Notes on Terminology and Chronology

As the original black sheep of tell-based narratives of cultural evolution, the IBA and the terms used to describe it have always served as a sensitive gauge of interpretive trends in Levantine archaeology.⁴ When Nelson Glueck’s surveys in Transjordan and the Negev began to call attention to the numerous desert sites of the “Middle Bronze I” that had so long eluded stratified excavations, W.F. Albright, in an article titled “Abram the Hebrew,” which was still required reading when I began my studies in the late 1970s, argued passionately for the attribution of those sites to donkey caravaneers of the early second millennium who would have plied the international routes between Middle Kingdom Egypt and Ur III and Old Assyrian Mesopotamia, and who were the prototype for the biblical patriarchs.⁵ Material-culture historians such as G.E. Wright, K. Kenyon, R. Amiran and M. Kochavi, struck by ceramic changes effected at the end of the EB III and visualizing them as the product of migration and invasion, sought out terms that would express the transitional nature of the ensuing period: “EB IV–MB I,” “Intermediate EB–MB,” and “Intermediate Bronze Age.” Olga Tufnell, who also favored invasion as the prime mover in cultural change, linked the “Intermediate EB–MB” to the European “Beaker Folk” and to Egypt’s First Intermediate Period, while coining the term “Caliciform Culture” for the period in question.⁶ The processual reaction to cultural–historical archaeology, embraced by local and anglophone researchers of the 1970s and 1980s in the Levant, included a healthy measure of indigenism; insisting that change was internally or systemically motivated unless proven otherwise, many archaeologists adopted the term “EB IV.”⁷ This term, while stressing continuity with the preceding period, has the added advantage of matching the terminology used in Syrian and Lebanese archaeology. Most recently, in an effort to create positivistic “neutral” definitions of the chronological divisions throughout Near East, the ARCANE project put forward the term Early South Levantine (ESL) 6, to cover the time period in question.⁸

The term “Intermediate Bronze Age,” as used here, subsumes earlier terminologies, which all refer to the same set of archaeological phenomena. It seems to be justified by the sheer length of the period – 400–600 years, depending on the subregion – and by the absence – for the most part – of the urbanizing elements that characterize the preceding Early Bronze Age and succeeding Middle Bronze Age. Where the term “EB IV” has become embedded in publications, for example, along the Lebanese coast and in Jordan, the excavators’ terminology will be used or noted.

In terms of absolute chronology, the transitions at either end of the period and between its internal stages are ill-defined. This is due to the absence of modeled radiocarbon sequences running from EB III to the IB, on the one hand, and from the IB to the MB I, on the other. The absence of such sequences is a product of the shifts in settlement patterns that characterize the beginning and end of the period, as well as the tendency of IBA settlements to relocate every few decades, which results in a wealth of sites and cemeteries spread across the landscape rather than superimposed on one another. A single modeled radiocarbon sequence from Tell Abu an-Niaj in the Jordan Valley – a region in which stratified IBA sites are most common – reportedly spans the entire second half of the third millennium.⁹ Combined radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements in the Negev Highlands suggest an occupation in the earlier part of the IBA.¹⁰ These results are consistent with a less clearly resolved sequence for the stratified site of Tell Arqa in Lebanon, one of the few Levantine sites with an EB–IB–MB sequence that shows only brief gaps, and with the new radiocarbon schemes for the third and second millennium Levant.¹¹

Comparative ceramic studies have recently suggested a correlation between well-defined Levantine industries, such as the black wheelmade ware of the northern Jordan Valley and Biqa‘, and Syrian EB IVB, which might be limited to the period between 2300 and 2100 BCE.¹² Jordan Valley IBA assemblages with strong EBA affinities, such as Bet Yerah Period E and Sha‘ar Hagolan, lack black wheelmade ware, and might represent an earlier ceramic phase, between 2500 and 2300.¹³ A similarly early date has been suggested for red-slipped ceramics of Transjordan and the Negev Highlands, and might receive support from twenty-sixth-century radiocarbon dates from the latter region.¹⁴ These will be discussed further below. Marta D’Andrea has collated a very broad selection of ceramics from the few stratified and radiocarbon-dated sites as well as from many single-occupation sites in an attempt to portray “early EB IV” versus “late EB IV” assemblages. The “early” phase is characterized by a technological regression in relation to the EB III, while the “late” phase provides more substantial regional industries that regain the use of slow-wheel coiling and adopt forms from the Syrian EB IVB sphere. As can be appreciated from her own use of scare quotes in these designations, the absolute chronological correlates of these technological observations are still uncertain.

The extension of the IBA over the entire second half of the third millennium might prompt the response that settlement and material culture assemblages are too thin on the ground to account for so long a period of time. In view of the downgrading of the intensity of urban EB proposed in Chapter 3 (and repeated in Chapter 5, for the MBA), a sparse population should be considered the norm over most of the Bronze Age Levant, the IBA being no exception. That said, discoveries of IBA village sites over recent decades, noted below, are gradually populating areas long thought to have been devoid of permanent settlement.

Climate

Of all the periods covered in this volume, there appears to be the greatest degree of agreement over the occurrence of significant climate events in the period between, roughly, 2200 and 1900 BCE, that is, in the second half of the IBA. Multiple lines of proxy evidence (extracted from ice cores, lake bottoms, and cave speleothems across the northern hemisphere) converge in indicating a significant and prolonged drought, caused by anomalies in the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is responsible for the Mediterranean westerlies that deliver precipitation in areas directly relevant to the Levant.¹⁵ But that is where agreement ends, since there has emerged a considerable body of debate over the impact of this event on microregions within the Levant, and over the nature of human response to it. The IBA is a case in point: clearly, the initial impetus toward the abandonment of towns, in the first half of the third millennium, can hardly be related to droughts at the end of the millennium. Moreover, the IBA preference for marginal-zone settlement is maintained from start to end of the period (though it is perhaps more pronounced in the earlier centuries) and would appear to be counterintuitive for a dry period, as would the retreat from these zones in the presumably somewhat improved second millennium climate. Nonetheless, there is a significance to the relative degradation of the agricultural potential of the Levant as a whole in the last quarter of the third millennium and perhaps a century beyond. This is the background against which the decisions taken by communities and individuals should be judged.¹⁶

Regions of Settlement

By c. 2400 BCE, all sites in the Levant that had shown an EB III presence were abandoned, some indefinitely, others only briefly. The fact that even sites with an ideal location and a long settlement history before and after the IBA experienced at least a temporary abandonment in the EBA–IBA transition suggests that it was marked by a significant conceptual rift, which required a fundamental restructuring of society, settlement and production. In Chapter 3 it was suggested that this restructuring was not a dramatic collapse, but a drawn-out transformation. Archaeologically, it is expressed in a series of global changes:

• Settlement gaps at mounds, which were abandoned either for a brief spell at the start of the IBA, for the entire duration of the IBA or permanently (or at least for many centuries, until their previous nature had been long forgotten)

• Resettlement of sparsely settled zones at the margins of EB III settlement, such as the coastal strip and the semi-arid margins in the Negev, eastern Samaria and the Transjordanian plateau

• Village settlement on slopes adjacent to wadi beds and alluvial valleys. Especially in the Jordan Valley, such village sites could be long-lived, creating minor tell sites of their own.

• A resurgent mortuary landscape, characterized by extensive shaft-tomb cemeteries, sometimes unassociated with comparable settlement remains. Interments are often individual and exhibit expressions of status, reflecting a break with the previous collective ethos.

• Regional ceramic styles associated with village workshops, new ceramic repertoires and the much-increased circulation of metals and metal artifacts; these signify new relations of production and new modes of social interaction.

The fissioning of large settlements at the EBA–IBA transition and the establishment or enlargement of nearby cemeteries is representative of the larger settlement picture. The IBA is characterized by an abundance of sites and of cemeteries (both below and above ground). Few settlement sites are stratified, so that their abundance can generally be taken to represent the pattern created by semi- or partially sedentary groups, moving through the landscape over the five centuries of the IBA (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1

Map of sites mentioned in this chapter.

Lebanon, Galilee and Hauran. Genz distinguishes between south Lebanon and the Biqa‘, where IBA remains are known primarily from tombs, and the north Lebanese coast, where urban settlement continued at some sites (principally Byblos and Arqa).¹⁷ Settlement remains were recorded at Tyre on the coast and at Baalbek in the valley, while Marfoe notes IBA pottery collected at sixteen sites in the Biqa‘, all of them previously occupied mounds, and a chamber tomb at Rafid in the southeastern Biqa‘.¹⁸ In highland Galilee, five sites – most of them previously occupied – show some evidence of occupation, alongside nine tombs, most of them not clearly related to settlements.¹⁹ In the Hauran, settlement declined (e.g., at Labwe) with some pastoral continuity at edges of previous towns and a marked pastoralist presence at Kh. Umbashi.²⁰

Upper and Central Jordan Valley. In a pattern that appears typical of valley settlement, the seven identified settlement sites in the Hula Valley were all established on mounds or previously settled sites. Apart from Tel Hazor and Tel Dan, where ephemeral IBA settlement succeeded urban EB III occupation, the other sites had all been abandoned since the late EB I or EB II. A shaft-tomb cemetery adjacent to Hazor and dolmen fields ringing the valley have been attributed to the IBA as well. Bechar has suggested that the IBA settlement represented in the Hula Valley sites should be dated to the second half of the period.²¹

Surveys conducted in the Jezreel and Bet Shean Valleys all note a sharp increase in the number of sites from EB III – counting as many as one hundred find-spots, including upward of twenty cemeteries.²² It is clear that a good number of these occurrences – many of them on mounded, multiperiod sites – mark ephemeral settlement, but there is ample evidence for sustained village settlement as well, particularly in previously unoccupied or long-abandoned sites, such as ‘Ein el-Hilu, Nahal Rimmonim and Murhan. Tell sites, including Megiddo and Bet Shean, show ephemeral occupation on the mounds, off-mound settlement and large cemeteries. On the eastern side of the valley, settlement is clustered in the central sector, north of Wadi Zerqa, with a large and long-lived village site at Tell Um Hammad and smaller, stratified sites excavated at Tell Abu an-Niaj and Tell el-Hayyat. Large, partly excavated cemeteries are reported at Wadi al-Hammah and Tiwal ash-Sharqi.²³

Highlands and Coastal Plain. In the central hills, 285 find-spots of the IBA are recorded in the West Bank archaeological database;²⁴ of these, about a third are cemetery and cave sites, and many more are ephemeral or uncertain identifications. Finkelstein noted forty-nine settlement sites, to which more recent surveys may have added a few.²⁵ He noted a pattern that still appears to hold true, of a greater proportion of settlements in the northern part of the hill country, and of cemeteries in the southern part. The proliferation of small sites and cemeteries in the south might be causally related to the earlier, late EB III, growth of settlement in the adjacent plains. Similarly, Palumbo notes more than 250 find-spots east of the Jordan, of which 29 are cemeteries and only 20 are positively identified as settlements, largely conforming to EB III regional patterns.²⁶ A more detailed review of settlement on the Kerak plateau seems to confirm the EB III–IBA continuity and the likelihood of a considerable number of settled sites, while highlighting the considerable confusion caused by imprecise survey period attributions.²⁷ Sixteen sites and seventeen cemeteries have been counted along the coastal plain, many of them in littoral areas that had not been settled in the EB II or III, with several more sites and tombs surfacing due to salvage work along the eastern fringes of the coastal plain in recent years.²⁸

Negev and Sinai. Upward of 300 IBA sites and tumulus fields have been surveyed and excavated in the Negev Highlands, and a total of perhaps 500 in the Negev and the Arabah Valley. A similar number of sites is recorded in the northern and central Sinai.²⁹ Here too, most sites, by far, are tiny and short-lived, and only a handful are characterized as “permanent.” There is disagreement whether some of the sites attributed to the IBA might have been settled earlier, in EB III, but there is no question that the IBA represents the high-water mark of Bronze Age arid zone settlement.

The prodigious number of IBA “sites” cited in the preceding paragraphs – approaching a total of 2,000 in all parts of the Levant and Sinai – requires explanation and qualification. One aspect to be considered is the visibility of IBA ceramics, which results in their easy identification even as individual occurrences. While in previous and some subsequent periods ceramic production and consumption was concentrated in urban workshops and domestic quarters, the democratic character of IBA ceramic production meant that everyone had access to the typical workshop products. Thus, in a period like EB III, where diagnostics are closely linked to particular workshops – whether the giant platters and pithoi of urban centers or the specialized Khirbet Kerak ware that was largely limited to a small number of communities – non-urban pottery production, if it existed, has never been described and remains buried in the “non-diagnostic” fraction of survey collections. In the IBA, typical techniques, decorations and clays are spread across the entire Levantine landscape. Another aspect to be considered is the sheer length of the period and the transitory character of many settlements, which creates an abundance of sites. That is, single communities may responsible for several sites over time, including both year-round and seasonal occupations. Because of the sedentary, tell-oriented bias of Bronze Age archaeology in the Levant, the dynamics of IBA settlement remain largely in the realm of surmise, founded on survey and salvage work and chance finds, rather than a focused research strategy. This has only lately begun to change, and preliminary results of new studies will be incorporated below, in the detailed description of the period.

Settlement Dynamics: The Abandonment of (Most) Tells

As we saw in Chapter 3, each of the fortified towns of the EB III took its own path to abandonment: some were abandoned early, and others late; some appear to have devoted enormous energies to augmenting their fortifications, right to the bitter end, while others dispensed with fortifications and seem to have established themselves as centralized manorial estates. Thus, though all these towns or strongholds were deserted by 2400 BCE, several typical trajectories to the creation of the post-urban landscape can be described.

At Tel Bet Yerah, in the Jordan Valley, Greenberg and Eisenberg describe a “terminal” EBA settlement that appears to catch the process of collapse in flagrante: the floors of a warren of multiroom, late EBA houses, built in proximity to the latest fortifications there, yielded pottery of crude local manufacture that clearly postdated the classic EB III industries, yet lacked the characteristics of standard IBA pottery, known from many nearby sites.³⁰ Soon afterward, two slab-lined tombs were built just south of the mound, in Kibbutz Deganya A;³¹ they contain ceramics and metal finds that must slightly postdate the “terminal EBA” settlement on the mound, illustrating a common IBA theme of using the abandoned mound as a mortuary marker and perhaps staking a territorial claim for the lands of the former urban settlement. Only a few kilometers south of Bet Yerah, at the far end of the same Kinrot valley that sustained the former town, the large IBA village of Sha‘ar Hagolan was established, virtually reproducing the layout of the “terminal EBA” quarter at Bet Yerah and exhibiting a rich assemblage of well-made IBA ceramics (see Figure 4.8).³² Tel Bet Yerah itself was never resettled in the IBA proper, and only sporadically in later periods.

A slightly different path was taken at Tel Lachish, which had a robust, though largely unexcavated, EB III settlement: here, the site was completely abandoned, with IBA occupation reemerging on a hill just northwest of the mound, within view of it.³³ A shaft-tomb cemetery was established on the slope beneath the site. Similarly, the town of Tel Yarmuth was abandoned for the duration of the IBA (and beyond), with small IBA settlements and cemeteries established just out of sight of the mound, 1–2 kilometers to the northeast.³⁴ This pattern appears to have been repeated at several other sites in the southern plains (e.g., Tell es-Sakan and the nearby IBA cemetery at Tell el-‘Ajjul).

At the great fortified center of ‘Ai, no IBA settlements were identified on the mound or in its vicinity, but the extensive cemeteries of ‘Ain Samiya/Dhahr Mirzbaneh, and the associated tumulus and platform that appear to have been mortuary cult installations, were established within 10–12 kilometers of it.³⁵ This pattern is repeated in other hill sites, where IBA hamlets, tombs and cult sites offer a nuanced picture of hill-country settlement, suggesting an integration of agricultural and pastoral pursuits within the former urban territories.³⁶

At Bab edh-Dhra‘, Jericho, Tel Bet Shean and Megiddo, there is evidence – usually ephemeral – of IBA reoccupation after a period of abandonment. At Bab edh-Dhra‘ and Jericho, a few houses were built on the perimeter or just outside the erstwhile town,³⁷ while at Megiddo and Bet Shean there is some activity on the mound proper; at Bab edh-Dhra‘ and Megiddo there is evidence for small-scale cultic activity as well. Each of these sites has a substantial cemetery that must have served more than just the temporary occupants of the mound. Tel Hazor and Tel Dan also show limited reoccupation, although the cemeteries associated with these sites are either not identified (Dan) or not excavated (Hazor).³⁸

In all the cases described above, the former occupants of the EBA towns were dispersed, creating a new, site-abundant settlement pattern that carefully avoided the reinstatement of the fortified place as a dominant presence (Figure 4.2). Yet, in each case, the erstwhile towns were not forgotten and often continued to serve as a commemorative or territorial resource: small settlements were established within a 2-kilometer radius of the mound and earlier cemeteries were reused, or, as was often the case, new cemeteries were established within view, where there had been no EBA cemeteries before. At Bab edh-Dhra‘ and Megiddo, cultic structures were maintained at the edge of the mound or in the previous cultic area. In those cases where settlement was renewed, it either took the form of a squat within the old EBA buildings (e.g., at Dan and Hazor) or carefully skirted earlier ruins (as at Jericho). A. Mazar sees this as intentional avoidance of places associated with recent disasters. S. Paz expands on the theme, suggesting that the tells were part of a redrawing of the IBA cognitive landscape, specifically intended to marginalize the former fortified centers and reject the values embodied by them.³⁹ The almost universal presence of shaft-tomb cemeteries adjacent to these sites, however, does point to a still-viable territorial claim. Whether as direct, biological descendants of the previous inhabitants, as non-urban kinsfolk, or as new arrivals inventing a historically sanctioned connection to the land, IBA people were not oblivious to the ruins of earlier towns but incorporated them in their landscape.

Figure 4.2

Tell-avoidance in the IBA: (a) the location of settlements in relation to Tel Yarmuth (courtesy of S. Paz), (b) Tell ed-Duweir/Lachish and (c) the walled precinct of EBA Bab edh-Dhra‘, with IBA find-spots circled. Redrawn after Tufnell Reference Tufnell1958: pl. 89, and Rast and Schaub Reference Rast and Schaub2003: fig. 1.4.

If tell-avoidance was a common and significant trope in the cognitive landscape of the IBA, it was not universal. A few tell sites, in different parts of the countryside, were substantially resettled in the IBA. These fall into two groups: north Lebanese coastal sites like Tell Arqa and Byblos, where the settlement hiatus must have been very brief, and where IBA (or, more properly for this region, EB IV) settlement shows no decline with respect to the earlier period, and a few south Levantine sites that buck the typical IBA trend and fully reoccupy earlier mounds.

At Tell Arqa, part of a densely built residential quarter was excavated (Figure 4.3), spanning the entire second half of the third millennium BCE (Strata 16–15, Period P).⁴⁰ Houses, built along a peripheral street, were two stories high, with the lower floor given over – by the end of Stratum 16 – entirely to storage of great quantities of grain in a series of narrow cells and the upper floors used as living quarters. A great conflagration at about 2200 BCE allowed the preservation of the charred grain and massive quantities of carbonized timber used in the construction of the house interiors. The site was not fortified, but protected by the continuous exterior wall of a row of rooms built around the perimeter of the site. The pottery is described as very much a local repertoire, different from that of the preceding phase, characterized by “a coherent set of liquid-related or drinking vessels, including a variety of jugs and large numbers of conical beakers and one-handled cups.”⁴¹ The flint and metal finds, however, evince a strong connection to inland Syria.

Figure 4.3

EB IV houses at Tell Arqa.

Courtesy of J.-P. Thalmann.

Byblos underwent a significant destruction in the latter part of the third millennium, bringing to an end the urban EB III settlement there (Stratum K IV, according to Saghieh’s scheme). It was immediately rebuilt, preserving its cultic core while apparently losing some of its urban density.⁴² Whether this transition is coeval with the EBA–IBA transition in the southern Levant is uncertain, although the presence of Fifth Dynasty objects in K IV might indicate a late twenty-fourth-century date for the end of the EB III at Byblos. Genz notes the presence of inscribed Sixth Dynasty objects, perhaps in the earlier IBA (EB IV) stratum at the site, as well as evidence for mutual contact with the Mesopotamian Ur III dynasty, at the very end of the millennium.⁴³ Like Arqa, Byblos appears to have developed its own ceramic tradition in the late third millennium, showing some generic similarities to neighboring regions but evincing little interaction with the village industries of the inland and southern Levant.

In the southern Levant, Tel Na‘ama in the Hula Valley had been abandoned since the end of the EB II when it was resettled in the IBA.⁴⁴ Some 2 meters of accumulation suggest a substantial and long-lived settlement on the 4-hectare mound. Tell Um Hammad, a large EB I site in the southern Jordan Valley that was reduced to a modest village in EB II, was resettled extensively in the IBA, moving (expanding?) from the eastern to the western hill.⁴⁵ The resettlement was accompanied by the establishment of several cemeteries. Kh. Iskandar, on the Wadi Wala in southern Jordan, was a fortified EB III town. Uniquely among sites of this type, it was extensively reoccupied in the IBA after what appears to be a brief hiatus and its fortifications may have remained in use.⁴⁶ All these southern Levant settlements, however, can be accommodated within the pattern of IBA village settlement, which will be our next concern.

Village Ceramic Production

Ceramic production was integral to village life in the IBA and was one of the modes of post-urban regeneration. In the EB III, ceramics had been purveyors of inequality: the great Houses of the EB III used massive pithoi to advertise their accumulation of staple wealth, and the massive platters to engage in conspicuous hospitality, while putting those who were being fed in irremediable debt. With the demise of towns, the attached ceramic industries were all extinguished; ceramic know-how, however, was certainly preserved, since it quickly resurfaced in the dispersed village industries of the IBA. Those industries maintained the technology of EBA ceramic production, while improving its technical quality and changing its decorative and formal priorities. One of the striking changes in the ceramic inventory was the adoption of a new set of containers designed for the mixing, distribution and consumption of beverages (Figure 4.7). These did not take the same form in every region – for example, distribution vessels could have a pinched rim (common in the northern Jordan Valley) or a separately formed spout (common in the south and coast), cups could be relatively deep or shallow – but the functions were nearly always reproduced. The shift from competitive feasting to convivial drinking implied by the change in the ceramic inventory has deep social implications that resonate with the other changes effected in the transition to IBA. But they also bear the imprint of cultural transmission, since a similar set was adopted broadly in western Syria in the mid-third millennium, and certain stylistic flourishes – as well as a complete repertoire of specialized vessels (the black wheelmade ware of the Biqa‘ and northern Jordan Valley) – can be shown to travel from north to south.⁶⁷

Figure 4.7

The IBA drinking repertoire in several workshop traditions: (a) black wheelmade ware (after Tadmor Reference Tadmor1978: fig. 8), (b) northern Jordan Valley (after Eisenberg Reference Eisenberg1985: figs. 3, 4), (c) middle Jordan Valley (after Feig Reference Feig1991: figs. 5, 6) and (d) Judean hills/Negev Highlands (after Cohen Reference Cohen1999: figs. 145–147).

Redrawn by N. Earon.

The rarity of stratified IBA sites and the long duration now accorded to the period seems to have induced a need among archaeologists to subdivide the period chronologically. Since radiocarbon dates are still thin on the ground, ceramic typology has been invoked to establish a bi- or tripartite division (e.g., EB IVA, B, C). But, as in the 400-year EB III, little consensus has been achieved. Putting aside chronology, for the moment, the rich ceramic record of the period does allow us to draw a map of interlocking regional ceramic traditions that represent a blend of pre-existing local styles, acquisitions from the Syrian ceramic tradition, and innovation.⁶⁸

A graphic illustration of the process of ceramic regeneration can be seen in the Kinrot Valley, south of Lake Kinneret, where a “terminal EB” post-urban ceramic horizon identified at Tel Bet Yerah gives way to a specialized village industry represented in the abandonment assemblage of the sprawling IBA site of Sha‘ar Hagolan (Figure 4.8).⁶⁹ The Period E assemblage at Bet Yerah was characterized by a limited repertoire of forms – two types of bowls (round- and straight-walled), one beaker, two types of cooking pots (holemouth and necked), two of jars (small and large) and four-spouted lamps. All were entirely handmade, with many closed vessels showing evidence of having been pressed into a mold. There was no slip or burnish, and the only decoration was a strip of rope-molding along the bowl rims or at the join between body and neck on large jars and incised lines on holemouth rims. Lost in transition were core EB III techniques (wheel finish, red slips, pattern burnish, painted designs) and forms (platters, combed jars and pithoi, jugs).

Figure 4.8

“Terminal EBA” pottery from Tel Bet Yerah, Period E (left), and IBA pottery from Sha‘ar Hagolan (right). After Greenberg and Eisenberg Reference Greenberg, Eisenberg, Greenberg, Eisenberg, Paz and Paz2006: figs. 5.96–5.99; Eisenberg Reference Eisenberg2012: figs. 41–47.

Reproduced by permission of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The assemblage recovered from the floors of the large village of Sha‘ar Hagolan, about 4 kilometers southeast of Bet Yerah, represents the final abandonment of the site, which may be assumed to have occurred several generations after that of Bet Yerah. Based on the same core types as the Bet Yerah group – two bowl types, beakers, holemouth and necked pots, jars and four-spouted lamps, the Sha‘ar Hagolan potter added a few minor types (particularly in the amphoriskos category) but, more pointedly, reestablished several EBA techniques – tournette formation, red slip and paint, combing – and added some new IBA flourishes – the folded “envelope” ledge handle; the wide, flat base; the sliced rim; and pie-crust decoration. The emphasis on pouring and drinking vessels was now marked, with strong parallels in EB IVA Syria.⁷⁰

The Sha‘ar Hagolan assemblage is generally comparable to the comprehensive village assemblage from ‘Ein el-Hilu. However, the latter shows a broader range of types and, in addition to locally made wares, contains artifacts from distant ceramic workshops with well-established traditions – e.g., trickle-painted vessels from the Jordan Valley and isolated artifacts from the Lebanese Biqa‘ or beyond it. It may therefore be permissible to posit a gradual development in the IBA ceramic industries in the northern valley regions, beginning with the post-urban household manufacturing of Period E at Tel Bet Yerah, continuing with the emergence of specialized village workshops such as that of Sha‘ar Hagolan and ‘Ein el-Hilu, and culminating in the emergence of distinct regional styles. These would have enabled ceramics to acquire added significance in the context of reciprocal exchange, signaling their origin and possibly their biographies – who made, handled, owned and exchanged them – and hence their social value.

Still in the northern valleys, the typologically and technologically distinct black wheelmade ware (BWW) encapsulates the ceramic interface between the urban aspect of the Syrian Levant and the more southerly region. The BWW assemblage consists entirely of vessels used for the mixing, distribution and consumption of liquids: bottles and kraters, teapots and cups. The vessels were made of fine clay (well-levigated Lower Cretaceous clays of the type previously used for EBA Metallic wares) and turned on a slow wheel, allowing them to attain a high level of delicacy and symmetry. Their dark coloring was attained by reductive firing, and they were decorated with white bands, often scrabbled to reveal the dark surface beneath them. BWW was found in considerable quantities in upper Jordan Valley sites (particularly at Hazor), and in tombs in the Jezreel, Jordan and Biqa‘ Valleys. All their components can be shown to have Syrian antecedents, but the peculiar combination and technique make them a distinct regional type that straddles the interface between the urban and non-urban potting traditions.⁷¹ Other regional industries of the northern valleys include the trickle-painted vessels of the middle Jordan Valley (both east and west of the river) and the Upper Galilee/Hula Valley industry.⁷² Each of these, as well as numerous regional industries in areas farther to the southwest, shows its own set of peculiarities and preferences (painted decoration in the first group, pinched mouths and stippled decoration in the second, and so on), placed within a shared typological framework.

In Transjordan, where the transition from EB III was less accentuated, in social terms, than in the west, the old red-slipped tradition was carried over to the IBA, with only slight changes in form seen in the earliest phase (this is best seen in the red-slipped vessels of Transjordanian origin, on the cusp between EB III and the IBA, found in early IBA sites of the Negev; see below). Soon, however, regional styles become more clearly articulated, and the red-slipped wares of Kh. Iskandar, for example, are quite distinct from those of other sites.⁷³

The “southern” facies of IBA pottery, which extends from the central hill region to the Negev and along the south-central coastal plain, is perhaps the most widespread regional style. It presents a typically sandy external aspect, verging to green in some coastal industries, and rarely carries any vestiges of painted decoration, but only occasional stippled, combed or incised patterns. Sloping-shouldered jars with vestigial “envelope” ledge handles, or without handles, are the most common ceramic artifact, as well as similarly shaped amphoriskoi. Also prominent are ridged bowls, teapots/teapot amphoriskoi and cups, four-spouted lamps and sliced-rim holemouth pots. Rope-decorated pithoi occur in the south, as well as in other regional industries, achieving a quite extraordinary size in some cases – evidence of the agricultural settings of the ceramic industries. As in the northern valleys, village workshops proliferated in the central hill and coastal regions, allowing for variation and invention within the broad outlines of the southern/coastal tradition.

Type A, Individualizing Tombs

A recurring category that cuts across regions and grave or tomb types is the singular, articulated male dagger-burial (these are nearly always single burials, but the occasional double burial is included in this category, as it represents a single event of inhumation). The clearest performance of this type of interment can be seen in stone-lined cist or chamber tombs excavated at Tell el-‘Ajjul.⁹⁹ In these tombs, most of which were oriented to the east, an articulated male skeleton was placed in a fetal position on its right side, with a dagger at its waist. Accompanying finds could include a jar, cuts of meat or personal ornaments. These tombs were sealed with large slabs and never reentered, though they were probably visible on the surface. Similar constructed, slab-roofed cist tombs were excavated at Tiwal ash-Sharqi in the eastern Jordan Valley,¹⁰⁰ and as noted by Tubb, they seem to be derived from above-ground cairns with central cists, of the type prevalent along the rift valley and in the hilly regions and excavated, for example, at Ramat Hanadiv, at the southern tip of the Carmel range (Figure 4.12).¹⁰¹ At that site – a mid-third-millennium seasonal burial site associated with transhumant pastoralists – about forty burial cairns were identified, all oriented toward the setting sun. Three of the twenty excavated tombs contained weapons – a dagger and two mace heads – but no other artifacts. Other members of this class might include circle dolmens of the northern Jordan Valley and the adjacent plateaus, both east and west; tumuli in the central hills; and some of the Negev Highlands tumuli.¹⁰² In all cases, burials were a singular event, probably conducted soon after death, but they created a highly visible mark in the landscape that could serve as the focus of commemorative performances, attract additional burials and signal territorial claims.¹⁰³

Figure 4.12

Type A individualizing tombs at Ramat Hanadiv (after Greenberg Reference Greenberg and Hirschfeld2000: figs. 6, 11) and Jericho (after Kenyon Reference Kenyon1965: figs 24, 26); daggers are scaled approximately 1:8. Type B collective tombs at Hazorea‘ (after Meyerhof Reference Meyerhof1989: figs. 7, 8) and Jericho (after Kenyon Reference Kenyon1965: fig. 66).

Jericho images reproduced by permission of the Council for British Research in the Levant.

Sharing most of the attributes of the built graves are the “dagger” and “composite” shaft tombs of the Jericho necropolis, as defined by Kathleen Kenyon.¹⁰⁴ The former are small tombs where articulated adult skeletons (all male, when identified), placed on their right side, are provided with daggers and an occasional personal ornament, but no pottery (Figure 4.12). The latter are like the “dagger” tombs, but they contain pottery and additional items of personal adornment. The “dagger” tombs, differing in size and content from all other tombs at Jericho, occupy a defined portion of the cemetery, but they do not seem to have been marked above-ground. The use of chamber tombs for a one-off ceremony is perplexing, since the point of having a sealed, accessible chamber is to allow periodic reentry (see below). But the concentration of these tombs in a specific zone within the cemetery suggests that their inhabitants were all considered peers, and that – as in the case of cairn-fields and other cemeteries composed of marked graves (including modern ones) – the relevant reference group is the entire community, rather than the immediate kin of the deceased. Thus, rather than patresfamilias, the men in question were perceived (or at least presented) as “pillars of the community.”

A significant attribute of these tombs is their pronounced gender identification, underscored by the interment of a dagger, worn at the waist, often to the exclusion of anything but a few items of personal adornment. All the daggers that have been in analyzed in this class of burial proved to have been made of copper alloy, containing 1–5 percent arsenic.¹⁰⁵ Since local copper, familiar from the Wadi Arabah production sites and the Negev Highlands ingots, contains only traces of arsenic, the presence of arsenical alloys suggests input from northern copper sources. The daggers therefore carried added value, as exotic items obtained by way of extended networks of exchange or by dint of long-distance travel. Their interment at the waist of the men who wore them points to their being inalienable objects that could not be separated from their owners without risk of offending them, even after death. In other words, they were, in life, a determinant of identity or parts of a new entity – “a man with a fine dagger” (often characterized as a warrior) – that is no longer reducible to its components,¹⁰⁶ and, in death, a fitting gift that ensured the maintenance of mutual obligations between the living and the dead.

Type B, Communal Tombs

The archetype for the IBA communal tomb is the remarkable group of multichambered shaft tombs from Megiddo and Hazorea‘.¹⁰⁷ Typically, these tombs have a quatrefoil plan, with a square shaft on one side leading to a square central chamber that provides access to three rectangular chambers, one on each side. Since the Megiddo tombs were all compromised by later use in antiquity, the comparable tombs at Hazorea‘, sealed in antiquity, might help illustrate their use. In Tomb 3, the largest and best preserved of the tombs at Hazorea‘, no articulated skeletal remains were found, but only numerous bone fragments that carpeted the central room and extended into the two lateral chambers, one of which was furnished with benches (Figure 2.12). Wide and deep troughs were cut into the floor of the lateral chambers and then covered with paving stones. Apart from a few pins, a copper knife, and a bead, finds consisted of a large collection of ceramics, among them thirty-eight jugs, thirty teapots, a cooking pot and several other containers, and several simple flint flake and blade tools. The other tombs at Hazorea‘, although smaller in size, yielded comparable finds. The surviving inventories at Megiddo are remarkably similar, with quantities of teapots and jugs, but very few other objects or personal effects of the departed.

There is little doubt that these tombs served as repositories for secondary interments but, more importantly, as places of periodic – perhaps even scheduled – commemorative performances that included the pouring-out of liquids into the carved troughs and the consumption of food and drink. The complete disintegration of the skeletal material should also be taken as intentional, as it is repeated in countless IBA tombs. It represents the final stage in a prolonged rite of passage for the departed that offers a sharp contrast to the Type A tombs: (1) primary defleshing (outside the tomb), (2) disarticulation and collection, (3) deposition in tomb and (4) fragmentation and mingling with ancestral remains. By the end of this process, the individual has been completely subsumed in the ancestral group and can no longer be identified.

Like the Type A individual monument, which finds its origin in long-standing commemorative practices of the marginal zones, the Type B collective hypogeum seems to be a concept shared across large parts of third millennium western Asia. A remarkable juxtaposition and continuous reformulation of these two approaches to commemoration occurs at Tell Banat, on the Syrian Euphrates, as discussed by Anne Porter.¹⁰⁸ There, massive above-ground burial monuments – the White Monument outside the mound and the Mortuary Monument on the mound – belong to the widespread practice, from the Euphrates down to the Levant, of enabling the cohesion of far-flung pastoral societies by “the reproduction of territorial and descent-based relationships through ancestor burials contained in massive built structures,” while a remarkable, ashlar-built subterranean chamber tomb (Tomb 7), very similar in plan to the Megiddo and Hazorea‘ tombs, represents the concentration of power with specific descent-lines in the same societies.

Most of the IBA tombs in the Levant can be placed on a spectrum between Type A – singular burials of prominent men – and Type B – communal tombs of nuclear or extended families. Closest to Type A are shaft tombs containing primary burials of males with daggers that provide evidence for a more extended ritual, or of several burial episodes. A relatively large, but damaged, cave excavated at Moza, near Jerusalem, contained one surviving supine burial, four jars, a tanged copper spearhead, two tin bronze daggers, copper studs and a decorated copper belt (?).¹⁰⁹ It seems likely that this cave was entered more than once. Tomb 1 at Horshim, on the coastal plain, contained three primary burials, one of which was provided with a tin bronze dagger.¹¹⁰

A different approach, also related to Type A burials, is the extension of the single-interment shaft tomb concept to entire cemeteries. This approach characterizes several cemeteries in the central coastal zone, in the Yarkon and Ayyalon River basins, where large numbers of shaft tombs were found, each containing a single primary interment of a man, woman or child, provided with a nearly identical “burial kit,” usually comprised of a jar, a cup and a lamp.¹¹¹ These individual tombs are only slightly removed from the simple pit tombs that characterize the coastal region in the second millennium BCE, suggesting that the physical affordances of the coastal lithology might have affected the choice of burial patterns. In such cemeteries, the uniform personal inventories underscore the collective ethos: all the interred belong to the community as a whole, rather than to their immediate kin.

Several tombs combine the concepts of individual and communal burial. Two slab-lined shaft tombs at Deganya, just south of Tel Bet Yerah, seem to have been family tombs.¹¹² The better-preserved of the two contained six primary burials – three adult males, an elderly female and two children – accompanied by a single spouted pot and three daggers, one of them of made of tin bronze.

A bilobate tomb at ‘Enan contained, in one chamber, a single adult male in primary articulation, accompanied by five daggers, apparently all of tin-bronze, a whetstone, a spearhead, an arrowhead, three copper pins, and ceramic lamps, amphoriskoi, jars and cooking pots.¹¹³ In the second chamber there were two adult males, one adult female, a child and an infant. Here too, the males were provided with daggers and a whetstone, and the female with rings, bracelets and a 49.5-centimeter-long toggle pin. Ceramics here included cups, teapots and broad-spouted pouring vessels, or askoi, in addition to the other types. A trough between the two chambers contained, among other things, a group of spearheads.

There are several additional examples of tombs with multiple primary burials where males were provided with daggers – often of tin bronze that could have been obtained only in Syria – but were interred alongside others, in tombs that were clearly reentered periodically and which served as a venue of rituals that included pouring and consumption of beverages.¹¹⁴ These tombs thus combine abbreviated mortuary treatment of the deceased with more extended familial commemoration within the tomb. While these tombs accord males “warrior” status, the tombs at Tel ‘Amal illustrate the reopening of tombs for additional burials and for commemorative meals, without gender differentiation among the primary interments, which remained intact.¹¹⁵ Tombs of this type are thus further removed from Type A, moving closer to Type B.

Most shaft tombs in the hill regions and the interior valleys belong to cemeteries containing scores or hundreds of shaft tombs, usually clustered on hillslopes in discrete groups that betray a degree of planning and institutional memory. The phenomenon of empty tombs has been recorded in several cases, and a detailed study of one of Jericho’s standard tombs revealed that it had lain open and unused for weeks before it was put into use.¹¹⁶ This can be taken as evidence of preparation for burial in the context of the “long” mortuary treatment that we have associated with Type B communal tombs. In most of these tombs there are fragmentary skeletal remains, nearly always representing only a small part of the original skeleton, belonging to one or two persons. But there are nearly always outliers that are larger than the others, or that contain remains of several persons or greater quantities of ceramic containers (Figure 2.12, bottom). Often, tombs show clear signs of reentry such as the repeated use of lamps, placed in lamp niches, the rearrangement of finds within the tombs, the introduction of food remains or various modifications of the shaft (such as the addition of incised graffiti).¹¹⁷ These and other variations have been cited as evidence of status disparity and display in IBA society,¹¹⁸ but if so, it is only limited disparity, of the same order as that exhibited between larger and smaller households in the settlements. Where there were more family members available to assist in the preparation of the tomb, or more participants in, or iterations of, the burial rites, we may find larger tombs or bigger inventories. The ‘Enan tomb described above, with its rich cache of exotic weapons, personal ornaments and serving vessels, might be the only clear-cut display of conspicuous consumption in the IBA mortuary contexts.

Broadly speaking, the huge cemeteries in the middle and southern zones of the central hills (e.g., ‘Ain Samiya/Dhahr Mirzbaneh, with 1,100 tombs, and Kirmil, with 850) have a preponderance of single or double disarticulated inhumations in shaft tombs, seemingly truncating the full Type B treatment before the final step of “mingling with the ancestors.” This would indicate that the collective identity, represented by all those interred in each cemetery, was still a powerful force, competing with the familial one. Greenhut has suggested that each of these cemeteries was marked by a hilltop tumulus or cultic platform, such as indeed have been excavated at Efrata, Dhahr Mirzbaneh and Jebel Qa‘aqir.¹¹⁹ Such installations would have served both as a visible marker of the subsurface tombs on the hillslopes and as a possible venue for the pre-burial rites. Evidence of a different kind of setting for collective mortuary rites comes from Qedesh, in the Upper Galilee, where a huge collection of pottery, including numerous cooking vessels, lamps and drinking sets was found along with a small number of human and animal bones in an artificial cave that was provided with a central trough and a modeled pillar, in which a shelf and niche were carved.¹²⁰ These seem to be remnants of mortuary feasts, perhaps associated with the collection and redistribution of bones of the dead in the process of secondary interment.

The negotiation evident in the mortuary practices of the IBA, between those typically associated with mobile populations (Type A) and those typically associated with sedentary village agriculturalists (Type B), must reflect the revived importance of these two modes of post-urban existence, which had been suppressed during the first half of the millennium, and the interpenetration of values between them. The many local variations visible in cemeteries are doubtless a reflection of the length of the period, the diversity of regional identities (as expressed, for example, in the ceramic industries) and the fact that the mortuary tradition had to be reinvented after the EB II and III, when familial and tribal support structures were suppressed. The relative wealth of finds in the tombs – especially of precious metal weapons and personal ornaments – is a reminder of the retreat from the urbanizing economies of accumulation and commodity production, and a return to an economy in which the mutual fulfillment of obligations – including those of the living to the dead – was of paramount importance.