This is the account of a remarkable excavation. It started with a modest dig on an unremarkable tell in Jordan. The name of the tell does not occur in the Bible, and no ancient town of any importance was to be expected under the rubble. The excavator Henk Franken had not yet made a name for himself within the archaeological community.00And yet, from 1960 onwards history was being (re)written at Tell Deir Alla. To discover the secrets of the tell, the expedition team defied cold, rain and stormy winds for months on end, sleeping in rattling tents and working long days on the tell and in the camp. And with success! A meticulous yet efficient excavation method was introduced, the already tenuous relationship between Bible and archaeology was further exacerbated, and the study of excavated pottery was given a scientific basis. The name Deir Alla became an international benchmark for modern scientific research, for prompt publication of the remarkable finds and for independent interpretation of the excavation results.00The story of the excavations at Tell Deir Alla in the 1960s have never been told in any detail, and the excavation results have mostly been published in scholarly books and journals which are difficult to access. This book hopes to remedy that. It recounts the story of the first ten years of the project, from 1959 when funding for the project was sought, until 1969 when the first report was published. The first section describes the organization of the project before the expedition team went out into the field. The second part takes the reader to the actual field work and describes the occupation history of the tell. The story is illustrated by numerous photographs and plans, many of which are being published for the first time.

An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.

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.

The book concerns the inscription written on wall plaster discovered in 1967 at Deir cAlla in the Jordan Valley, and published in 1976. Using new data and the discussions about the text available to date, it deals with six different aspects of study of the text, namely the archaeological context, the palaeography, the general interpretation as well as the interpretation of several separate passages, the language used, and its relation to Old Testament studies.

This Handbook aims to serve as a research guide to the archaeology of the Levant, an area situated at the crossroads of the ancient world that linked the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. The Levant as used here is a historical geographical term referring to a large area which today comprises the modern states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, western Syria, and Cyprus, as well as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. Unique in its treatment of the entire region, it offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the current state of the archaeology of the Levant within its larger cultural, historical, and socio-economic contexts. The Handbook also attempts to bridge the modern scholarly and political divide between archaeologists working in this highly contested region. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it focuses chronologically on the Neolithic through Persian periods - a time span during which the Levant was often in close contact with the imperial powers of Egypt, Anatolia, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. This volume will serve as an invaluable reference work for those interested in a contextualised archaeological account of this region, beginning with the 'agricultural revolution' until the conquest of Alexander the Great that marked the end of the Persian period.

Located in a strategic position on the southern flank of the Ammonite hill country, overlooking the Madaba Plain, the earliest settlement at Tall Jawa dates to the Iron I period (1100-900 BC). This settlement was redesigned during Iron Age II (900-600 BC), and consisted of a walled town, surrounded by a casemate style fortification system and a multi-chambered gate complex. Major buildings, standing to the second storey, are described in detail with their furnishings and contents. A marked change in architecture, ceramic technology, and high status artefacts mark the high point of Tall Jawa during the period of the Assyrian empire (730-600 BC). The major features of each structure are illustrated both in the text and on a CD-ROM. This volume presents the final report of six seasons of excavations at Tall Jawa in central Jordan. The particular focus of this report is the architecture and stratigraphy of the settlements which occupied the site during the Iron Age (1100-600 BC).

This volume deals with the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the central East Jordan Valley, the period of the fall of the Egyptian New Kingdom, and of the birth of a new era, in which small kingdoms such as Ammon, Moab and Israel were born. A broad spectrum of sources is being reviewed: written evidence, excavations and surveys, and ethnographic sources from the 19th century and later. New archaeological evidence is being presented, including a report on the excavations of Tell el-Hammeh on the Zerqa. This evidence, written, material and ethnographical, is incorporated in a new model for the LB-IA transition in the region: a model that explains the events of this turbulent period as the precipitation of a tribal society, where the interactions of tribes and territories determined the political lay-out and shaped the kingdoms of the Iron Age.

A historical survey of the relationship between archaeology and biblical studies in the first archaeological excavations in Palestine at Tell el-Hesi, from 1840 to 1990. Concentrating on the work of major excavators and scholars, Moorey details collaborations and conflicts between archaeologists and theologians who possess different views on the purpose of biblical archaeology.