the population of the area was higher. Stable governance brought about growth in population and prosperity. But other factors also played their part in these ebbs and flows of population: climatic fluctuations affecting the availability of water and arable land; the development and adoption of new technologies in farming practices, raw material extraction and industrial methods, processes and transportation; and political change resulting in periods of relative stability and instability in government.

A comprehensive history of a state on Judah’s border Edom at the Edge of Empire combines biblical, epigraphic, archaeological, and comparative evidence to reconstruct the history of Judah's neighbor to the southeast. Crowell traces the material and linguistic evidence, from early Egyptian sources that recall conflicts with nomadic tribes to later Assyrian texts that reference compliant Edomite tribal kings, to offer alternative scenarios regarding Edom's transformation from a collection of nomadic tribes and workers in the Wadi Faynan as it relates to the later polity centered around the city of Busayra in the mountains of southern Jordan. This is the first book to incorporate the important evidence from the Wadi Faynan copper mines into a thorough account of Edom's history, providing a key resource for students and scholars of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible.

Tel Malḥata: A Central City in the Biblical Negev presents the results of nine seasons of excavations—two by the first expedition and seven by the second. Tel Malḥata is an elliptical-shaped mound located in the eastern sector of the Arad–Beer-sheba Valley and spreads across some 18 dunams. Tel Malḥata is generally identified with biblical Moladah, one of the cities of Judah, although other identifications have been suggested. The Arabic name of the site, Tell el-Milḥ (“Hill of the Salt”), is apparently indicative of its association with the production and distribution of salt from the Dead Sea in more recent times. The many Bedouin graves on the upper terrace of the tell significantly hindered the planning of the excavations, and consequently the excavations were concentrated mainly where no graves were discerned. The two-volume report consists of 22 chapters that take the reader through six strata of civilization, ranging from the Middle Bronze Age to the early Byzantine period.

Detailed historical and archaeological essays give insight into the many people groups who interacted with and influenced ancient Israel.