Not a Friend of ASOR yet? Sign up here to receive ANE Today in your inbox weekly!
March 2023
Vol. 11, No. 2
The Emergence of Edom: Recent Debate
By Piotr Bienkowski
Did the Iron Age kingdom of Edom emerge in the 10th century BCE from a nomadic polity that developed sophisticated copper production and social complexity, or was it formed much later, in the late 8th century BCE, as a result of the impact of the Assyrian empire on settlement, agriculture, and trade?
Geographically, Edom was located in the southern part of modern Jordan, between the Dead and Red Seas. As an Iron Age kingdom, it is known from Assyrian sources of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE that mention named kings of Edom who paid tribute and from biblical sources as an eastern and occasionally hostile neighbor of Israel and Judah.
At the heart of the debate is the interpretation of the evidence from the excavations at Faynan, alongside Ben-Yosef’s methodological argument about nomads being archaeologically invisible. There are two key points of contention. Firstly, who was responsible for the copper-production boom at Faynan – was it really local nomads who created a nomadic polity, or was it an external entity? Secondly, is there any evidence for continuity between early Faynan and the later Iron Age kingdom of Edom in the highlands?
The first point, Faynan as a nomadic polity, is essentially a theory with no supporting archaeological evidence. In fact, nomads are archaeologically visible at Faynan (e.g. in the Wadi Fidan cemetery, which has been attributed to a nomadic population), but their material culture is completely different from that of the copper-production sites.