Israelite Conquest or Settlement? New Light from Tell Masos

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(In Memoriam—Yohanan Aharoni)

One of the most vexed problems of Biblical history and archaeology concerns the nature of the Israelite occupation of Canaan. With the occupation, Israel became a nation and at that time its national history begins. However, the Bible itself reflects at least two views of this beginning. One, that a series of swift military victories subdued the land (e.g. Joshua 5–12) and another, that the Israelite settlement was a gradual and, at least at the outset, a peaceful process over an extended period of time (e.g. Judges 1, 4–5).

What part of the Biblical account is an accurate reflection of history and what part is folk history or legend?

Biblical scholars are still far from agreement. Some accounts in Joshua and Judges may be accurate reflections of events which occurred at the time the Bible says they did; others perhaps should be regarded as later compositions from the time of David and reflecting the period when they were composed more than the period which they ostensibly recount.

The only extra-Biblical document of this period which has some direct bearing on the question is the well-known Israel Stele of the Pharaoh Merneptah (about 1220 B.C.) in which Israel is mentioned as a tribal group subdued by Merneptah together with some Canaanite cities. For the rest, the archaeologist must uncover the material remains of the period to shed whatever light he can on the problem. Only by taking into consideration both the Biblical traditions and the archaeological data, can we hope to write an accurate history of the period.

Perhaps longer than others, the German school of Biblical studies has grappled with the problems of the Israelite occupation of Canaan. Coming from a critical scholarly tradition, German scholars never regarded the stories of the military occupation of Canaan as realistic historical accounts. Instead, they posited a slow but steady penetration by the Israelite tribes who settled peacefully first in the unoccupied areas of Canaan, and only at a later period—during the early monarchy—initiated military campaigns against the Canaanite cities.

The two most prominent German proponents of this theory are Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth. Alt first advanced his “Settlement Theory” in the early 1930’s in an article entitled “Die Landnahme de Israeliten in Palästina”¹. The keyword in the title is “landnahme” which means something like a “taking over of a land”, a non-military occupation or “settlement”—all as opposed to a military conquest.

The core of this theory was that prior to their settlement in Canaan, the Israelite tribes were small cattle semi-nomads; during the settlement period, they went through a centuries-long process which transformed them from semi-nomadic shepherds into agricultural settlers. This transformation and settlement took place primarily in the central mountain areas of Canaan which were not controlled by the 026Canaanite city-states, so that the Israelite tribes could occupy the land peaceably.

Alt’s theory of the settlement was based primarily on his acute critical analysis of the Biblical text and was buttressed by ethnographic observations of Bedouin behavior which he made during the early 1920’s and 1930’s when he spent extended periods in the Holy land. These ethnographic observations suggested to Alt that it takes generations to change semi-nomadic shepherds into agricultural settlers.

At the time Alt formed his theories, the “area-survey” as a precise archaeological tool was practically unknown in Palestine. Prominent tells had already been identified by their peculiar shape and by the masses of potsherds spread on their slopes; but the small sites, the remains of villages and hamlets, were still disregarded.

An area-survey is a painstaking task: Each square mile is thoroughly walked over by a group of surveyors and each small mound is visited, its sherds and stone tools collected and recorded. The first large-scale survey done by Israeli archaeologists was undertaken in the Jordan Valley in the 1940’s by a team that included Benjamin Mazar and Moshe Stekelis. In the early 1950’s Yohanan Aharoni, then a doctoral candidate in archaeology at The Hebrew University, began a large-scale archaeological survey of the central Galilee area. Aharoni was assisted by a group of enthusiastic amateur archaeologists, primarily from the kibbutzim in the area. Aharoni’s aim was to find out whether he could recognize in the field the material remains of the original Israelite settlement or occupation. He chose the central Galilee area because this is where Alt had suggested the first Israelite nomads had settled.

The results of this survey were astonishing.² Aharoni actually found a chain of small villages and hamlets which 028he believed had been settled by the early Israelites. He established his point archaeologically principally from ceramic evidence. The ware was rough and poorly made, suggesting a rural, unsophisticated people. Some of the shapes were new to the repertoire of Palestinian pottery forms, but many others imitated more sophisticated Canaanite pottery. The collection of pottery forms he found comprised what would later be described as typical “Israelite Ware”.

Aharoni’s survey represented a breakthrough in the effort to understand the Israelite settlement of Canaan. It showed that the Alt-Noth theory of an initial peaceful settlement was correct. It demonstrated that Israelite occupation began as an infiltration into the vacant areas of the central mountains at the end of the Late Bronze Age (c. 13th century B.C.). Aharoni’s survey also tended to refute the central historical concept reflected in the book of Joshua that Canaan was occupied by means of military victories. An initial and total Israelite victory over the Canaanites would have resulted in an Israelite settKempinskilement of the richer, more desirable parts of the country, not the heavily wooded central Galilee.

The results of Aharoni’s Galilee survey were later confirmed by a survey of Judea and Samaria conducted by Moshe Kochavi shortly after the 1967 war. In both these areas, Kochavi found hundreds of small settlements similar to the ones Aharoni had found in Galilee. As predicted by Alt, they were scattered over all the theretofore unoccupied mountainous areas.

Turning to the southern part of the country, the northern Negev is another area of ancient Palestine without any Canaanite cities. Although the Biblical account of the Israelite occupation (Numbers 21:1–3 and Judges 1:17) tells us that two Canaanite cities (Arad and Hormah) ruled the northern Negev, the archaeological evidence is otherwise. Arad, identified with Tell Arad and excavated by Aharoni and Ruth Amiran in the 1960’s, turned out to have been settled in the Early Bronze Age (third millennium B.C.) but was later resettled only at the beginning of Iron Age I (c. 1200 B.C.). No Late Bronze Age Canaanite city was found there. Hormah can be identified either with Tell-el-Milh (Tell Malhata in Hebrew), or with Kirbet el-Meshash (Tell Masos in Hebrew). Both are prominent sites west of Arad. However, excavations of both these sites have proved that after a relatively short period of occupation during the Middle Bronze Age (18th and 17th century B.C.), these sites were unoccupied until the beginning of Iron Age I. Again, no Late Bronze Age Canaanite city.

The history of settlement was the same in the northern Negev as in the mountain areas of central Galilee. Both areas were unoccupied during the period preceding the Israelite settlement (the Late Bronze Age). In the central Galilee area, some Canaanite cities did rule the important mountain passes, but that was all. In the northern Negev, no Canaanite cities whatever were found in the Late Bronze Age.

The northern Negev excavations also strengthened another argument put forth by the Alt-Noth school; namely, that the stories of military victories over the Canaanites in the books of Joshua and Judges should be recognized mainly as etiological in nature, i.e., in these stories the Israelites sought to explain certain observed phenomena by relating them to the period of Joshua and the occupation, rather than to the period when they actually occurred. Thus, the ruins of ancient cities were thought by later Israelites to be “Canaanite” cities destroyed either by their tribal hero Joshua or, slightly later, by the occupying tribes of Simeon and Judah. In fact, these ruins dated from a much earlier period and were unrelated to the Israelite occupation.

In 1968 Aharoni, by then head of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, started excavations at one of the most important tells in the area, Tell Beer-Sheva. At the same time, and as part of Israel’s first organized Regional Archaeological Project, Moshe Kochavi began excavations at Tell Mahata, between Beer-Sheva and Arad. As noted earlier Tell Malhata is a candidate for Biblical Hormah.

In 1972, again as a result of Aharoni’s initiative, excavations were started at Tell Masos. These excavations are the first joint Israeli-German expeditions in the country. The Germans are represented by Volkmar Fritz, Professor of Biblical Archaeology and Biblical Studies at the University of Mainz, and the Israelis are represented by the author.

029Tell Masos is the largest Iron Age I site in the northern Negev and southern Judean mountains. It comprises about 15 acres and is located about 8 miles east of Tell Beer-Sheva on the northern side of the Wadi Beer-Sheva. This wadi connects Masos with Arad and Tell Malhata to the east, and with Beer-Sheva and some of the sites of the western Negev and the southern coast to the west (see map). The tell also occupies an important position on a cross-road which connects the southern coast with Trans-Jordan through the Beer-Sheva valley to Tell Arad and eastward. This road also crosses another important road: the road which connects the central Negev and the Aravah (the area of copper mines) with the central Judean mountains (Devir-Hebron-Jerusalem). No doubt this site’s geographical position was one of the main reasons the first Simeonite families settled there. This strategic location also led to its development as one of the most important Iron Age I settlements in southern Judea and the northern Negev.

Three seasons of excavations have now produced important new information regarding the process by which Israelite tribes settled in the south. That Tell Masos should be a key site for unravelling this process is easily explained not only by its size and importance, but also by the fact that it was abandoned soon after 1000 B.C. At about that time its inhabitants moved to a well fortified settlement at nearby Tell Ira, a mile and a half to the north (see map). For the archaeologist such a short-lived site is ideal; as Manfred Weippert, a leading authority on the problems of the Israelite settlement, has put it, Tell Masos serves today as a huge “field laboratory” for the problems of the Israelite settlement in the south.

The historical and cultural picture which emerges after three seasons of excavations can be summarized as follows: The first settlers in the area of Masos were semi-nomadic. They built their huts and houses on the loess hills near the rich wells of the Wadi Beer-Sheva. They brought with them some pottery, most of which is very similar to the Canaanite pottery of the 13th century B.C. from the Canaanite-occupied southern Shefelah, the area of rolling hills between the coastal plains and central mountains.

They also brought with them some new domestic architecture—a peasant house which consists of an inner court with two narrow rooms opening onto the court on two sides (see plan). One of the rooms has a row of stone pillars in place of a wall on the courtyard side. This probably functioned as a free connection between this room and the courtyard. The other room had a more private function and was no doubt the main family residence. At a slightly later period, another room with stone pillars was added 030on a third side facing the court. Thus was formed the so-called “4-room house” (see planand illustration) which has been identified as a unique form of Israelite domestic architecture, commonly found at early Israelite sites.

At Tell Masos, we have established that this 4-room house developed from a traditional primitive structure in which a room with stone pillars facing onto a court was an essential element.

Stone monoliths have often been used as pillars—and sometimes as supportive corbelling—by people living in mountainous areas where such building materials are available. Some of the best-known examples come from the volcanic basalt areas north of the Sea of Galilee, as well as in the Golan and Trans-Jordan, where these stone pillars have been used in buildings from the second and even from the third millennium B.C. But the 4-room house which developed from this building technique appears to have been an Israelite architectural contribution and is typically found in Israelite settlements, as first observed in a study by the Israeli archaeologist and historian Shmuel Yeivin.³

In a more recent study⁴, Yigael Shiloh of Hebrew University demonstrated that the 4-room house continued to be the principal domestic architectural unit in Israelite villages and cities during the Iron Age II period (1000–586 B.C.) as well. Shiloh also demonstrated that the 4-room house was an original Israelite design without foreign prototype.

The results from Tell Masos have confirmed the Yeivin-Shiloh theories. During the first period of settlement (our stratum IIIa), at the end of the 13th century B.C. the Tell Masos settlers were already acquainted with the prototype 3-room house.

During the middle of the 12th century B.C. this early settlement was destroyed; however, shortly thereafter it was rebuilt. The population did not change, as is indicated by the same pottery types and the same basic architectural style as in the earlier stratum. But in the rebuilt settlement (stratum II) the quality of both pottery and architecture improved enormously. Instead of 3-room houses, well-built and uniformly planned 4-room houses occupied most of the 15-acre site. This improvement in architecture found its parallel development in the improved and more sophisticated pottery. This new-found prosperity probably resulted from Tell Masos’ incorporation into the political and economic sphere of the Philistines, the rulers of Canaan during the late 12th and 11th century B.C. Not only were well-built 4-room houses found in stratum II, but some public buildings were also erected, apparently under initiative of the city’s Philistine over-lords.

The first appearance of the Israelites at Tell Masos in the northern Negev and the new cultural elements which they brought with them is in total harmony with the settlement theory of Alt as later developed and supported by Aharoni and Aharoni’s own teacher, Professor Benjamin Mazar. Tell Masos establishes that the Israelite settlers of the second half of the 13th century B.C. were not simply nomads who “emerged from the desert” but were a people who already had a building tradition going back to the Bronze Age traditions of the mountainous areas. The picture is a rather complex one: a new population settles in unoccupied areas bringing with them a specific type of building, as well as their own pottery styles which are closely akin to Late Bronze Canaanite pottery of the southern Shefelah. Both elements, architecture and pottery, develop during the 12th and 11th century B.C. under the strong cultural influence of the Philistines, and form the prototypes for some of the major material elements of Israelite culture in the centuries that followed.⁵

One of the most vexed problems of Biblical history and archaeology concerns the nature of the Israelite occupation of Canaan. With the occupation, Israel became a nation and at that time its national history begins. However, the Bible itself reflects at least two views of this beginning.