Southern Levant

The Southern Levant

The Southern Levant roughly encompasses the lower half of the Levant, resulting in some variance of geographical definition, with the widest definition including Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai Desert.[1] Archaeologically, it is among the most extensively excavated regions in the world.[2]

Academic Usage

Many archaeologists have adopted the term Levant (including northern and southern halves) as the "term of choice" due to it being a "wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus" that does not have the "political overtones" of Syria-Palestine.[3] A survey of North American dissertations shows the "overwhelming emphasis and scope of these works has been the southern Levant, an area formerly identified as Syria-Palestine including Canaan,[3] but with most moden Ph.D. dissertations using the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Canaan’.[3]

The term Southern Levant has also been criticized as imprecise[4] and "an awkward name."[5] The term Southern Levant has been described in academic discourse as a "at least a strictly geographical" description of the region.[5]

History

The archaeology of the southern Levant is generally conceived as a series of phases or stages in human cultural and evolutionary development based, for the most part, on tool technology for early pre-historic, proto-historic and early historic periods. Later phases are generally associated with historical periods and are named accordingly. While there is no single, accepted sequence that all archaeologists agree upon, the basic conventions indicate a number of Stone Ages, followed by a Copper/Stone age, in turn followed by a Bronze Age. The names given to them,derived from the Greek, are also used widely for other regions. The different ages in turn are often divided up into sequential or sometimes parallel chrono-cultural facies, sometimes called “cultures” or “periods”. Sometimes their names are derived from European prehistory, at other times from local sites, often where they were first discovered.

Pre-history and Stone Age

The Southern Levant was one of the major dispersal routes for hominins from Africa to Eurasia in the Neogene period.[6] Three main routes have been suggested:

Several stone ages, when stone tools prevailed and make up the bulk of artifacts, are followed by periods when other technologies came into use. They lent their names to the different periods. The basic framework for the southern Levant is, as follows: Paleolithic or Old Stone Age is often divided up into phases called, from early-to-late: Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic. An Epipaleolithic (latest Paleolithic) period, also known as Mesolithic (transition to Neolithic) follows and is, in turn succeeded by a Neolithic (New Stone Age).

The following Chalcolithic period includes the first evidence of metallurgy with copper making its appearance. However, as stone technology remains prevalent, the name, Chalcolithic (Copper/Stone) age combines the two.

Bronze Age

Bronze is used for the following periods, but is actually a misnomer for a good part of that time. An Early Bronze Age is divided into three major phases, Early Bronze I, II and III, but copper and not bronze was the most common metal in use, while stone technology continued to contribute the bulk of tools. Early Bronze III is followed by another period, alternately named Early Bronze IV, Middle Bronze I, Intermediate Bronze or Early Bronze-Middle Bronze. In this period the name is apt; true bronze (a tin alloy of copper) makes its appearance in this time span.

The next period is generally known as Middle Bronze II and is generally broken down into two sub-periods, Middle Bronze IIa and Middle Bronze IIb. Some scholars acknowledge a Middle Bronze III. The next period is known as Late Bronze and is often sub-divided into Late Bronze I and II.

Iron Age

The introduction of iron, although relatively rare, especially in the earliest phases, caused the following phase to be named the Iron Age. It is variously sub-divided into Iron I, Iron II and sometimes Iron III, with subdivisions becoming increasingly popular as sequences become better known. Some archaeologists suggest that there in the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, the large cultural differences are explained by foreign invasion, that is, the introduction of new ethnicity. More recent evidence indicates that the large culture changes were not the result of a foreign invasion. Rather, the Iron Age people of the southern Levant were related to their Bronze Age predecessors.[8]

Later historical periods

The post Iron Age is generally thought of as historical and accordingly names of periods reflect this. The very latest Iron Age phase is sometimes called “Assyrian” and the following period is universally known as the Persian period.

The 333 BC conquest of the region is accepted as the beginning of the Hellenistic period. The Deuterocanonical book 2 Maccabees records: "Apollonius the son of Tharseas, who at that time was governor of Celesyria and Phenicia", Celesyria being the transliteration of Coele-Syria.[9] It is followed by Early Roman and Late Roman periods. The 4th century is recognized as the beginning of the Byzantine period that lasted until the Arab conquest of the region.

Later periods are alternately known as Early Arab and sub-periods by the names of reigning dynasties. The Crusader conquest of the region is known, appropriately as the Crusader period and it is followed by a Mameluke period after the conquering dynasty. In 1517 the Ottoman empire conquered the region and gave its name to the period that lasted until 1917, when the British conquered it in World War I.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Ancient Texts and Archaeology Revisited-Radiocarbon and Biblical Dating in the Southern Levant - Antiquity | HighBeam Research". www.highbeam.com. Retrieved 2016-04-26.
  2. ↑ "A passion for cultural difference. Archaeology and ethnicity in the southern Levant". www.academia.edu. Retrieved 2016-04-26.
  3. 1 2 3 Burke, Aaron. The Transformation of Biblical and Syro-Palestinian Archaeology" The Transformation of Biblical and Syro-Palestinian Archaeology." Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future: The New Pragmatism. Ed. Thomas Evan. Levy. London: Equinox Pub., 2010. "Much work continues to be done in these regions, and not surprisingly this work is now of great interest to those studying the southern Levant (i.e. the region formerly identified as Syria-Palestine and including Canaan)...Nevertheless, despite such a well-reasoned basis for the identification of Levantine archaeology, the adoption of this term by many scholars has been, for the most part, simply the result of individual attempts to consider a wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus than that which is suggested by the use of terms like Canaan,Israel, or even Syria-Palestine. Regardless of the manner in which the term has come into common use, for a couple of additional reasons it seems clear that the Levant will remain the term of choice. In the first place scholars have shown a penchant for the term Levant, despite the fact that the term ‘Syria-Palestine’ has been advocated since the late 1970s. This is evident from the fact that no journal or series today has adopted a title that includes ‘Syria-Palestine’. However, the journal Levant has been published since 1969 and since 1990 Ägypten und Levante has also attracted a plethora of papers relating to the archaeology of this region. Furthermore, a search through any electronic database of titles reveals an overwhelming adoption of the term ‘Levant’ when compared to ‘Syria-Palestine’ for archaeological studies. Undoubtedly, this is mostly due to the fact that ‘Syria-Palestine’ is, correctly speaking, the title for a Roman administrative division of the Levant created by Hadrian (Millar 1993). The term ‘Syria-Palestine’ also carries political overtones that inadvertently evoke current efforts to establish a full-fledged Palestinian state. Scholars have recognized, therefore, that—for at least the time being—they can spare themselves further headaches by adopting the term Levant to identify this region"
  4. ↑ Editorial remarks, Paléorient (1993), Volume 19-1, pp. 6-7, quote "In gathering contributions for the present issue, it soon became apparent - and this is a generally valid point - that imprecise terminology is one of the major difficulties encountered in our research. An example is the term "Southern Levant" used as a substitute for the geographers’ "Palestine". The use of this term hides the particularism of the regions on either side of the Jordan Valley just when the discoveries of the last decade have highlighted their specificity. The lack of precision traditional terminology (agriculture, herding, pastoralism, neolithic, etc.) applied to the complex phenomena that we are studying constantly leads to misunderstandings."
  5. 1 2 C.H.J. de Geus, Palestina Antiqua, Palestina Antiqua (2003), Book 10, p. 6, quote "At the beginning of this Introduction I have indicated how difficult it is to choose a general accepted name for the region this book deals with. In Europe we are used to the late Roman name "Palestine," and the designation "Palestinian Archaeology" has a long history. According to Byzantine usage it included CisJordan and TransJordan and even Lebanon and Sinai. In modern times, however, the name "Palestine" has exclusively become the political designation for a restricted area. Furthermore, in the period this book deals with a region called "Palestine" did not yet exist. Also the ancient name "Canaan" cannot be used as it refers to an older period in history. Designations as: "The Land(s) of the Bible" or "the Hold Land" evoke the suspicion of a theological bias. "The Land of Israel" does not apply to the situation because it never included Lebanon or the greater part of modern Jordan. Therefore I have joined those who today advocate the designation "Southern Levant." Although I confess that it is an awkward name, it is at least strictly geographical"
  6. ↑ Fleagle, John G., Shea, John J., Grine, Frederick E., Baden, Andrea L., Leakey, Richard E., "Out of Africa I: The First Hominin Colonization of Eurasia", Springer 2010 pp 247-273.
  7. ↑ Dennell, 2010, cited in "Out of Africa I: The First Hominin Colonization of Eurasia"
  8. ↑ Ullinger JM, Sheridan SG, Hawkey DE, Turner CG 2nd, Cooley R., Bioarchaeological analysis of cultural transition in the southern Levant using dental nonmetric traits., Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
  9. ↑ 2 Maccabees 3:8.
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