Bronze Age City Research Articles

Craft Specialization in the Highland Longshan Society: Perspective from the Bone Needle Workshop on the Central Mound at the Shimao Site, Shaanxi, China

The emergence of Shimao, a proto-urban center at the contact zone between agropastoral communities of the Loess Plateau and herders/hunter-gatherers of Monogolian Plateau, offers critical insights into the economic activities during the transition to the Bronze Age in continental East Asia. Unprecedented in scale in prehistoric China, the bone needle workshop at the central mound was a prelude to the specialized, industrial-scale bone production workshops seen in the Bronze Age cities of Zhengzhou, Anyang, and Zhouyuan during the second and early first millennium BCE. The bone needle production at Huangchengtai probably supplied a sophisticated craft industry for the production of garments using animal hides and textiles.

Embracing Heritage, Empowering Communities: Visualizing Fieldwork and the 6 February 2023 Earthquakes at the Bronze Age City of Tell Atchana, Alalakh

ABSTRACT The earthquakes on 6 February 2023 in southeastern Türkiye and northern Syria were a disaster on a massive scale. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and the destruction is still being assessed and grappled with today, over a year later. As one of the archaeological projects in the disaster zone, we at the Tell Atchana Excavations, many of us survivors, have had to consider ways in which we can move forward while incorporating and honoring the past—both the past that we study and our own experiences. We have embraced the engagement with the past that characterizes archaeology as a discipline and have come together to support one another and our communities through a large-scale project of preserving the exposed mudbrick monuments at Tell Atchana. This photo essay journeys through the difficulties we faced and the opportunities we found in them and celebrates the healing potential of archaeology in the face of disaster.

Violence, conflagrations and the destruction of Bronze Age cities in the ancient Near East

Violence, conflagrations and the destruction of Bronze Age cities in the ancient Near East

TOWARDS A RADIOCARBON-BASED CHRONOLOGY OF URBAN NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA IN THE EARLY TO MID-SECOND MILLENNIUM BC: INITIAL RESULTS FROM KURD QABURSTAN

ABSTRACTRadiocarbon (14C) data for 2nd millennium BC urban sites in northern Mesopotamia have been lacking until recently. This article presents a preliminary dataset and Bayesian model addressing the Middle and early Late Bronze Age (Old Babylonian and pre/early Mittani) strata of Kurd Qaburstan—one of the largest archaeological sites on the Erbil plain of Iraqi Kurdistan. The results place the large, densely occupied and fortified Middle Bronze Age city in the first part of the 18th century BC, an outcome consistent with the site’s tentative identification as ancient Qabra. A long occupation gap (up to two centuries) probably ensued, before a smaller town confined to the high mound and part of the northeastern lower town resumed in the late 16th and early 15th centuries BC, possibly before this region became part of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Mittani.

Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law by Sara J. Milstein

Reviewed by: Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law by Sara J. Milstein Jessie DeGrado Sara J. Milstein. Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 216 pp. Sara Milstein’s new book provides a stimulating challenge to the hypothesis that the non-Priestly laws of Exodus and Deuteronomy were directly inspired by Mesopotamian law collections such as the Laws of Hammurabi (LH). Milstein argues instead that the laws preserved in Exodus 21–22 and Deuteronomy 12–23 reflect a complex process of adapting and expanding materials produced for scribal education in Israel and Judah during the Iron II–III periods (roughly 850–586 BCE). The introduction surveys Mesopotamian law collections and legal pedagogical texts from the third and second millennia BCE. Over the past fifty years, scholars have increasingly recognized that law collections, once referred to as law codes, neither record specific verdicts nor provide binding precedent. Rather, they both express an idealized form of justice that might indirectly inform decisions and, equally significant, function as political propaganda for the king who promulgated them. In addition to the scholarship cited by Milstein (6–12), interested readers can consult Pamela Barmash’s recently released monograph, The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions (Oxford: OUP, 2020). Chapter 1 further sketches the contents of the Mesopotamian scribal curriculum in the Old Babylonian period. This includes legal phrasebooks containing lists of contractual clauses, which students copied to gain facility with common legal phraseology, and model contracts. Also included in school curricula were fictional court cases (sometimes called model cases), which Milstein argues were used to teach legal formulations and phraseology in a livelier and more playful form. Finally, scribes in training often copied lists of casuistic laws, which were often excerpted from longer law collections but could also be innovated around a specific topic, such as rented oxen. The bulk of the work is devoted to identifying pentateuchal texts that embed pedagogical genres like those found in the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum. In chapter 2, Milstein identifies several clusters of laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy that exhibit features like the Mesopotamian fictional cases. Special attention is given to what Milstein terms the “slandered bride cluster” (Deut 22:13–19), the “manslaughter cluster” (Deut 19:4–13), and the “illicit intercourse cluster” (Deut 22:23–29). Each example embeds a longer base case featuring an innocent party, followed by several more laconic casuistic laws that cover guilty verdicts. Milstein terms the base cases Hebrew legal fictions (HLFs), which she considers an “analogous group to the Mesopotamian fictional cases” (72). These longer laws would have been independently drawn from scribal exercises and supplemented with short laws exploring guilty outcomes. Milstein identifies several potential indicators of an original pedagogical function for the base cases, including the use of dialogue, [End Page 176] colorful scenarios, and contract language. The latter point is fleshed out in more detail in chapter 3, which compares language from the HLFs to phrases attested in contracts from the Late Bronze Age city of Emar. Chapter 4 presents an ambitious reappraisal of the relationship (or lack thereof) between the legal material in Exodus 21:18–22:16 and Mesopotamian law collections. Milstein advances two separate lines of argument in this chapter. First, she observes that the compilation of laws in Exodus is both shorter than Mesopotamian law collections and covers a more restricted set of topics. In this respect, Exodus 21:18–22:16 resembles the extracts or lists of laws used in Mesopotamian scribal training more than the lengthier compositions we refer to as law collections. This leads Milstein to a second argument, which is that discontinuities and errors constitute further evidence of dependence on scribal pedagogical texts. These include a case concerning self-defense and home burglary that interrupts a law concerning stolen animals (Exod 21:37–22:3) and the placement of general talionic principles immediately after the law of accidental miscarriage (Exod 21:22–25). Overall, Milstein’s book provides an important critique of atomistic comparison between Exodus 21:1–23:5 and the Laws of Hammurabi. Namely, even if one postulates that Judean scribes accessed...

Fire at the gate of Hazor: A micro-geoarchaeological study of the depositional history of a Bronze Age City gate

The City of Hazor is one of the most significant archaeological sites from the biblical period in Israel. Studies on destruction have received much attention in archaeology in recent years. Previous excavations in Hazor have suggested a major conflagration event that destroyed the entire tell site at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The present study re-examines the sedimentary sequence of one of the city’s gates located in Area K by applying a suite of micro-geoarchaeological analyses to understand the stratigraphy previously documented by Yigael Yadin (1972) and later also interpreted by Amnon Ben-Tor et al. (1989); Ben-Tor (1993, 2016); Bechar et al. (2021). In the summer of 2019, 89 bulk sediment samples were taken within squares K5 and K7 in the gate’s passage. This study aimed to understand the archaeological formation processes at the gate and interpret human activities in the Lower City gate of Hazor based on the micro-archaeological record. Laboratory work included Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to analyze sediment samples’ composition and quantify phytoliths, wood ash, and dung spherulite concentrations. The major goals of this study are: a) to study the site formation processes, based on mineralogical assemblages and activity micro-residues, of a Middle Bronze to Late Bronze Age city gate; b) to identify mineralogical- and micro-remains, as indicators for fire and destruction of the gate; c) to identify occupation surfaces within the gate and their associated micro-residues; and d) to re-examine previous interpretations of the history of the gate and Hazor in light of the micro-archaeological record.The results confirmed Yadin’s interpretation of the occupation levels at stratum 3 (MB II-C) and 2 (LB I), but with no evidence for destruction between the strata. Those strata showed typical tell site remains, such as anthropogenic input of ash and phytoliths, indicating more or less continuous urban activity. For Yadin’s stratum 1B gate, we identified the floor, the roof, which was the main element that burnt, overlain by a thick unburnt accumulation of the second floor and final burnt debris atop. Our study also suggested a sequence of events for the fiery destruction of the gate and its collapse. The distribution of phytoliths and wood ash combined with the sediments’ composition proposes a single collapse event caused by fire from within the gate. The minimal anthropogenic record above the destruction horizon indicates possible disuse of the gate area following this major destruction event. The conclusions of this study offer new and direct evidence for the history of the gate at Hazor’s Lower City with continuous activity from the Middle Bronze into the Late Bronze Age, ending with a major and single event of destruction of the site at the end of the Late Bronze Age which was followed by its abandonment.

Digitally constructing a late Early Bronze Age roof. Observations and conclusions

While computer aided design (CAD) technology has been used in archaeology since the early 1980s, the advent of free, open-source 3D modeling software such as Blender is quickly moving the application of 3D modeling in archaeology from a narrow specialization to a common tool for examining a wide range of basic research questions. In this case study, Blender is used to create two models for the construction of a multi-roomed house at the late Early Bronze Age (EBA) city of Titriş Höyük (c. 2300-2100 BC). The models focus on the challenges posed by roofing a large mudbrick structure with a mud roof supported by wooden elements. One house excavated at the site in the 1990s, was chosen for modeling since its location at the corner of two ancient streets, its location adjacent to a terrace wall, and its contiguity with an adjacent house provided a complex problem for ancient builders. Considerations of material, labor, and time costs (architectural energetics) needed to provide a viable model, and new observations have added nuance to our understanding of EBA construction processes. In particular, the case-study provided here illustrates the value of an iterative problem-solving methodology that forces the researcher to consider in detail the decisions made by ancient builders in constructing complex domestic houses. This article shows that 3D modeling software is an appropriate and feasible solution to moving archaeological analysis of ancient architecture beyond the traditional presentation of plan and section views and enables the researcher to evaluate design processes used in antiquity.

The New Swedish Cyprus Expedition (The Söderberg Expedition): Excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke 2020 and 2021. Preliminary results

In 2020 and 2021, the eleventh and twelfth seasons of excavations at the Late Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke were carried out in the cemetery of Area A. Based on indications provided by a large-scale magnetometer survey, two tombs exposed by intensive farming were located, Tombs RR and SS. The excavation of Tomb RR, which had started in 2018, was concluded. The total minimum number (MNI) of skeletons in this tomb, of which most were incomplete and disarticulated, is estimated at 137. In addition to clay figurines, seals and scarabs, objects of ivory, as well as jewellery of gold, silver, bronze, faience and carnelian, the inhumations are associated with more than 100 intact or complete ceramic vessels, many of them imported from the Mycenaean, Minoan, Hittite and Levantine spheres of culture. The pottery indicates a LC II(A/)B–C1 date of the inhumations, i.e., covering the 14th and the beginning of the 13th centuries BC. The excavations of the adjacent Tomb SS began in 2020 and has been concluded in May 2022. It contained a minimum of eleven inhumations, most of them (almost) complete and articulated, and large deposits of Cypriot and imported pottery, in total over 300 vessels mainly from the LC (I–)IIB, i.e., from the 16th/15th to mainly the 14th centuries BC. These contexts not only offer an insight into the complex Late Cypriot mortuary practices and funerary rituals but also reflect the urban élites with far-reaching inter-cultural connections.

The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism of the Civic Forum in the Southern Levant

The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism of the Civic Forum in the Southern Levant

Agricultural resources in the Bronze Age city of Tel Lachish

In this paper, we present the results of the plant macrofossil analyses from the site of Tel Lachish, Israel with focus on the botanical assemblage of the Middle and Late Bronze Age layers collected in two different areas of the tell: Area S, a trench on the western edge of the site, whose samples belong to Late Bronze Age deposits, and Area P, the palace area on the top of the mound with samples ranging from the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Systematic sampling of these areas and analysis of the remains have extended our knowledge of the agricultural resources of one of the most influential Late Bronze Age cities in the southern Levant. Multivariate statistics have been applied to gain insight into regional patterns of crop growing. Fruit crops account for the majority of the identified remains from this site, which also included large quantities of Hordeum vulgare (barley) and Triticum dicoccum (emmer wheat) grains. The virtual lack of chaff remains is not solely a matter of preservation, since the Late Bronze Age assemblage preserved fragile small seeds. Rather, this finding suggests that cereal processing took place some distance from the area of deposition. Overall high diversity, ubiquity and proportions of fruit crops indicate that these played a fundamental role in their cultivation and probably also in cultural life at Lachish throughout the 15th–12th centuries bce.

Fire at the Gate of Hazor: A Micro-Geoarchaeological Study of the Depositional History of a Bronze Age City Gate

Fire at the Gate of Hazor: A Micro-Geoarchaeological Study of the Depositional History of a Bronze Age City Gate

Discovering Early Syrian Magic

Scholars of magic in the Iron Age Levant have had to grapple with a dearth of sources between the fall of Late Bronze Age cities (ca. 1200 BCE) and the proliferation of magic bowls over a millennium later (ca. 400 CE). Three recently published early Aramaic inscriptions help fill this lacuna: a recently excavated inscribed cosmetic container from Zincirli, a Lamaštu amulet from the same site held by the Vorderasiatisches Museum (S.3604), and an Aramaic-inscribed statuette of Lamaštu’s nemesis, Pazuzu, currently in the holdings of the Ashmolean Museum (AN1892.43). These texts, dated paleographically to the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, afford a window into local magical traditions in the Levant. They also show how communities on the imperial periphery adopted and adapted elements of Mesopotamian magic. Finally, the inscriptions provide an impetus for a new analysis of the infamous Arslan Tash amulets, offering further context for their texts and iconography.

BRONZE AGE SURVEY ON TAVSANLI HOYUK (KUTAHYA, TURKEY): PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Tavsanli Hoyuk is situated approximately 2 km from Tavsanli District of Kutahya Province, and in the central part of the Tavsanli Plain. The main objective of the Tavsanli Hoyuk survey is to shed light onto the transition between the end of the 3rd Millennium BC and the 2nd Millennium BC. The purpose of the geo-archaeological research around the Tavsanli Hoyuk was to reveal the influential factors in selection of the spot for founding the mound and the environmental changes that took place around the mound in time and space. For this purpose, vibracorings were done at three points on a line stretching from the alluvial fillings left by Orhaneli Stream flowing in the east to the mound. The preliminary results of our research seem eye-opener for in two ways. It revealed environmental conditions of Tavsanli Hoyuk but also confirmed that the findspot is a prominent Bronze Age city in Western Anatolia. The settlement is likely to have been established as a city for the supply of natural resources around and transfer within the framework of the trade network.

Urban Squares in Late Bronze Age Ugarit: a Street View on Ancient Near Eastern Governance

Urban Squares in Late Bronze Age Ugarit: a Street View on Ancient Near Eastern Governance

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea

We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard.

Reconstructing agro-pastoral practice in the Mesopotamian-Zagros borderlands: Insights from phytolith and FTIR analysis of a dung-rich deposit

Understanding everyday agro-pastoral practice is critical for reconstructing the formation and maintenance of ancient societies. The ancient Near East (Southwest Asia) has one of the longest histories of agro-pastoral practice and one of the richest textual datasets anywhere on the globe. Yet, our knowledge of local, day-to-day agro-pastoral management strategies remains conjectural in many regions of Southwest Asia during the Bronze Age (late 4th–2nd millennium BCE). In this study we used phytoliths, dung spherulites, and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to identify and examine dung-rich sediments from Khani Masi, a mid-second millennium BCE Kassite site located in the Kurdish Region of Iraq. While micro-remain and geochemical approaches have not yet been widely applied in Mesopotamia (Ancient Iraq), they have the potential to shed light on the production systems supporting its Bronze Age cities, states, and empires. Our aim was to investigate (1) the range of local pastoral management strategies, (2) the degree of integration between agricultural and pastoral practice, and (3) the presence of signals related to the local ecology, seasonality, and environmental change and continuity.Phytolith results indicate that sheep-goat herds were primarily free grazed on wild grasses. The dominance of wild grass inflorescences, a potentially strong seasonality indicator, may suggest transhumant pastoralism. However, further evidence, including occasional foddering with cereal chaff, a diverse range of crop types, and significant accumulation of burnt dung within the site, collectively suggests a closely linked local agro-pastoral subsistence economy. This study provides much-needed empirical botanical data as well as productive insights for future application of phytolith studies in the Mesopotamian region, and sheds new light on agro-pastoral practice in the Zagros foothills during the second millennium BCE Kassite period.

The uses of domesticated animals at the Early Bronze Age City of Wangjinglou, China

AbstractZooarchaeological research on the early Bronze Age in the Central Plain of North China has been focused mainly on two periods: the Erlitou culture (ca. 1900–1500 BC) and the late Shang Dynasty (ca. 1250–1046 BC). In this paper, our research on the animal bone assemblage from the Wangjinglou site, a walled city of the Erligang culture (ca. 1600–1400 BC), allows us to explore the use of animal resources and husbandry specializations during the time period between Erlitou and the late Shang. Domesticated animals, especially pigs and cattle, were dominant species in the faunal assemblage, while wild animals, mainly deer, were small in number. Moreover, the percentages of cattle and sheep were higher in prosperous phases at Wangjinglou and lower in the later phase during the site's decline. Analysis of the estimated death ages for various taxa suggests that pigs were raised for meat consumption, while sheep were used for secondary products. This research on Wangjinglou shows the varied nature of the animal economy at an early Bronze Age City in East Asia.

Life and death of four individuals in the destruction of the Late Bronze Age city of Azekah, Israel

AbstractIn this article, we discuss the skeletal remains of four individuals discovered trapped below destruction debris of Building T2/627 at the site of Tel Azekah, Israel, dating to the late 12th Century BCE. Osteological analysis shows that these individuals suffered from anemia and other systemic illness during their lives. Patterns of musculoskeletal stress markers show that they were likely highly active; in the context of artifacts recovered from the building, we suggest that specific activities included grinding grain and carrying heavy objects. Heat damage to the remains shows that the bodies were extensively burned. The archaeological and osteological evidence suggest that a high temperature fire fueled by flammable goods stored in the building caused the building to collapse on top of these individuals, preserving their burnt remains in situ. Together, these lines of evidence enhance our understanding of these individuals' ways of life and manners of death against the backdrop of the “crisis years” of the Late Bronze Age Collapse during the end of the 2nd Millennium BCE.

Crops and food choices at the Late Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke

The Late Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke (HST) is located on the south-eastern coast of Cyprus, c. 7 km south of modern-day Larnaca. The most recent excavations revealed four new city quarters (CQ1–4), where domestic and industrial activities took place. While the earliest occupational remains are from c. 1650/1600 BCE, the so far best attested period lasted from the 13th century to its final destruction in the mid-12th century BCE, after which the city was abandoned, never to be occupied again. The find material demonstrates intense industrial and trade activities resulting in an increased wealth. Agricultural products from the city’s hinterland certainly added to its rank as a leading trade hub in the eastern Mediterranean. The most recent archaeobotanical research revealed charred plant remains including that of barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, fig, olive, grape and lentil. These contribute to understanding the function and use of areas, spaces and specific installations at HST, and shed further light on Late Bronze Age agriculture on Cyprus.

ABUSE, REUSE, RECYCLE: THE USES OF BASALT ORTHOSTATS AT HAZOR IN THE BRONZE AND IRON AGES

SummaryThis paper investigates the use of basalt orthostats in Syro‐Anatolia throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, focusing on the changes in their consumption at Hazor. Used to reflect the wealth and power of city rulers in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, this practice continued in the Iron Age in Syro‐Anatolia, while at Hazor it stopped entirely. By applying the modern concepts of counter‐monumentality and spolia, it is suggested that, at Hazor, the orthostats were used by the Iron Age inhabitants of the city to glorify the destruction of the Late Bronze Age city and to humiliate the previous royalty of Hazor, thus exhibiting their victory over its Canaanite rulers.