Volume
72 no. 3
September 2009
The Archaeology of Border Communities: Renewed Excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh, Part 1: The Iron Agei
by Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman
Excavated three times within a century by British, American, and Israeli-initiated expeditions, Tel Beth-Shemesh is a key site for studying geopolitical and cultural transformations on the border between Judah and Philistia. Subscribing to an interpretive framework of anthropology and archaeology of borders, authors Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman have been investigating the Bronze and Iron Age communities at the site for the last nineteen years. Applying a "view from the border" perspective to the new finds from their excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh, they present innovative insights on three major topics: Iron Age I ethnogenesis; Iron Age IIA formation of states and core-periphery relations; and Iron Age IIB-C dynamics of border landscapes in the aftermath of Sennacherib's campaign in 701 B.C.E. The article is the first of two on Beth-Shemesh; a survey of the Bronze Age remains will appear in a future issue of NEA.
FIELDNOTES
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