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This large volume presents virtually all aspects of the Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture in a series of chapters that cover recent results of field work, analyses of materials and sites, and synthetic or interpretive overviews of various aspects of this important prehistoric culture.

The ancient Near East is a construct defined by present-day scientific investigations, a construct whose temporal and spatial boundaries are fuzzy, constantly shifting under the weight of new empirical data and increasingly sophisticated analytical methods. Its objects of investigation, even those that have resided in museum collections for generations, are in flux, as the profound cultural, geographical, ethnic and social diversity of the ancient Near East threatens to drown out any points of commonality. Yet it is these points of commonality that draw us inevitably to questions of Diversity and Standardization as categories for cross-cultural and trans-historical analysis. As we look across the variegated horizons of antiquity, do these categories have any real analytical power? For instance, the introduction of a new system of measurement or bookkeeping technique or even the imposition of a standardized repertoire of pottery forms on a more-or-less subject population are all examples of the real power of processes of standardization to stabilize territorial political entities. The problem must be posed for the ancient Near East at an even more fundamental level, however: what role do concepts, methods of standardization and, more generally, sign systems play in the reconfiguration and reconstitution of cultural, political, religious, scientific and social spaces? This volume results from a symposium under the aegis of the TOPOI Research Cluster (a trans-disciplinary research center devoted to the investigation of the interdependencies between space and knowledge in the ancient world) that brought together leading archaeologists, philologists, historians and linguists in order to investigate concrete historical examples that speak to questions of Diversity and Standardization in the ancient Near East.

The contributors in this book use the most recent research in key areas - the early settlements of Israel, early Israelite religion, Qumran, Jerusalem, early Christian churches - to show that ancient writings and modern archaeology can illuminate each other, but only when used with professional care. The essays represent a new generation of archaeologists and historians, with new social, political and religious concerns who draw a fresh and vital picture of the emergence of ancient Israel.

Der Alte Orient ist ein Konstrukt der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft. Seine Grenzen in Raum und Zeit sind unscharf, seine Forschungsgegenstände unterliegen kontinuiertlich der Veränderung. Doch in demselben Maße, in dem die kulturelle, geographische, ethnische und gesellschaftliche Diversität im Alten Orient in der Forschung an Kontur gewinnen, treten auch die Gemeinsamkeiten deutlicher hervor. Dies lenkt den Blick auf Vielfalt und Normierung als Kategorien kulturgeschichtlicher Betrachtung, und die Frage, inwieweit diese als Elemente des historischen Prozesses selbst wirksam sind. Die Einführung eines neuen Maßsystems, eine Schriftreform, die Durchsetzung eines neuen keramischen Formenrepertoires sind Beispiele für die aktive Nutzung des Wissens um die Wirkmächtigkeit von Normierungsprozessen zur Stabilisierung territorialer Herrschaft. Doch die Frage stellt sich für den Alten Orient sehr viel grundsätzlicher: Welchen Anteil haben Konzepte, Regelungsmechanismen und Zeichensysteme an der Erzeugung der kulturell, politisch, religiös, wirtschaftlich und sozial überformten Räumen? Im Rahmen der Forschungen des Exzellenz-Clusters TOPOI, der das Spannungsfeld von Räumen und Wissen in der Antike erkundet, widmete sich ein Symposium historischen Phänomenen von Vielfalt und Normierung in altorientaischen Kulturen. Der Band versammelt archäologische, philologische, historische, linguistische und religionsgeschichtliche Beiträge nenommierter Forscher zur Altertumskunde Vorderasiens.

Seventeen papers demonstrate how zooarchaeologists engage with questions of identity through culinary references, livestock husbandry practices and land use. Contributions combine hitherto unpublished zooarchaeological data from regions straddling a wide geographic expanse between Greece in the West and India in the East and spanning a time range from the latest part of the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. The vitality of a hands-on approach to data presentation and interpretation carried out primarily at the level of the individual site – the arena of research providing the bread and butter of zooarchaeological work conducted in southwest Asia – is demonstrated. Among the themes explored are shifting identities of late hunter-gatherers through interactions with settled agrarian societies; the management of camp sites by early complex hunter-gatherers; processes of assimilation of Roman culinary practices among Egyptian elites; and the propagation of medieval pilgrim identity through the use of seashell insignia. A wealth of new data is discussed and a wide variety of applications of analytical approaches are applied to particular case studies within the framework of social and contextual zooarchaeology. The volume constitutes the proceedings of the 11th meeting of the ICAZ Working Group - Archaeozoology of Southwestern Asia and Adjacent Areas (ASWA).

This volume features a group of select peer-reviewed papers by an international group of authors, both younger and senior academics and researchers. It has its origins in a conference held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, which aimed to bring up the frequently-neglected popular cult and other ritual practices in prehistoric and ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. The topics covered by the chapters of the volume include the interplay between elite and popular ritual at cemeteries and peak sanctuaries just before and right after the establishment of the first palaces in Minoan Crete; the use of conical cups in Minoan ritual; the wide sharing of religious and other metaphysical beliefs as expressed in the wall-paintings of Akrotiri on the island of Thera; the significance of open-air sanctuaries, figurines and other informal cult and ritual paraphernalia in the Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant from the late bronze age to the archaic period; the role of figurines and caves in popular cult in the classical period; the practice of cursing in ancient Athens; and the popular element of sports games in ancient Greece.

No detailed description available for \"Unearthing Jerusalem\".

This volume of fourteen papers covers the environment, archaeology and conservation of the Dakhleh Oasis, as presented at the Second International Conference of this long-running project (held in Toronto, 1997). Four abstracts from papers not submitted to the published volume are also included, as is the original conference program.

The origin of the Israelites is one of the most frequently discussed issues among archaeologists and biblical scholars. Only a few decades ago, biblical stories such as the Conquest were heralded as confirmed by archaeology. But in the 1970s, Thomas L. Thompson and John Van Seters were in the vanguard of a movement among scholars that was intent on reassessing the historical reliability of the biblical narratives. This reassessment gained momentum during the 1980s and 1990s; today, the mainstream opinion is that there was no Conquest, and the Israelites, if they can be identified as a national entity or as a people, did not arrive in Canaan by means of a military conquest. For three days in March 2004, a group of scholars met to consider the state of the question and to provide a response to the predominant academic skepticism, a response that considers the biblical text to be an important datum in the construction of the history of the people of Israel. To do so, the authors of the papers read at the conference take into account both biblical and extrabiblical literary evidence, as well as the contributions of archaeology, to describe as completely as possible what may be known about the early history of Israel. Critical Issues in Early Israelite History publishes the papers read at this conference in the hope that the result will be a balanced portrayal of this watershed event based on all of the currently available evidence.