Fertile Crossroads
Elites and Exchange in the Southern Levant's Early Iron Age
Sarah Malena [+–]
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Sarah Malena is Associate Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She specializes in the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean world, with a special focus on intercultural exchange.
The southern Levant linked the major powers of the ancient Near East. More often than not, peoples of this land were politically and economically dominated by greater kingdoms and empires. During the transition between the Iron I and II Ages (late eleventh to early ninth centuries BCE) however, imperial occupation and active colonization diminished, and local leadership emerged. Fertile Crossroads examines how, despite the lack of large-scale institutional support throughout the ancient world, small-scale leaders persisted in long-distance interactions and established the foundations for Iron Age polities. Malena critically examines the most direct evidence of these developments with the aid of historical and anthropological approaches regarding intercultural interaction and social change. Despite challenging disparity among historical, literary, and archaeological sources, Fertile Crossroads demonstrates that interactions (including diplomacy, commerce, competitive emulation, and aggression) were taking place within the southern Levant and with more distant neighbors, such as Egypt, Arabia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and even the Aegean. In this new application of interaction models and synthesis of evidence, Malena shows how small-scale exchange had a significant impact on socio-political changes in the region, especially involving shifts in elite networks, territories, group identities, and political power.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction [+–] 1-24
The southern Levant’s transition from the Iron I to the Iron IIA period (roughly late eleventh to early ninth centuries BCE) is one of the more contentious subjects among historians and archaeologists who work in the region. This chapter provides an introduction to the region and era, the available evidence, and the disciplines and theoretical models that have set the tone for current investigations.
Chapter 2
The biblical account of ancient Israel’s transition to a king-led polity is recounted in 1 and 2 Samuel, and central to this transition are interactions with the neighboring Philistines. This chapter examines the depiction of these relations and evaluates how the biblical material contributes to understanding trade and exchange activities in the region.
Chapter 3
Solomon’s Interactions and Economic Policies [+–] 66-119
Chapter Three examines the depiction of Solomon’s reign as described in 1 Kings 3-11. The biblical narrative recounts extensive inter- and intraregional interactions in the mid to late tenth century. This chapter provides a historical assessment of these accounts and evaluates how the claims contribute to current reconstructions of interactions.
Chapter 4
The Special Case of Jerusalem–A Discussion [+–] 120-134
Chapter Four addresses the role of Jerusalem in interregional interactions based on biblical, historical, and archaeological evidence. The case of Jerusalem demands special attention because of the contrast between the centrality of the city in the biblical worldview and the very limited epigraphic and material evidence that can be dated to the early Iron Age.
Chapter 5
Epigraphic Evidence Relating to Exchange [+–] 135-152
Although it is limited, there is a growing corpus of contemporary historical evidence for this period. The sources are not substantial enough to provide general reconstruction of cultural exchange, but they do provide evidence of specialized interregional interaction among elites.
Chapter 6
Nonlocal Ceramics in the Iron I-IIA Transition [+–] 153-192
This chapter surveys evidence of nonlocal ceramics from the Aegean, Cyprus, and Northwest Arabia, which provide some of the most concrete physical evidence of long-distance exchange. The geographic distributions of the artifacts reveal different exchange networks and clarify which sites and areas were able to participate in the growing exchange activities.
Chapter 7
Synthesis and Conclusions [+–] 193-209
Chapter Seven brings all of the evidence presented in these separate case studies into one conversation. Each type of evidence speaks to a considerable amount of interactions, and together the activities involve all areas of the southern Levant. The combined analysis demonstrates interactions among an emerging elite that led to the consolidation of resources and influence. These interactions would eventually give rise to the earliest kings and polities of the Iron Age.
