List of Contributors  

Introduction  

Ahuva Ho: Over Two Decades of Friendship, Fieldwork, and Comradery with Aren Maeir

Section 1: The Rising Urban Entities: Studies in the Early Bronze Age of the Southern Levant

Pierre de Miroschedji: Metrology and Early Bronze Age Urbanization in the Southern Levant: Some Additional Notes

Haskel J. Greenfield, Jeremy A. Beller and Thomas E. Levy: Butchering Technology During the Early Bronze Age I: An Examination of Microscopic Cut Marks on Animal Bones from Nahal Tillah, Israel

Alexander Joffe: Notes on Early Bronze Age Commensality

David Ussishkin: A Note on the Fortifications of Tel Poran

Ayelet Levy-Reifer and Itzhak Paz: Tel Yarmouth, its Environs and their Reflection on the Urban Landscape of the Shephelah in the Early Bronze Age III

Section 2: “and the Canaanite was then in the land”: The Middle and Late Bronze Age

Beth Alpert Nakhai: When Considering Infants and Jar Burials in the Middle Bronze Age Southern Levant

Nava Panitz-Cohen, Robert A. Mullins, Arlette David and Ariel Shatil: A Late Middle Bronze IIB Burial from Tel Abel Beth Maacah: A Northern Perspective on the Hyksos Phenomenon

Amihai Mazar: Middle Bronze Syro-Anatolian Cylinder Seals and Impressions from Tel Beth Shean

Jeffrey R. Chadwick: Hebron in Early Bronze Age III and Middle Bronze Age II: Fortification Walls in Area I.3 of the American Expedition to Hebron (Tell er-Rumeide)

Wolfgang Zwickel: The Late Bronze Age in the Northern Jordan Valley

Peter M. Fischer and Teresa Bürge: A Levantine Vessel from a Late Cypriot Tomb at Hala Sultan Tekke

Yuval Gadot, Sabine Kleiman and Oded Lipschits: A Tale of Two Cities: Tel Azekah and Tell es-Safi/Gath during the Late Bronze Age

Section 3: “We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines”: The Origins, Material Culture and Interactions of the Philistines

Joseph Maran: Goliath’s Peers: Interconnected Polyethnic Warrior Elites in the Eastern Mediterranean of the 13th and 12th centuries BCE

Rona S. Avissar Lewis: A Matter of Perception: Children in Pre-Israelite and Philistine Houses in the Iron Age I

Shirly Ben-Dor Evian: The Egyptianised Ivories from Philistia: Style, Function and Identity

David Ben-Shlomo: Judah and the Philistines in the Iron Age I and IIA

Celia J. Bergoffen: The Ashdoda Figurine as an Anthropomorphized Chair

Seymour Gitin and Baruch Brandl: An Iron Age II Cache of Phoenician Jewelry from Tel Miqne-Ekron

Louise A. Hitchcock: ‘All the Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites’ (2 Samuel 2:15-18) – An Up-To-Date Account of the Minoan Connection with the Philistines

Linda G. Meiberg: Decorative Motifs on Philistine Pottery and their Connections to Crete

Irit Ziffer: Philistine Head Cups Once More

Maura Sala: Beyond Dagon: Resilience and Entanglement of Canaanite Backgrounds in Sacred Buildings and Cult Practices of Early Iron Age Philistia

Philipp W. Stockhammer: Rethinking Philistia as a Contact Zone

Section 4: “And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines”: Entering the Third Decade of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project

Suembikya Frumin, Yoel Melamed and Ehud Weiss: Current Vegetation of Tel Tzafit

Amit Dagan and Joe Uziel: Surveying the Survey: A Contemporary View on Past Results

Cynthia Shafer-Elliott: Coming Home Again: Household Archaeology at Judahite Gath

Shawn Zelig Aster: The Historical Background of the Destruction of Judahite Gath in 712 BCE

Yigal Levin: “Tell it Not in Gath” (Micah 1:10): What is Gath Doing in a List of the Destroyed Towns of Judah?

Section 5: “Then Hazael king of Syria went up, and fought against Gath, and took it”: The Aramean Realm

Erez Ben-Yosef and Omer Sergi: The Destruction of Gath by Hazael and the Arabah Copper Industry: A Reassessment

Shira Gur-Arieh: Siege Matters: Insights from the Zakkur Inscription and Other Ancient Sources on Ancient Near Eastern Siege Warfare

André Lemaire: Remarks on the Early Use of Aramaic in Egypt

K. Lawson Younger, Jr.: The Aramean Ancestor Cult at Tell Ḥalaf (Gōzān) during the Kapara Period: Tomb 1 and the Tempelpalast

Section 6: “are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?”: New Perspectives on the Biblical Accounts

Marvin A. Sweeney: Balaam in Intertextual Perspective

Gershon Galil: The Formation of the Book of Joshua

Thomas Schneider: The Stigma of Submission: Reassessing Sisera’s Fate in Judges 5:25-27

Chris McKinny: Pressing On: Identifying the “Other” Gath and Its Implications for Understanding the Border between the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah

Itzhaq Shai: Amon, Son of Manasseh

Section 7: “And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron”: Textual and Archaeological Research of the Iron Age

Brent Davis: Literacy in Cyprus and the Levant in the Early Iron Age: Continuities from the Bronze Age

James W. Hardin and Jeffrey A. Blakely: An Alternate Interpretation of Iron Age Tell en-Negila: The Relationship between Tell el-Hesi and Tell en-Negila

Ido Koch: Late Iron Age I Southwestern Canaanite Multi-Facet Stamp-Amulets: Innovative Imagery and Interpreted Egyptian Heritage

Deborah Cassuto: Unravelling the Time for War: A Note on Seasonality, Weaving and the Fall of Ḥazor

Lily Singer-Avitz: The Iron IIB Pottery: On Typological Differences between the Regions of Judah and Israel

Norma Franklin: The Kushite Connection: The Destruction of Lachish and the Salvation of Jerusalem

Assaf Kleiman, Paula Waiman-Barak and Israel Finkelstein: A Cypro-Archaic I Amphora from Megiddo

Stefan Jakob Wimmer: Palestinian Hieratic in Non-Hebrew Context: Egyptian Numerals and Special Signs in Regions Neighboring Israel

Section 8: “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve”: Methodological Approaches to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East

Dvory Namdar, Anat Cohen-Weinberger and Sharon Zuckerman (z”l): Towards a New Understanding of MB IIB Cult Practices: Analyses of Seven-Cupped Bowls from the Shrine of Nahariya

Joseph Yellin: The Origins of Tel Batash-Timnah Pottery of the Late Bronze Age

Dan Cabanes: The Role of Phytolith Analysis in Levantine Archaeology

Kate Raphael and Amotz Agnon: Earthquakes East and West of the Dead Sea Transform in the Bronze and Iron Ages

Ruth Shahak-Gross: Micromorphological Insights into Construction Materials and their Manufacture Technology at Tell es-Safi/Gath

Adi Eliyahu-Behar and Naama Yahalom-Mack: Metallurgical Investigations at Tell es-Safi/Gath

Elizabeth R. Arnold and Haskel J. Greenfield: Understanding Animal Movement and Urban Provisioning through the Integration of Zooarchaeology and Isotopic Analyses: A Case Study from Early Bronze Tell eṣ-Ṣâfı̂ /Gath, Israel  

Oren Ackermann: Life on Nari (Calcrete) Outcrops: A Base for Ecological and Human Systems in the Judean Shephelah  

Section 9: “It’s interesting to see that people had so much clutter even thousands of years ago. The only way to get rid of it all was to bury it, and then some archaeologist went and dug it all up”: Reports on Archaeological Excavations and Finds

Roi Shavit, Gabriel Mazor, Ianir Milevski, Steven A. Rosen and Ofer Marder: Biq’at ‘Uvda 2: A Timnian Site in the Southern Negev

Hamoudi Khalaily, Karen Covello-Paran and Ofer Marder: Lithic Traditions and Formal Tools of an Early Pottery Neolithic Site: Tel Yosef as a Case Study

Shira Albaz: Simple Choices or Hidden Meaning: Understanding Patterns in the Raw Materials of Bead Production throughout the Bronze Age

Estelle Orrelle: Refashioned Sherds – Lost in Classification

Josephine A. Verduci: The Final Cut: Symbolic Acts of Destruction in the Ancient Near East

Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor: Khirbet al-Raʿi near Lachish

Samuel R. Wolff and Steven M. Ortiz: Roll the Dice: Iron Age II Gameboards and Playing Pieces from Tel Gezer

Liora Kolska Horwitz, Eitan Tchernov (z”l) and Omri Lernau: The Archaeozoology of Vered Yericho, an Iron Age II Fortified Structure in the Kingdom of Judah  

Ester Eshel, Nahshon Szanton and Joe Uziel: An Iron Age II Inscription from the City of David

Section 10: “Discover how to visit the past and bring yesterday's stories into our lives today”: Various Other Studies

Jennie Ebeling: Representations of Ancient Daily Life in Early Excavation Reports

Adrian J. Boas: Return to the Holy City: Historical and Archaeological Sources on the Frankish Presence in Jerusalem between 1229 and 1244

Angelika Berlejung: Social Demarcation Lines and Marriage Rules in Urban Babylonia and Their Impact on the Golah  

Color Plates