Khirbet el-Mastarah: An Early Israelite Settlement? - The BAS Library

Khirbet el-Mastarah: An Early Israelite Settlement? - The BAS Library

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Hidden in the Jordan Valley, Khirbet el-Mastarah may shed light on early Israelite origins. The site contains numerous enclosures and structures, which appear to have been used by a nomadic or semi-nomadic group at the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200 B.C.E.). Archaeologists Ralph K. Hawkins and David Ben-Shlomo examine the evidence.

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Footnotes

1. Benny Arubas, Shay Bar, and Hershel Shanks, “Archaeologists on Crutches,” BAR, March/April 2016.

2. See Ralph K. Hawkins, “Israelite Footprints,” BAR, March/April 2016.

Endnotes

1.
For an overview of the various models of early Israelite origins, see Ralph K. Hawkins, How Israel Became a People (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013), pp. 29–48.

2.
Most recently, Dever states, “all current models … focus on indigenous origins somewhere within Greater Canaan.” See William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), p. 232.

3.
See, for example, Dever, Beyond the Texts, p. 152.

4.
For a detailed account of the excavation, see David Ben-Shlomo and Ralph K. Hawkins, “Excavations at Khirbet el-Mastarah, the Jordan Valley, 2017,” Judea and Samaria Research Studies 1.26 (2017), pp. 49–82.

5.
See Benjamin A. Saidel, “The Bedouin Tent: An Ethno-Archaeological Portal to Antiquity or a Modern Construct?” in Hans Barnard and Willeke Wendrich, eds., The Archaeology of Mobility: Old World and New World Nomadism (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2008), pp. 465–486.

6.
Adam Zertal and Shay Bar, The Manasseh Hill Country Survey: From Nahal Bezeq to the Sartaba, vol. 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 62.

7.
For the Jordan Valley, see Zertal and Bar, Manasseh Hill Country Survey, vol. 4, p. 58. For the Manasseh Hill Country, see Adam Zertal, The Manasseh Hill Country Survey: The Shechem Syncline, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 53–54.

8.
See Zertal and Bar, Manasseh Hill Country Survey, vol. 4, p. 61. For a summary of the debate about the derivation of the ceramic traditions, see Hawkins, How Israel Became a People, pp. 147–152.

9.
See Hawkins, How Israel Became a People, pp. 121–135.

10.
Zertal and Bar, The Manasseh Hill Country Survey, vol. 4, pp. 62–63.

11.
Adam Zertal, Dror Ben-Yosef, Oren Cohen, and Ron Be’eri, “Kh. ‘Aujah el-Foqa (Ataroth)—An Iron Age Fortified City in the Jordan Valley,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 141.2 (2009), pp. 104–123.

12.
Zertal, Ben-Yosef, Cohen and Be’eri, “Kh. ‘Aujah el-Foqa (Ataroth),” pp. 120–121.

13.
Shmuel Ahituv, Eitan Klein, and Amir Ganor, “The ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus: A Seventh-Century BCE Shipping Certificate,” Israel Exploration Journal 67.2 (2017), pp. 168–182.