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Volume 62 Number 2
June 1999
62 A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron Age I
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Beth Alpert Nakhai
Over the course of its two centuries, the Iron I landscape of the
southern Levant witnessed the formation of the social, economic, and
political foundations of the familiar constellation of Iron Age
states. From Israel to Edom, all emerge from this era's fascinating
amalgam of regional variations, disparate population groups, and
alternate economies.
The story of this momentous period includes the biblical story of the
transition from the city-states of Canaan to the United Monarchy of
Israel. The story of the Iron I is also the story of the emergence of
distinct groups on the borders of what would become Israel and Judah.
Moreover, alongside the national trajectories of Ammon, Moab, and
Edom, the Philistines and the Phoenicians carry forward the Bronze
Age city-state mode of organization.
The extraordinary events at the end of the Late Bronze Age - huge
population movements, military disasters, the general demise of the
city-state system, and the destabilization of Egypt's empire in south
Canaan - shaped the Iron I as a period of regionally-based
accommodation rather than of widespread conformity. The absence of
great international markets forced most settlements to concentrate on
achieving self-sufficiency, combining small-scale agriculture with
animal husbandry. Archaeological survey and excavation have shown
that a major element in this transition was the establishment of
hundreds of small villages, renewing a landscape that had been but
sparsely inhabited in the LBA.
The origin of these settlers remains a vexed question, and, in
particular, there is no easy reconstruction of the Israelite conquest
and settlement based on combined archaeological and biblical
evidence. The salient features of Iron I material culture demonstrate
continuity from the LBA. Were it not for the Bible, no late
thirteenth-early twelfth century Israelite invasion would be
suspected. The complex archaeological and textual evidence of Iron I
settlement demands a more nuanced approach than can be offered by any
single model.
93 The Egyptian Gallery of the Oriental Institute Museum Reopens
Emily Teeter
After a three-year closure, the completely renovated Egyptian gallery of the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago has reopened. Displaying a portion of the approximately 25,000 objects in the Institute's Egyptian collection, the gallery now gives pride of place to a colossal statue of King Tutankhamun that, at 5.3 m tall, towers over the entrance. The gallery's introductory section on chronology presents the most characteristic objects of each period. Curators arranged the rest of the gallery thematically, with the major subdivisions being daily life and funerary beliefs. The exhibition encourages visitors to make connections between the ancient and modern world.
128 Arti-Facts
Edited by Eric H. Cline
131 Book Reviews
On the cover: Anthropoid coffins
from Deir el-salah witness the Egyptian presence in the southern
I event at the cusp of the Iron Age 1. The coffins mark the cultural
heterogeneity of the landscape, especially on the coastal plain and
in the valleys, but also signal the rejuvenation of the highlands as
remote as the territory of Moab - bisected by the deep gorge of the
Wadi Mujib (background). Photograph of coffins © Erich
Lessing; landscape courtesy of R.
Cleave.
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