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The is the final excavation report of the Iron Age I levels of Tel Dan, Israel. It includes a num... more The is the final excavation report of the Iron Age I levels of Tel Dan, Israel. It includes a number of contributions by specialist authors. The download is only the front material, not the book!
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Dan I: A chronicle of the excavations, the pottery neolithic, the early bronze age and the middle bronze age tombs, 1996
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NGSBA Archaeology, 2022
This journal is the window front for the excavation work of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical ... more This journal is the window front for the excavation work of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology. Edited by David Ilan, it includes both preliminary and final reports, mainly of our contract and community archaeology field projects. These are free access. And have a look at the website while you're at it.
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Ancient environment and climate
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Global climate change has sharpened focus on the social and economic challenges associated with w... more Global climate change has sharpened focus on the social and economic challenges associated with water deficits, particularly in regions where anthropogenic demands exceed supply. This modern condition was also experienced by the people of ancient western Asia, where chronic water shortages were accentuated by recurrent droughts. However, human societies may react to climate change, particularly desiccation, in different ways depending on specific local conditions. Focusing on the biblical site of Tel Dan (present-day Israel), we show the effects of severe precipitation decline in an environment that was well watered and fertile even in times of drought. Such local niches of prosperity became attractive targets for predation when food resources became scarce in surrounding rain-fed areas. We propose that predation forced urban populations to either flee or adopt new subsistence strategies. Predation and abandon-ment, even if only partial, led to the poor maintenance of water networks in and around the city. Once stagnant water surrounded the area, water-borne disease proliferated. Our study shows how climate changes can disrupt social and political structures, cause water system management to collapse, and facilitate marshland expansion.
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Archaeology of Ritual and Religion
Egypt and Levant , 2023
Fenestrated domed vessels have been found in Bronze and Iron Age contexts at a number of sites in... more Fenestrated domed vessels have been found in Bronze and Iron Age contexts at a number of sites in the central and eastern Mediterranean,
western Asia, and Egypt. In the Levant, they have been interpreted as “snake houses” and house models, but more often as model sanctuaries
or portable shrines. In this presentation, I reexamine their attributes and find-spot contexts and propose that they represent grain silos—modeled
on the original Egyptian conception. Referencing mythological and ritual texts from ancient Western Asia and from Ugarit in particular, it is proposed that the model silos were an attribute of the grain god – Ba’al-Hadad or Dagan – and housed figurines of that deity. The model silos would have been considered instrumental in communicating
with the deity to encourage agrarian fecundity. They might also have been a vehicle of communication with ancestors.
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Advances in Ancient Biblical and Near Eastern Research, 2021
Pilgrimage--a journey to a shrine of other sacred place undertaken to gain divine aid, as an act ... more Pilgrimage--a journey to a shrine of other sacred place undertaken to gain divine aid, as an act of thanksgiving or penance, or to demonstrate devotion within a particular religious system--has been the subject of archeological investigation in recent years. The site of Tel Dan (Tell el-Qadi), Israel, provides a unique opportunity to explore pilgrimage because its remains have been exposed over a wide expanse and it has produced a great deal of archeological data. Dan is also remembered in the Hebrew Bible as an Israelite pilgrimage destination. In this paper we attempt to recreate the experience of a pilgrim moving through the stations of the pilgrimage itinerary of Holy Dan. We end by providing a synthetic analysis of pilgrimage at the site invoking biblical, archeological, iconographic, and ancient anear Eastern textual data, viewed through a phenomenological lens.
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Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel …, Jan 1, 1992
This article discusses a cache of artifacts--bronze weapons and utensils, beads and miniature pot... more This article discusses a cache of artifacts--bronze weapons and utensils, beads and miniature pottery vessels--from Middle Bronze Age IIA (1900-1700 BCE) Tel Dan, Israel. After a typological description of the contents, a series of possible interpretations is offered, with the conclusion that this is a ritual offfering desposit, perhaps a sort of quid pro quo gift to a deity with the aim of achieving a desired action or result.
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Beyond Belief: the Archaeology of Religion and Ritual (ed. Y. Rowan). (Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association Vol. 21). Arlington,, 2012
The serendipity of discovery can determine the process and progress of the archaeological interpr... more The serendipity of discovery can determine the process and progress of the archaeological interpretation of religious belief and ritual practice. The Chalcolithic period (4500–3600 B.C.E.) of the southern Levant is used as a case study. Had the material expressions of Chalcolithic religion been discovered in a different sequence, our understanding of that religion might have been distinctly altered. We first present a chronological narrative of discovery, with summary headlines, and then proceed to dismantle previous syntheses. Finally, we construct our own framework for understanding Chalcolithic religion, which is essentially a life-cycle religion with extensive, almost ever-present, ritual reference to death and the regeneration of life. [ritual, mortuary landscape, ossuary, iconography, secondary burial]
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This paper explores ritual behaviour, religious belief and
their nexus to power during the Chalc... more This paper explores ritual behaviour, religious belief and
their nexus to power during the Chalcolithic period
(c. 4500–3600 BC) of the southern Levant. Recurring
symbolically charged artefacts and their contexts suggest
an overarching, region-wide cosmology or religious
framework. At the same time, we argue for diverse,
coexisting modes of ritual behaviour practiced by different
sorts of ritual specialist. The Chalcolithic seems to exhibit
the earliest evidence for the incorporation and control of
ritual and ideology by the elite as a power strategy.
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The Routledge Companion to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World, 2022
Bronze and Iron Age ring kernoi found in eastern Mediterranean contexts have been interpreted as ... more Bronze and Iron Age ring kernoi found in eastern Mediterranean contexts have been interpreted as artifacts used for liquid libation. In this paper I make the case that they were used for the ingestions of psychotropic substances in both liquid and as smoke. I first trace the temporal and geographical distribution of the ring kernos and then examine the array of archaeological contexts in which the ring kernoi were found. I then attempt a reconstruction of how the vessel was used—how the liquid and smoke were ingested. The following section surveys the physical, chemical, iconographic and textual evidence for the ingestion of psychotropic substances in the ancient western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. In the final section I discuss how ecstatic states were achieved and propose a scenario in the form of a short story.
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Archaeology and Society
Controlling the Past, Owning the Future: The Political Uses of Archaeology in the Middle East. eds. R. Boytner, L. Swartz Dodd and B. J. Parker. University of Arizona Press, 2010
This paper grew out of a community archaeology project near Modi'in, a newly-built city located h... more This paper grew out of a community archaeology project near Modi'in, a newly-built city located half way between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the Green Line (the pre-1967 border). The project was developed by the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. It is centered on the rural site of Horvat Sher located on the outskirts of Modi’in, within walking distance of the town (Fig. 1). The site itself is not prepossessing; it appears to have variegated in scale from a small village during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (100 BCE-330 CE) to a rural farmstead in the Mameluk period (ca. 1250-1517 CE); a monastery may have stood at the site in the Byzantine period (330-636 CE). Agricultural installations abound across the surrounding hillsides.
It is our aim in this paper, and in our project, to show that there can be more than one story for a given place and that we archaeologists, acting as agents of change, should encourage our public to examine, and even create, competing narratives. The community archaeology project described below was not initially conceived as an experiment in multivocality. Rather, it was initiated against the background of decreasing interest in archaeology in Israel and with a sense of alarm at the growing gap between our profession and the wider public.
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The Biblical archaeology review, Jan 1, 1989
Two colleagues and I wrote this paper is 23 years old but not a lot has changed. The antiquities ... more Two colleagues and I wrote this paper is 23 years old but not a lot has changed. The antiquities trade is still legal in Israel, collectors still collect and the plunder continues. This short, popular article describes the symbosis of collecting, dealing and plunder in Israel ca. 1989.
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Future Directions of Biblical Archaeology (ed. T.E. Levy). London: Equinox. , 2010
In many ways archaeology is a unique discipline. Though grounded in scholarship it has great appe... more In many ways archaeology is a unique discipline. Though grounded in scholarship it has great appeal to the lay public and great potential as a participatory enterprise. Though grounded in the past, archaeology is embedded in the present and bears ramifications for the future. This is where politics come into play. This chapter describes two projects that seek to take advantage of these facets, projects which unabashedly adopt social and political agendas. One of these is an attempt to create a mutually invested relationship between an archaeological site (Givat Sher) and a community (Modi'in) and the other addresses questions of collective memory, narrative construction and political (dis)enfranchisement.
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Artifact studies
Atiqot, 2023
This paper presents a cache of 31 astragali from the site of Tel Nagila, dating to the Middle Bro... more This paper presents a cache of 31 astragali from the site of Tel Nagila, dating to the Middle Bronze Age. This is the earliest known cache of astragali from the Southern Levant outside tombs, and may be the forebearer of the later caches found in cultic contexts in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. This paper presents the context in which the cache was found, adjacent to a tower that functioned as part of the site's fortifications; the social mechanisms behind the use of astragali; their deposition in a cache; and how the cache may have related to the function of the context in which it was found.
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Israel Exploration Journal, 1993
A glass bead was found in a Middle Bronze I tomb at Tel Dan, dating to ca. 1750 BCE, making it on... more A glass bead was found in a Middle Bronze I tomb at Tel Dan, dating to ca. 1750 BCE, making it one of the earliest finds of glass in the Levant.
Postscript: It now seems possible that the bead is an intrusion and dates to the Late Bronze I (ca. 1500-1400 BCE)
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The image of the crescent appears in various forms in the material culture of the Chalco-lithic, ... more The image of the crescent appears in various forms in the material culture of the Chalco-lithic, Bronze and Iron Ages of the southern Levant. It also appears in Mesopotamian and Egyptian iconography. It is most frequently associated with the crescent moon and its related deity. The formal similarity of the crescent moon to cattle horns led to that species often becoming the zoomorphic attribute of the moon deity. In this paper I focus on lunate jewelry, referencing other iconographic representations, asking what the lunate form symbolized and how it functioned in ancient Near Eastern society and culture.
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This is an object biography of an ivory handle (from a mirror?) found amongst recycling metallurg... more This is an object biography of an ivory handle (from a mirror?) found amongst recycling metallurgy installations in an Iron Age IA context (ca. 1150-1100 BC) at Tel Dan. I trace the object from its ivory origins, through its exchange process, its manufacture as a finished composite object with a hafted bronze object, its probable deposit in a tomb, its scavenging from the tomb, and its removal from its metal component to facilitate the recycling of the metal. This handle is emblematic of the social, economic and political processes that affected Canaan in the second half of the second millennium BC.
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Ceramic studies
This article is a descriptive and quantitative account of the different classes of painted potter... more This article is a descriptive and quantitative account of the different classes of painted pottery from the Middle Bronze Age levels at Tel Dan in northern Israel, near the borders of Lebanon and Syria. Two general classes were identified: Levantine Painted Ware (LPW) and Monochrome Painted Cream Ware (MPCW). The former is a composite of several classes, most local, while the latter is derived from a tradition similar to the Amup/Cilician Ware and probably indicates immigration of a potter or potters and consumers from northern Syria.
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Ancient environment and climate
Archaeology of Ritual and Religion
western Asia, and Egypt. In the Levant, they have been interpreted as “snake houses” and house models, but more often as model sanctuaries
or portable shrines. In this presentation, I reexamine their attributes and find-spot contexts and propose that they represent grain silos—modeled
on the original Egyptian conception. Referencing mythological and ritual texts from ancient Western Asia and from Ugarit in particular, it is proposed that the model silos were an attribute of the grain god – Ba’al-Hadad or Dagan – and housed figurines of that deity. The model silos would have been considered instrumental in communicating
with the deity to encourage agrarian fecundity. They might also have been a vehicle of communication with ancestors.
their nexus to power during the Chalcolithic period
(c. 4500–3600 BC) of the southern Levant. Recurring
symbolically charged artefacts and their contexts suggest
an overarching, region-wide cosmology or religious
framework. At the same time, we argue for diverse,
coexisting modes of ritual behaviour practiced by different
sorts of ritual specialist. The Chalcolithic seems to exhibit
the earliest evidence for the incorporation and control of
ritual and ideology by the elite as a power strategy.
Archaeology and Society
It is our aim in this paper, and in our project, to show that there can be more than one story for a given place and that we archaeologists, acting as agents of change, should encourage our public to examine, and even create, competing narratives. The community archaeology project described below was not initially conceived as an experiment in multivocality. Rather, it was initiated against the background of decreasing interest in archaeology in Israel and with a sense of alarm at the growing gap between our profession and the wider public.
Artifact studies
Postscript: It now seems possible that the bead is an intrusion and dates to the Late Bronze I (ca. 1500-1400 BCE)
Ceramic studies
western Asia, and Egypt. In the Levant, they have been interpreted as “snake houses” and house models, but more often as model sanctuaries
or portable shrines. In this presentation, I reexamine their attributes and find-spot contexts and propose that they represent grain silos—modeled
on the original Egyptian conception. Referencing mythological and ritual texts from ancient Western Asia and from Ugarit in particular, it is proposed that the model silos were an attribute of the grain god – Ba’al-Hadad or Dagan – and housed figurines of that deity. The model silos would have been considered instrumental in communicating
with the deity to encourage agrarian fecundity. They might also have been a vehicle of communication with ancestors.
their nexus to power during the Chalcolithic period
(c. 4500–3600 BC) of the southern Levant. Recurring
symbolically charged artefacts and their contexts suggest
an overarching, region-wide cosmology or religious
framework. At the same time, we argue for diverse,
coexisting modes of ritual behaviour practiced by different
sorts of ritual specialist. The Chalcolithic seems to exhibit
the earliest evidence for the incorporation and control of
ritual and ideology by the elite as a power strategy.
It is our aim in this paper, and in our project, to show that there can be more than one story for a given place and that we archaeologists, acting as agents of change, should encourage our public to examine, and even create, competing narratives. The community archaeology project described below was not initially conceived as an experiment in multivocality. Rather, it was initiated against the background of decreasing interest in archaeology in Israel and with a sense of alarm at the growing gap between our profession and the wider public.
Postscript: It now seems possible that the bead is an intrusion and dates to the Late Bronze I (ca. 1500-1400 BCE)
(mortars and pestle), condiment and pigment crushing (small mortars, mullers, and palette), blade and point sharpening (whetstone), textile
manufacture or tent weighting (stone ring), gaming and or accounting (pebbles, disc, and token), and hunting (slingstones/pebbles).
In this comprehensive final report David Ilan and 12 other contributing authors present the rich finds from the Iron Age I (circa 1200-950 BCE) levels at Tel Dan, gleaned in the course of Avraham Biran's 1966-1999 excavations at the site. The architecture, ceramics, metal, flint, bone and ground stone objects and ecofacts, all contribute to the portrayal of a cosmopolitan society that thrived, initially, under Egyptian imperial rule, subsequently forging its own way with the departure of Egyptian hegemony. The early Iron Age levels at Tel Dan show material evidence for the presence of local peoples, Egyptians, Cypriots, Aegeans, and Syrians, who together, negotiated a new identity, as Danites.
Preface - Andrew Rehfeld, President
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Natural Environment
Chapter 2: Stratigraphy and Architecture
(with a contribution by Ross Voss)
Chapter 3: The Local Pottery
Chapter 4: Notes on the Philistine, Aegean and Cypriot-style Decorated Pottery
Alexander Zukerman
Chapter 5: "Phoenician" Painted Ware
Thomas Beyl
Chapter 6A: A Petrographic Study of Early Iron Age Containers at Tel Dan
Paula Waiman-Barak and Ayelet Gilboa
Chapter 6B: Chemical and Petrographic Analysis of Aegean/Philistine Pottery from Tel Dan
David Ben-Shlomo
Chapter 6C: Petrographic Analysis of Iron Age I Painted Pottery from Tel Dan
Nissim Golding-Meir
Chapter 7: Ground Stone and Natural Stone Objects
Chapter 8: Scale Weights
Chapter 9: The Chipped Stone Assemblage
Conn Herriott
Chapter 10: Use-wear Analysis of Sickle Blades
Shoh Yamada
Chapter 11: The Metal Objects
Chapter 12: The Bone and Ivory Objects
Chapter 13: Seals and Impressions
Chapter 14: Various Objects of Stone, Faience, and Ceramic
Chapter 15: Figurines and Ritual Objects
Chapter 16: Ritual Contexts
Chapter 17: The Animal Bone Remains
Jonathan S. Greer, Deirdre Fulton, and Paula Wapnish
Chapter 18: Archaeobotany
Chapter 19: Commodity Storage: Pits, Pithoi and Installations
Chapter 20: Chronology
Chapter 21: Conclusion: Economy, Society and Polity at Tel Dan in the Iron Age I
This article traces the development of mortuary practices and beliefs from the Late Bronze Age (1470-1140 BC) to the end of the Iron Age (c. 550 BC) in the southern Levant. It examines regional traditions (which are probably associated with group identity) and the social and political implications of burial practices. Finally, I discuss the importance of the biblical evidence for mortuary practices and beliefs.