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Tell Arqa: A Prosperous City during the Bronze Age

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... How to use this regularity to interpret the modalities of adoption of the potter's wheel at Tell Arqa? According to Thalmann (Thalmann, 2009(Thalmann, , 2010(Thalmann, , 2016, the ceramic types from the first half of the third millennium testify to cultural affinities or contacts with the Early Bronze II-III southern Levant. However, no other craft bear witness to relationships between these two regions. ...
... At the same period, contacts with the north were limited "to the occurrence of pattern-combed jars on the coast as far north as Ras Shamra (…), suggesting a mainly "southern" orientation of the EBA culture of the Akkar before the middle of the third millennium" (Thalmann 2009:10). A shift in contacts, now privileging the north and inland Syria, started by the middle of the third millennium BC (Thalmann, 2009(Thalmann, , 2010. These contacts are signaled by some limited comparisons with Hama J and Amuq I and J, by a few local imitations of "Hama beakers" and other "caliciform" shapes, and by some actual imports from central Syria. ...
... However, these are limited contacts as shown by the strongly local character of mid-third millennium BC pottery, suggesting kind of autarkic entity (Thalmann, 2009:12) and therefore weak ties rather than strong ties with the north and inland Syria. By the early second millennium BC, the Akkar settlements kept looking northwards (Thalmann, 2010). ...
... How to use this regularity to interpret the modalities of adoption of the potter's wheel at Tell Arqa? According to Thalmann (Thalmann, 2009(Thalmann, , 2010(Thalmann, , 2016, the ceramic types from the first half of the third millennium testify to cultural affinities or contacts with the Early Bronze II-III southern Levant. However, no other craft bear witness to relationships between these two regions. ...
... At the same period, contacts with the north were limited "to the occurrence of pattern-combed jars on the coast as far north as Ras Shamra (…), suggesting a mainly "southern" orientation of the EBA culture of the Akkar before the middle of the third millennium" (Thalmann 2009:10). A shift in contacts, now privileging the north and inland Syria, started by the middle of the third millennium BC (Thalmann, 2009(Thalmann, , 2010. These contacts are signaled by some limited comparisons with Hama J and Amuq I and J, by a few local imitations of "Hama beakers" and other "caliciform" shapes, and by some actual imports from central Syria. ...
... However, these are limited contacts as shown by the strongly local character of mid-third millennium BC pottery, suggesting kind of autarkic entity (Thalmann, 2009:12) and therefore weak ties rather than strong ties with the north and inland Syria. By the early second millennium BC, the Akkar settlements kept looking northwards (Thalmann, 2010). ...
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In this paper, I first argue that technological analysis of archaeological assemblages in terms of chaînes opératoires is a privileged qualitative approach to reconstruct technological networks, namely networks of socially linked object-makers. This is a first step before explaining dynamic phenomena such as diffusion of techniques or emergence of shared norms at the population level. The second step is to call upon sociological regularities since archaeology alone cannot provide a fine-grained temporal resolution to evaluate how micro-level interactions might have scaled up in changes. In the second part of the paper, I give archaeological examples and illustrate how to use sociological regularities for explaining past dynamics. RESUMEN En este documento, sostengo en primer lugar que el análisis tecnológico de las ce-rámicas arqueológicas en términos de Cadenas Operativas es un enfoque cualitativo privilegiado para reconstruir las redes tecnológicas, es decir, las redes de productores de objetos socialmente vinculados. Se trata de un primer paso antes de explicar fenómenos dinámicos como la difusión de técnicas o la aparición de normas compartidas a nivel de la población. El segundo paso consiste en recurrir a regularidades sociológicas, ya que la Arqueología por sí sola no puede proporcionar una resolución temporal ajustada para evaluar cómo las interacciones a nivel microeconómico podrían haber incremen-tado en los cambios. En la segunda parte del documento, doy ejemplos arqueológicos e ilustro cómo utilizar las regularidades sociológicas para explicar la dinámica del pasado.
... Archaeologists have concentrated on specific areas due to historical interests as well as access to sites, such as (from north to south) Turkey's Hatay's Province, coastal and inner Syria, west-central and southwest Jordan, and Israel's southern Sephelah and southern coastal plain. Areas such as northern Jordan, northern Lebanon, and southern Syria have seen comparatively little attention, although they are by no means unexplored (e.g., Braemer 1984;Thalmann 2010;. Other areas have seen attention in the past, but access is currently limited because of challenging political and economic conditions, such as in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. ...
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Archaeological research on the Iron Age (1200–500 BC) Levant, a narrow strip of land bounded by the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Desert, has been balkanized into smaller culture historical zones structured by modern national borders and disciplinary schools. One consequence of this division has been an inability to articulate broader research themes that span the wider region. This article reviews scholarly debates over the past two decades and identifies shared research interests in issues such as ethnogenesis, the development of territorial polities, economic intensification, and divergent responses to imperial interventions. The broader contributions that Iron Age Levantine archaeology offers global archaeological inquiry become apparent when the evidence from different corners of the region is assembled.
... Rescue excavation of the site was initiated in (Badreshany et al., 2005, and again undertaken between 2007 and 2011 by an American University of Beirut (AUB) team led by Dr. Hermann Genz (Genz and Sader, 2008;Genz et al., 2009Genz et al., , 2010Genz, 2012a). Although the project was limited in scale, the evidence shows an urban site, settled from the early fourth to the late third millennia BCEalbeit with a few gaps in the sequencewhich was part of the broader urban settlement system emerging contemporaneously across Lebanon (Saghieh, 1983;Doumet-Serhal, 2008;Thalmann, 2006Thalmann, , 2010Genz, 2012b). ...
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The discoveries of the 2004-2008 excavations at Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla, in north-western Syria, and the following processing of the archaeological record have allowed for a re-examination the site’s trajectory between Early Bronze IVB and Middle Bronze I. Not only it was possible to gain a clearer picture of the site’s trajectory during Early Bronze IVB, the phase following the demise of Ebla’s Early Bronze IVA kingdom, but also to re-investigate how the site transitioned from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age at a deeper chronological scale, which was hampered before by the lack of sufficient stratified data. Moving from these insights, this paper offers a summary of the state of research on Ebla between the Early and the Middle Bronze Ages and proposes some ideas concerning this critical nexus in the site’s development. Moreover, unpublished stratified ceramic data are presented and examined that might allow current synchronisms between Ebla, the Middle Euphrates, and the Syrian Jazirah between the late 3rd and the early 2nd millennium BC to be re-considered, and to shed light on the site’s participation and role in region-wide processes that were taking place between the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC. This way, this crucial connection in the developmental trajectory of Ebla and in the study of ancient Syria will be re-analysed offering insights into archaeology, chronology, and history.
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The site of Tell Arqa is one of the most important Bronze Age sites in Lebanon. Excavations conducted there between 1972 and 2014 have yielded a continuous stratigraphic sequence stretching from the Crusader period down to the Chalcolithic. While the Early and Middle Bronze Age material cultures are marked by a strong tendency towards conservatism, the Late Bronze Age (LB) offers two distinctive chronological and cultural phases. Level 12/Phase L1 covers the early part of the Late Bronze Age and retains many of the architectural and cultural aspects of the previous Middle Bronze Age (MB) period. Level 11/Phase K is different in architecture and in some components of the material culture. Local and regional architectural and ceramic comparisons place Level 11/Phase K between the last half/quarter of the 13th century BC and the first quarter of the 12th or to the timespan commonly known as the transitional Late Bronze Age/Iron Age I. This paper analyses the architectural and material characteristics of Level 11/Phase K at Arqa with the aim of isolating local characteristics and regional influences, and better defining the regional chrono-cultural sphere to which this level belongs.
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Thousands of dolmens are scattered throughout the southern Levant, mainly in Syria, Israel, and Jordan. These megalithic burials, dated to the early stages of the Bronze Age, are an understudied and little understood phenomenon of Levantine archaeology. Unlike in Europe and other parts of the world, rock art has rarely been reported from Levantine dolmens, despite more than 150 years of research and hundreds of excavated dolmens of the thousands of megalithic structures recorded. A fortunate discovery, in 2012, of engraved features on the ceiling of the central burial chamber of a giant dolmen in the Shamir Dolmen Field has markedly altered our current body of knowledge. Since this finding, rock art has been discovered at three additional dolmen sites. These latest discoveries are presented in the context of their significance to the broader phenomenon of the mysterious megalithic burials of the Levant.
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Re-assessment of the terminology, manufacture, function and distribution of Levantine 'Combed Ware', and the implications of this ceramic marker for commodity exchange and chronology in the eastern Mediterranean (including Egypt) during the third millennium BC.
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The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant - by Raphael Greenberg November 2019
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Cambridge Core - Archaeology of Europe and The Near and Middle East - The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant - by Raphael Greenberg
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Eprint: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/74wu5YKwt2BVa6hNSjzV/full
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