Forts or agricultural estates? Persian period settlement in the territories of the former kingdom of Judah

ABSTRACT

The territories of the former kingdom of Judah were only sparsely settled during the Persian period, as exemplified by the extreme rarity of domestic structures unearthed in excavations. Viewed against this background, the large number of excavated forts and isolated administrative buildings from this period is remarkable, and they apparently outnumber the period's excavated dwellings. Not only is this an extremely unlikely situation, but various lines of evidence, pertaining to specific sites as well as to the phenomenon as a whole, render the possibility that all these structures were forts or administrative buildings re-examines implausible. Consequently, this article reexamines the phenomenon within the social landscape of the region in particular, and of the Achaemenid empire in general, in an attempt to embed those unique buildings within the broader demographic and political reality of this time. Given the location of many of the sites and the finds unearthed in them, and in light of the demographic reality in the region and of the broader Achaemenid imperial policy, the article suggests that most of the so-called forts were estates, created in the process of the resettlement of this previously devastated region.     

The Transnationalisation of Competing State Projects: Carbon Offsetting and Development in Sumatra's Coastal Peat Swamps

Indonesia's peatlands can be considered as conflict arenas where different state projects and actors compete. The case presented here stands for a new conservation controversy. The Berbak Carbon Initiatives overlap with a settlement project, inducing struggles among different state apparatuses, transnational actors, and peasants. This article is based on a novel conceptual approach building on political ecology, politics of scale and state theory for investigating divergent and transnationalised state projects. Empirically we draw on qualitative research conducted in the province of Jambi, Sumatra. We argue that the territorial conflicts mirror the contradictory interests of different state apparatuses influenced by conservation‐oriented and development‐oriented actors in society but also by supra‐national planning institutions. In our case, the contestation becomes visible through inconsistent notions of development and property. We show how political change challenges the implementation of a forest carbon project, illustrating the high risks of mitigating climate change through offsetting.     

Mud-brick composition,archeological phasing and pre-planning in Iron Age structures: Tel ‘Eton (Israel) as a test-case

The eighth century BCE city at Tel ‘Eton (Israel) was destroyed by the Assyrian army, probably during Sennacherib’s campaign of 701. Building 101, sealed within the heavy conflagration caused by this destruction, was uncovered almost in its entirety on the top of the mound. From the beginning, it was apparent that the structure had two major building phases, and while its initial construction was of high quality, later additions were much inferior. Analyses of mud-brick walls for firing temperatures, texture, carbonate content, color, and dimensions approved the observation regarding the differences between the two phases, but consistently pointed out that one wall, initially attributed to the first phase, was analytically different, comprising an intermediate phase. This conclusion not only altered our understanding of the building construction, adding heretofore unknown building phase, but also gave us insights into the pre-planning of Building 101, indicating that some rooms had originally two doorways. Such a configuration allowed easy subdivision of spaces according to needs, without harming the overall structural stability. Differences in inner division of similar Iron Age houses were identified in the past and were attributed to differences in the life cycles of families. The evidence from Tel ‘Eton suggests that such future changes were taken into considerations when the structures were built.     

FUNNELS AS INDICATORS OF STORAGE ACTIVITIES IN THE IRON II SOUTHERN LEVANT

Although literally hundreds of houses have been excavated in the southern Levant, it is not easy to use them to study past spatial activities. While modern excavations allow high‐resolution reconstructions, due to the costs involved only a limited number of houses are excavated nowadays in their entirety; the recording of the hundreds of houses excavated until the 1960s was partial and much of the material (e.g. botanical remains, bones, charred material, etc.) was not even collected. Some of the older reports recorded the distribution of macro‐artefacts, mainly pottery, and a concentration of storage vessels, for example, may indicate that a room was used for storage. The products stored, however, cannot usually be determined. This article suggests that the volumes and forms of funnels may indicate whether they funnelled dry products, liquids or precious fluids, and can therefore be used to identify specialized activities even from reports of older excavations, when other lines of evidence are lacking.     

Doorway Orientation, Settlement Planning and Cosmology in Ancient Israel During Iron Age II

An examination of Iron Age buildings and settlements in ancient Israel indicates that a large number of them were oriented toward the east, while the west was extremely under-represented. An examination of various climatic and functional considerations does not seem to explain the phenomenon. Many ethnographic studies, however, have demonstrated the strong influence that cosmological principles can have on the planning of buildings and settlements, and that in many cases the east is preferred. In the present study, however, we have additional information. The common Biblical Hebrew word for east is qedma (forward), while the west is ahora (backward). Additional words for these directions indicate that the east had a good connotation while the west had a bad one. Thus, the archaeological pattern, along with language and texts (which are used as a substitute for human informants), seem to give an important insight into some of the cosmological principles of the ancient Israelites.