Table of Contents

Part I: 1. The lower and middle paleolithic of the Southern Levant Gary Rollefson; 2. An anthropological review of the upper paleolithic in the Southern Levant Anna Belfer-Cohen and Nigel Goring-Morris; 3. Getting it together: the creation of community in the Neolithic William Finlayson; 4. Fire and society in the Eastern Mediterranean: a diachronic view with a microarchaeological focus Ruth Shahack-Gross; 5. It's a small world: work, family life, and community in the late neolithic Edward B. Banning; 6. The spiritual and social landscape during the Chalcolithic Period Yorke M. Rowan; 7. Using archaeobotanical remains to model social, political, and economic changes during the Chalcolithic period in the Southern Levant Philip Graham; Part II: 8. The Southern Levant during the early Bronze Age I–III Meredith S. Chesson; 9. Continuity, innovation, and change: the intermediate Bronze Age in the Southern Levant Susan L. Cohen; 10. Mix 'n' match: the bioarchaeology of commingled remains Susan Guise Sheridan; 11. The middle Bronze Age Canaanite City as a domesticating apparatus Assaf Yasur-Landau; 12. Cuneiform writing in Bronze Age Canaan Yoram Cohen; 13. 'Canaan is your land and its kings are your servants': conceptualizing the late Bronze Age Egyptian government in the Southern Levant Shlomo Bunimovitz; Part III: 14. The 'conquest' of the Highlands in the Iron Age I David Ilan; 15. Iron Age I Philistines: entangled identities in a transformative period Aren M. Maeir; 16. Moving beyond King Mesha: a social archaeology of Iron Age Jordan Benjamin W. Porter; Part IV: 17. A social archaeology of the kingdom of Judah: tenth–sixth centuries BCE Avraham Faust; 18. Phases in the history of the kingdom of Israel Daniel M. Master; 19. The alphabet comes of age: the social context of alphabetic writing in the first millennium BCE Christopher A. Rollston; 20. People, material culture, and ethno-religious regions in Achaemenid Palestine Oren Tal; 21. Land/homeland, story/history: the social landscapes of the Southern Levant from Alexander to Augustus Andrea M. Berlin; 22. The effects of empire on daily life in the provincial East (37 BCE–313 CE) Alexandra Ratzlaff; 23. The social archaeology of the Southern Levant in the Byzantine Period: rethinking the material evidence Itamar Taxel; 24. Rural communities and labor in the Middle Islamic-Period Southern Levant Ian W. N. Jones; 25. Society in the Frankish Period Rabei G. Khamisy; Part V: 26. Themes and patterns in human–animal interactions: hunting, domestication, and livestock husbandry Nimrod Marom; 27. Finding a world of women: an introduction to women's studies and gender theory in biblical archaeology Stephanie Budin; 28. Social archaeology in the Levant through the lens of archaeometallurgy Erez Ben-Yosef and Sariel Shalev; 29. The archaeology of maritime adaptation Assaf Yasur-Landau; Part VI: 30. The impact of radiocarbon dating and absolute chronology in the Holy Land: a social archaeological perspective Felix Höflmayer and Katharina Streit; 31. Itinerant objects: the legal lives of Levantine artifacts Morag M. Kersel; 32. Archaeology, museums, and the public in Jordan: 100 years of educating Arwa Badran; Epilogue Assaf Yasur-Landau, Yorke M. Rowan and Eric H. Cline.

Promotional Information

Offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan).

About the Author

Assaf Yasur-Landau is associate professor at the University of Haifa, a Fulbright Scholar, and head of the laboratory for Coastal Archaeology and Underwater Survey. He co-directs the Tel Kabri excavations and the Tel Dor underwater excavations. His book, The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age (Cambridge, 2010), has appeared in English and Spanish (2012). Eric H. Cline is professor of Classics and Anthropology in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University, Washington DC. A Fulbright scholar, National Geographic Explorer, and NEH Public Scholar, Dr Cline has authored, co-authored, or edited a total of 18 books to date, of which four have won awards, including the Biblical Archaeology Society's 'Best Popular Book on Archaeology' award (2001, 2009, and 2011) and the American Schools of Oriental Research's 'Nancy Lapp Award for Best Popular Book' in 2014. Yorke M. Rowan is a senior research associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. A Fulbright Scholar in Jordan and an National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellow in Jerusalem, he co-directs two field projects, the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project (Jordan) and the Galilee Prehistory Project (Israel).