The area of the Judean Foothills – the biblical Shephelah – has in recent years become one of the most intensively excavated regions in the world. Numerous projects, at sites of different types and utilizing various methodological approaches, are actively excavating in this region. Of particular importance are the discoveries dating to the Iron Age, a period when this region was a transition zone between various cultures—Philistine, Canaanite, Judahite, and Israelite. The current volume includes reports from eight of the excavations currently being conducted in the region (Azekah, Beth Shemesh, Gezer, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tel Burna, Tel Halif, Tell es-Safi/Gath, and Tel Zayit), as well as a general study of the region by Ido Koch. The importance of this volume lies not only in the fact that it collects up-to-date reports on most of the current excavations in the region but also demonstrates the lively, at times even boisterous, scholarly discussions taking place on various issues relating to the archaeology and history of the Iron Age Shephelah and its immediate environs. This volume serves as an excellent introduction to current research on the Iron Age in this crucial zone and also serves as a reflection of current trends, methodologies, and approaches in the archaeology of the Southern Levant.

The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean offers new insights into the material and social practices of many different Mediterranean peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages, presenting in particular those features that both connect and distinguish them. Contributors discuss in depth a range of topics that motivate and structure Mediterranean archaeology today, including insularity and connectivity; mobility, migration, and colonization; hybridization and cultural encounters; materiality, memory, and identity; community and household; life and death; and ritual and ideology. The volume's broad coverage of different approaches and contemporary archaeological practices will help practitioners of Mediterranean archaeology to move the subject forward in new and dynamic ways. Together, the essays in this volume shed new light on the people, ideas, and materials that make up the world of Mediterranean archaeology today, beyond the borders that separate Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Late Bronze Age in the Levant is a period of much interest to archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars. This is a period with intense international relations, rich in ancient sources, which provide historical data for the period, and is a crucial formative period for the peoples and cultures who play central roles in the Hebrew Bible. Recent archaeological research in Israel and surrounding countries has provided new, exciting, and in some cases, groundbreaking finds, interpretations and understanding of this period. The fourteen papers in this volume represent the proceedings of a conference held at Bar-Ilan University in 2014 (with the additional of several invited papers not presented at the conference), which provide both overviews of Late Bronze Age finds from several important sites in Israel and surrounding countries, as well as several synthetic studies on the various issues relating to the period. These papers, by and large, represent a broad view of cuttting edge research in the archaeology of the ancient Levant in general, and on the Late Bronze Age specifically.

The Late Bronze Age in the Levant is a period of much interest to archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars. This is a period with intense international relations, rich in ancient sources, which provide historical data for the period, and is a crucial formative period for the peoples and cultures who play central roles in the Hebrew Bible. Recent archaeological research in Israel and surrounding countries has provided new, exciting, and in some cases, groundbreaking finds, interpretations and understanding of this period. The fourteen papers in this volume represent the proceedings of a conference held at Bar-Ilan University in 2014 (with the additional of several invited papers not presented at the conference), which provide both overviews of Late Bronze Age finds from several important sites in Israel and surrounding countries, as well as several synthetic studies on the various issues relating to the period. These papers, by and large, represent a broad view of cuttting edge research in the archaeology of the ancient Levant in general, and on the Late Bronze Age specifically.

In this volume honoring Tel Aviv University archaeologist David Ussishkin, colleagues and students representing some of the major names in the field today present 25 essays on a variety of topics of interest to the honoree. The contributions cover a range of periods from the Late Bronze Age through the Persian period and disparate subjects such as Judahite bullae, destruction levels at Megiddo, a diversity of results from various tells in Israel (and one in Jordan), Egyptian influence on Canaan, the city of Jerusalem and its temple, and much on the archaeology of the Shephelah, an area of particular interest to the honoree—who is best known for his excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, the site of biblical Lachish. The volume takes its title from a reference in one of the Lachish ostraca. From 1966 until his retirement in 2004, David Ussishkin taught in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. Between 1975 and 1978, he served as Chair of the Department, and between 1980 and 1984 as the Director of the Institute of Archaeology. In 1996, he was nominated incumbent of the Austria Chair in Archaeology of the Land of Israel in the Biblical Period. He served as the editor of Tel Aviv: The Journal of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University for 30 years.

This book focuses on the characteristics and the development of the stone vessel industry in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1200 – 330 BCE).

Excavations at the early Iron age site of Khirbet Qeiyafa (Israel), directed from 2007 to 2011 by Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor under the auspices of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority, have attracted considerable scholarly and media attention since the very first season, when the discovery of an inscribed ostracon sparked controversies over the site's historical significance and nature. Located at the entrance of the Elah Valley, protected by a casemate wall and two monumental gateways, the settlement of Qeiyafa existed for barely half a century. Its dating and the correlation of the archaeological evidence with the regional history, not least the rise of an early Judahite monarchy, have become matters of intense academic debate. Resulting from a colloquium of the Swiss Society of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, this volume offers a condensed report by main excavator Yosef Garfinkel as well as several in-depth studies on archaeological, historical, epigraphical, iconographical and biblical issues.

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.

"The Socoh Intensive Survey was initiated in 2010 by the Institute of Archaeology, Southern Adventist University, and the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the intent to conduct a large-scale excavation of the site beginning in 2011. The goal of the anticipated project was to expand the work of the Khirbet Qeiyafa Archaeological Project into a regional study focusing on the history of the Elah Valley and the expansion of Judah in the Early Iron Age. Specific research questions to be addressed were (1) the geopolitical interplay between the cities of Tell Zakariya-Azekah, Khirbet Qeiyafa-Sha'arayim and Khirbet Shuweikeh-Socoh within Judah and the border of Philistia; (2) Socoh's stratigraphic and historical occupation; (3) its fortification history as a border garrison town; (4) its relationship to the major military history of the region (Philistine, Assyrian and Babylonian incursions); and (5) its larger significance in the development of the Shephelah"--

Memory in a Time of Prose investigates a deceptively straightforward question: what did the biblical scribes know about times previous to their own? Daniel D. Pioske attempts to answer this question by studying the sources, limits, and conditions of knowing that would have shaped biblical stories told about a past that preceded the composition of these writings by a generation or more. This book is comprised of a series of case studies that compare biblical references to an early Iron Age world (ca. 1175-830 BCE) with a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence from the era in which these stories are set. Pioske examines the relationship between the past disclosed through these historical traces and the past represented within the biblical narrative. He discovers that the knowledge available to the biblical scribes about this period derived predominantly from memory and word of mouth, rather than from a corpus of older narrative documents. For those Hebrew scribes who first set down these stories in prose writing, the means for knowing a past and the significance attached to it were, in short, wed foremost to the faculty of remembrance. Memory in a Time of Prose reveals how the past was preserved, transformed, or forgotten in the ancient world of oral, living speech that informed biblical storytelling.