Transitions during the Early Bronze Age in the Levant

The present volume brings together 14 papers of a workshop organized by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem. The objective of the workshop was to confront scholarly interpretations of the various transitional phases across the late 4th–3rd Millennium (Late Chalcolithic to Early Bronze I, EB I to EB II, and EB III to EB IV / Intermediate Bronze Age) in the southern Levant. The focus was on the nature of the cultural-period-defining traits and their value for distinguishing between changes related to endogenous or exogenous evolution, cultural or demic diffusion. These traits include material culture, architecture, mortuary practices as well as patterns of relationships between sites and subsistence strategies. – The traditional approach to structuring the past is based on a rigid chronological perception of time forced upon dynamic and fluidly transforming societies. The one-dimensional nature of the chronological approach results in periods of well-defined spatiotemporal cultural entities separated by “transitional” periods. These defined cultural entities are often treated as static, though we know they were not, so that we may interpret cultural, historical, sociological, and political aspects of the society. Transition periods, however, are often treated as outliers interpreted against one or both of the periods that bracket them.

Matthew J. Adams and Valentine Roux: Transitions during the Early Bronze Age in the Levant: Methodological Problems and Interpretive Perspectives

Eliot Braun: They Seek It Here, They Seek It There, “That Demned Elusive” Late-Chalcolithic to Early Bronze 1 Transition of the Southern Levant

Amir Golani: The Late Chalcolithic / Early Bronze I Transition and the Ashqelon Occupational Sequence

Valentine Roux: The Southern Levant during the Late Chalcolithic–Early Bronze I Transition: Dispersal and Return of the Descendants

Alex Joffe: New Models for the End of the Chalcolithic in the Southern Levant

Yuval Yekutieli: “Let’s Make a Clean Slate of the Past!” Alternative Reading of the Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age Transition

Ian Cipin: The Chalcolithic as Transitional Period: Looking at the Big Picture

Ianir Milevski, Nimrod Getzov, and Yitzhak Paz: Uneven and Combined: The Synchronization of the Early Bronze Age I and the First Urbanization of the Southern Levant

Aaron Greener and Matthew J. Adams: A Rich Early Bronze Age I Groundstone Assemblage from Tel Megiddo East, Israel 

Yitzhak Paz and Itai Elad: New Vistas on the EB IB–EB II Transition in the Coastal Plain: A View from ʿEn Esur, an EB IB Proto-urban Settlement

Maura Sala: The EB IB–II Transition at Tell el-Far‘ah North: Continuity Versus Discontinuity: A Preliminary Reassessment

Pierre de Miroschedji: The EB I–II Transition in the Southern Levant: Questions of Sequence, Terminology, and Chronology 

Liora Kolska Horwitz: Dynamics of Early Bronze Age Faunal Exploitation in the Sinai Peninsula: Modes of Production, Commodity Production and Trade

Omer Shalev, Naama Walzer, and Yitzhak Paz: The EBA–IBA Transition in the Judean Shephelah: A View from the IBA

Francesca Manclossi and Steven A. Rosen: Transitions, Truncations, Correlations, and Disassociations in Early Bronze Age Lithic Systems of the Southern Levant: Issues of Process