Figure 2 - uploaded by Susan Cohen
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Map of the southern Levant and Negev, with sites mentioned in the text (map prepared by W. Więckowski).
Source publication
The northern Negev—a region both geographically peripheral and environmentally marginal for human habitation—experienced increased settlement and activity in the Intermediate Bronze Age in the southern Levant (ca. 2500–2000/1950 BCE). Most interpretations link this phenomenon with Egyptian demand for copper and the accompanying development of trade...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... addition to these sites, although only a few may be dated confidently to the IBA, burial cairns throughout the Negev landscape also add to the evidence for a sizeable population in the region (Haiman 1992;see also Finkelstein 1989: 130-31). Overall, therefore, considerable evidence exists for the presence of a significant number of people living and working (either permanently or seasonally) in the Negev during the Intermediate Bronze Age (Figure 2). These Intermediate Bronze Age sites in the Negev have been subject to a variety of interpretations, which have adapted over time to account for evidence from continued survey and excavation together with changes in overall understandings of the IBA and the southern Levant in this era. ...
Context 2
... copper must then also have traveled back along this route to the centers in the southern regions of the southern Levant. Some of the copper also then traveled along the second leg of the triangle from the larger (permanent) Negev sites, along routes marked by rock-cut images of "crescent-headed" figure carvings ( Schwimer and Yekutieli 2021: 237, figs. 23 and 24), to Egypt, or perhaps more precisely, to Egyptian sites in north Sinai. The peoples traveling this leg may still have needed to rely to some degree on the food supplies shipped south, and perhaps also on the donkeys used to transport it, along the first trade leg from the greener regions in the north. Given the evidence that indicates ...
Citations
... Many Bronze Age communities may be considered "peripheral" by virtue of their small populations and distant locations (geographically and/or politically) from larger "centers" (e.g., see discussions in Mohr and Thompson 2023). Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of peripheral communities in early urbanized societies (e.g., Rowlands et al. 1987;Champion 1996;Maeir et al. 2003;Haour 2013;Cohen 2022), marginal settlements in the Southern Levant have not received the detailed chronometric attention that would improve their integration into Bronze Age social reconstructions. Bayesian analysis of a newly-expanded suite of calibrated AMS ages from Zahrat adh-Dhra' 1 (ZAD 1), Jordan documents this settlement's occupational history, thereby providing a detailed chronology for a unique peripheral Middle Bronze Age community amid the urbanization that has otherwise attracted the focus of archaeological attention (Figure 1). ...
... Samples are tabulated by phase and ordered chronologically according to conventional 14 C age within each phase. Cohen 2022). Most notably, the Early Bronze IV Period offers evidence of seasonal encampments, upland cemeteries and small villages that figure prominently in long-standing characterization of Early Bronze IV society in terms of urban abandonment (e.g., Dever 1980Dever , 1995Prag 2014). ...
Analysis of 20 calibrated accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS ¹⁴ C) ages reveals a chronology for the habitation of a unique peripheral settlement at Zahrat adh-Dhra‘ 1 (ZAD 1), Jordan during the Middle Bronze Age of the Southern Levant. Bayesian modeling distinguishes three phases of occupation between the first settlement at ZAD 1, perhaps as early as about 2050 cal BCE, and its abandonment by 1700 cal BCE. ZAD 1 represents a marginal community, both environmentally and culturally, on the hyperarid Dead Sea Plain, and exemplifies the peripheral settlements that are envisioned as important elements of Bronze Age Levantine society. Most importantly for this study, it is the only peripheral site in the Southern Levant that provides a Bayesian model for its habitation during the growth of Middle Bronze Age urbanized society. The timing of ZAD 1’s constituent phases, early in Middle Bronze I, across the Middle Bronze I/II transition and in Middle Bronze II, correspond well with emerging chronologies for the Middle Bronze Age, thereby contributing to an ongoing reassessment of regional social and settlement dynamics.
