Burial offerings in intramural tombs at Middle Bronze Age Megiddo

Tel Megiddo is a major type-site for the Middle Bronze in the Levant. During this period a new burial custom appeared in which the dead were interred beneath occupied houses. This tradition is well attested in Area K at the site. Area H, near the palatial complex, revealed a monumental masonry-constructed chamber tomb. This article presents the results of residue analysis conducted on ceramic vessels placed in these tombs as burial offerings. Hundreds of intramural Middle Bronze tombs with ceramic offerings were excavated in the Levant, but this is the first time the content of the vessels is revealed.     

Gender relations in Bedouin communities in Israel: local government as a site of ambivalent modernity

In this article, we examine the perceptions towards women and gender relations maintained by male, local authority officials within two Bedouin towns in Israel. As such, the current research lies at the intersection of local politics, gender, space and culture. We argue that analysis of these perspectives provides insights into the ambivalent nature of modernity: into the tension between the desire to preserve the traditional role of women in maintaining the family, and the recognition of the powerful potential of women to act as agents of change. Based on an analysis of personal interviews, the study traces the ways in which both power and vulnerability impact the attitudes and perspectives of these men officials. By applying narrative analysis, gendered power structures are examined within Bedouin society in the context of the local authority – zooming in on the narratives provided by the male authority officials. The findings reveal that the officials maintain a series of ambivalent and conflictual attitudes towards the role of women. Bearing in mind their potential impact on the quality of women's daily lives in local public spaces, it seems vitally important to account for the entire matrix of tensions and vulnerabilities that impact the municipal policy instruments at their disposal. The findings are relevant beyond the Bedouin communities in Israel and may serve as a platform for a wider discussion of the dilemmas of minority women in rapidly changing cultural environments, and ambivalent modernity.     

Sacred,but not surveyed: Nineteenth‐century surveys of Palestine

Abstract

Nineteenth‐century Palestine mapping projects based on systematic land surveying reached a peak with the Ordnance Survey of Western Palestine between 1871 and 1877, conducted on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund by officers of the British Royal Engineering Corps. Various other nineteenth‐century proposals for an organized survey of the country—some of which bore partial results while others were never implemented—are also presented. The surveying of one region, Mesopotamia, during the 1830s and 1840s, forms the basis for the discussion of the reasons for the relative lateness of the topographical survey. The sacredness of the region seems not to have been a sufficiently convincing motive for entrepreneurs to organize and finance such a survey. The main reason for the delay in mapping the country as a whole was that it was not especially important, either strategically or geo‐politically, for the European nations engaged in the international struggles in the Middle East until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.     

The contents of unusual cone-shaped vessels (cornets) from the Chalcolithic of the southern Levant

Cornets are cone-shaped ceramic vessels, characteristic of the Chalcolithic period (ca. 4700–3700 BC) in Israel and Jordan. Their contents and use are unknown. Gas chromatography with flame ionization and mass-selective detection, showed that extracts of cornets from five different sites with different related activities (domestic, habitation cave and a cultic complex) all contain the same assemblage of mainly n-alkanes adsorbed within their walls. This assemblage differs from those found in other types of ceramic vessels from the same sites, as well as from the residues found within the associated sediments. The assemblage of odd and even-numbered n-alkanes found in the cornets is almost identical to that found in the residues of beeswax heated on modern ceramic fragments, as well as in a beehive from the Iron Age IIA strata at Tel Rehov, Israel. Thus the cornets are most likely to have contained beeswax. The presence of beeswax in the cornets contributes to our understanding of the Chalcolithic period; a time when secondary products such as milk, olive oil and wine are thought to have come into use.     

Cartographical evidence of efforts to develop Acre during the last decades of Ottoman rule: did the Ottomans neglect the city?

Using dozens of Ottoman maps from the Central Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, the article challenges the prevailing standpoint regarding the historical-geographic process that took place on both sides of the Bay of Acre/haifa during the last decades of the Ottoman period, and led to Haifa’s emergence as one of the most important port towns in the eastern Mediterranean, and concomitantly to Acre’s demise and negligence. To date, the few researchers who have dealt with this process, especially from the viewpoint of Haifa’s local history, have viewed the Ottoman regime as a passive force that did not act to preserve the status or economic strength of Acre, the regional headquarters, the province’s capital city and the region’s most important town for many years. We argue that the central Ottoman government in Istanbul did not perceive the process of Acre’s demise and Haifa’s rise as a deterministic process. Official Ottoman maps drawn at the request of the imperial centre as early as the 1880s show that plans existed to develop Acre and its region. These plans, even if only partially implemented, would have clearly contributed to preserving Acre’s status over Haifa. The Ottomans attempted to preserve the geo-strategic status of Acre and its importance and made plans to upgrade various infrastructures in the town’s vicinity, which might have changed processes related to physical conditions and powerful technological advances. This approach, which is based on the belief in the human ability to confront and deal with deterministic geographic and physical conditions, seems to have been the foundation of Ottoman planning in the case of Acre. The Ottomans’ capacity to implement these plans was very limited, however, and they eventually had to acknowledge this reality. Thus, Acre was reduced to its formal status as the capital of an Ottoman administrative district until the end of the Ottoman rule in Palestine. In a way, its fate was not very different from that of other traditional centres of Ottoman rule along the eastern Mediterranean coast, whose importance diminished at that time, while new centres that were more cosmopolitan and connected to developments overseas came to power.     

Metalworking at Hazor: A Long‐Term Perspective

The temporal and spatial distribution of metal production remains from Hazor was used in this study to sketch the development of metalworking (bronze, iron and silver) at this important site. The remains attest to a long sequence of metalworking at Hazor, from the Middle Bronze Age through to the Iron Age, and significantly highlight the transition from bronze to iron production and the mode of bronze production after the transition had been completed.     

Non-destructive provenance study of cuneiform tablets using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF)

Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) apparatus of the last generation was tested to determine its potential for routine provenance determination of clay cuneiform tablets, which cannot be analyzed by “classical” intrusive methods. A group of tablets from Hattuša (Bo?azköy) and from el Amarna, which were previously provenanced using optical mineralogy (OM) and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), was analyzed by pXRF and the results were used to establish the grouping according to their elemental concentrations. These groups were compared with the previous results retrieved by OM and INAA in order to confirm their validity. The results corroborate the high potential of the pXRF for non-destructive study of well-defined, ‘closed’ assemblages of clay-derived, delicate artifacts, such as cuneiform tablets, bullae, and fine-ware pottery. Consequently, a group of previously unexamined tablets from Hattuša was analyzed by pXRF and the results are discussed with implications on future research.