Although long considered a hallmark of the EB H-III of northern Canaan, Metallic Ware (sometimes termed Abydos Ware, Combed Ware) has eluded systematic characterization. Defined by its highly fired fabric, Metallic Ware comprises a full range of household forms, excluding cooking pots. It is widely distributed between Taanakh in the south and Tyre in the north, andfrom Khirbet ez-Zeraqun in the east to the Mediterranean coast. Wherever found, it exhibits a unity of typology, chronology (floruit in EB II, decline in EB III), and fabric. Sherds from eight sites were analyzed petrographically, revealing a similar geological provenance: Lower Cretaceous formations that crop out mainly in the Hermon massif and north, in Lebanon. In view of its stylistic affinity to contemporary Canaanite pottery, it is proposed that Metallic Ware was produced in workshops centered around the upper Jordan Valley and distributed from there, in large quantities, to sites as far away as 100 km. Its pattern of distribution reflects a highly integrated, perhaps centralized, economy in EB II in northern Canaan and adjacent regions.

Since the 1970s, much archaeological work in the Near East has shiftedfrom investigations of "urban" sites and monumental architecture towards analysis of economic systems and study of smaller rural sites. An increasing use of regional surveys to collect primary archaeological data has accompanied this shift. These surveys have encountered many methodological and theoretical problems but at the same time they show promise for addressing previously unexamined questions in the history and prehistory of the Near East.

With a focus on applications of regional survey to studies of rural settlement and economy in the dry farming areas of the southern Levant, this article defines some problems in exploiting the potential of archaeological survey in the southern Levant's physical and cultural environments. Archaeological surveys in other parts of the Near East suggest some ways to do this, but are not necessarily appropriate in the Levant. The article discusses some ways to take advantage of spatial structure in the landscape to design the sampling frame of a survey, with an example from the Wadi Ziqlab Project in northern Jordan.

The emergence of "orientalizing " in Greek art is a large and complex topic that has occupied the attention of scholars since the emergence of the modern discipline of Greek art history. This article addresses some of the broader issues that bear upon the process of "orientalizing, " focusing upon the two mainland ceramic traditions, Attic and Corinthian, that were arguably the most influential in the formation of a figural style in Greek vase painting. It encompasses a time frame of roughly 75 years, the last half of the eighth and the first quarter of the seventh centuries B.C.

The phonetic problem of the $ibbolet incident in Judges 12 has long defied easy solution. After a consideration of the historical sibilant in question, this article proposes that the evidence from the Ammonite seal of Ba'lîum;$a', an Ammonite king of the sixth (century B.C.E., provides access to a solution. The biblical riting of this Ammonite name with a samek instead of a $in provides a phonetic parallel to the writing of $ibbolet with a samek instead of a $in. The problem, in short, is resolved as the graphemic expression of a phonetic contrast between Cisjordanian and Transjordanian realizations of the phoneme $.