The Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages of Southern Canaan: Selected Studies on the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages of Southern Canaan

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. Foreword 6 Contents 10 The Late Bronze Age at Tell es-Safi/Gath and the site’s role in Southwestern Canaan 12 The Wheat-People of Canaan 30 Late Bronze Age Azekah – an almost forgotten story 48 A reevaluation of Gezer in the Late Bronze Age in light of renewed excavations and recent scholarship 73 Tel Batash in the Late Bronze Age – a retrospect 97 First impression on the urban layout of the last Canaanite city of Lachish: a view from the northeast corner of the site 133 Lachish is Lachish on the Lachish bowl: an object lesson for reading Hieratic, with little surprising results 147 Tel Burna in the Late Bronze – assessing the 13th century BCE landscape of the Shephelah 159 Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age – The Glass Half Full 182 Hebron in the Late Bronze Age: Discoveries of the of the American expedition to Hebron (Tell er-Rumeide) 196 The Transjordanian Jordan Valley in the Late Bronze Age: under Egyptian control? 228 Shifting meanings and values of Aegean-type pottery in the Late Bronze Age Southern Levant 244 Prestige and authority in the Southern Levant during the Amarna Age 258 Southwestern Canaan and Egypt during the Late Bronze Age I–IIA 273 Index 294