Debate: Sticking to the Facts

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In the May/June 2002 issue of BAR, we published Adam Zertal’s “Philistine Kin Found in Early Israel,” in which he argued that the ruins found at el-Ahwat in northern Israel were the remains of an Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E) city built not by locals but by a tribe of Sea Peoples known as the Shardana. Zertal links the Shardana to distant Sardinia, basing his claim on the site’s many unusual features. Among them are small domed structures, known in Greek as tholoi, that resemble edifices found in Late Bronze Age (1500–1200 B.C.E.) Sardinia. Another is the apparent brevity of the city’s history: according to Zertal, the entire city—walls, homes and all—was built at one time and inhabited for less than a century.

However, another prominent archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, disagreed with Zertal’s findings. Finkelstein published his critique in the Israel Exploration Journal, which we summarized in “Just Another Israelite Village” (May/June 2003). Contra Zertal, Finkelstein claims that the site, despite its unusual features, was, as our title says, just another Israelite village, and that its supposedly massive walls date to a much later time and are simply field stones cleared for Roman agricultural terraces. Below is Adam Zertal’s rebuttal to Finkelstein’s critique.—Ed.

El-Ahwat is a highly interesting site: If our interpretation is correct not only did the site belong to the Shardana, one of the most important Sea Peoples, but the Shardana may have had a connection to Sardinia. We may be dealing here with a very significant discovery. With this in mind, any contribution proffered by serious scholars would be more than welcome. Unfortunately, Finkelstein’s article is everything but this.^a Instead of challenging our interpretation concerning the link with the Sea Peoples and their identity, he chose to attack our stratigraphy and the dating of the city wall, even questioning the wall’s existence.

He does this, moreover, after only two short visits to the site and without having had access to all the documentation amassed during seven seasons of digging, making his claims groundless, if not absurd. Indeed, Finkelstein discusses only the short preliminary report on el-Ahwat, published in Hebrew in 1996. That report presented data from the first three seasons, which remained valid, though with minor changes, until we published further findings after four more seasons. In any case, this later report also does not provide any support for the redating of the city wall, and the reasons for the attack on our interpretation of el-Ahwat remain obscure.

More than 40 years ago the English archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon, in her comments on the Megiddo excavations of the 1920s and 1930s, set a precedent by being the first to openly criticize the results of other scholars’ work. However, in contrast to Finkelstein, she did not redate the Megiddo levels but proposed a new stratigraphic division for them. She was also careful to base her analysis on the final report of the Chicago Expedition to Megiddo rather than on a preliminary report (the final report on el-Ahwat, a book of 400 pages, will appear in mid-2004).

Finkelstein’s attack fits what now appears to be a pattern. A few years ago he attacked Amihai Mazar on the dating of the “Bull Site” without visiting the site or inspecting the pottery. In his response, Mazar faced the same dilemma as we do: an attack that ignores the facts. In our case, Finkelstein has built his argument on the assumption that our large wall was not a city wall but a terrace wall built by farmers during the Roman period. If this assumption is wrong, his entire argument collapses. Here we shall try not only to show that our interpretation of the wall is correct but also return 023to what is the real issue here: whether or not the site belonged to the Shardana.

For the sake of brevity, I will make only the following points in support of our views:

1. City Plan: The entire site was clearly pre-planned and built in one phase. The findings of seven seasons of excavation (1993–2000) and repeated examinations along the wall and its junctions indicate that the structure was built as one single unit at one time. All archaeologists are inclined to find stages and levels in their stratigraphy, for that would make the site more attractive and interesting. We tried, but we could not find them.

2. City Wall: City walls (and other walls as well) are dated according to the floors and levels that abut them. If these relate clearly to the wall, then they date it. Another criterion is the presence of datable pottery and other objects in a wall’s foundation trenches. Our city wall was analyzed at many points along its perimeter, including the 200-foot strip in area C (the domestic quarter). In all the houses that we inspected, the floors that abutted the city wall and integrated the wall into the structure of the house yielded pottery, jewels, scarabs and other objects that came entirely from Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E). No other strata or other houses were found; the site only had one thin stratum. Moreover, since there is no evidence of repairs in the walls or of reflooring, we assume that the whole city existed for only 50 or 60 years. In addition, the foundation trenches of the city wall revealed by our section into it also yielded exclusively Iron Age I pottery, confirming the findings from the house floors. Finally, an agricultural terrace wall is extremely different in construction from a city wall. It is narrow, short and lacks continuity, none of which is true of the wall at our site.

3. The Roman Level at el-Ahwat: El-Ahwat was fully abandoned around 1150 B.C.E. and stood unoccupied for some 1500 years, until the fourth century C.E. Then the site was converted into an agricultural field. The stones of the ancient site were collected and accumulated into piles to make room for topsoil, which was imported from a Roman site elsewhere and spread over the foundations of the Iron Age city. It is quite easy to tell the difference between the floors of the Iron Age structures, which relate to the lower courses of the wall and abut them, and the upper level of agricultural soil, which contains Roman potsherds. This distinction is easy even for the beginning student to discern and was indicated on all the sections and plans we made of the site. Had Finkelstein been interested, he could have seen our sections and plans by request.

4. The Corridors and Tholoi: These are perhaps the most intriguing features of the el-Ahwat site, for they are alien to local Bronze and Iron Age architecture. The corridors are long tunnel-like constructions that extend into the city wall. They are covered by long stone slabs and end in small round rooms roofed by the “false” dome method (“false” domes are made of rows of overlapping stones and do not have a constructed arch, which would make it a “true” dome). The tholoi are round huts, also with “false” domes. Although comparable structures dating to the Roman and Byzantine periods have been found nearby, the tholoi of el-Ahwat are clearly from Iron Age I: They are too well-integrated into the city wall to have been later additions.

5. Domestic Architecture: Most of the architectural styles found at el-Ahwat exist nowhere else in the region. These buildings are further evidence that a foreign element inhabited this site.

6. Rural Iron Age I Settlement or Sea Peoples’ City? El-Ahwat has all the trappings of a full-blown city: a relatively large size (equal at the time to the City of David in Jerusalem!), fortifications, evidence of urban planning, division into quarters, public buildings such as the “governor’s house” and rich material finds. Indeed, el-Ahwat is quite different from any rural sites known in ancient Canaan or Israel.

7. Pottery: The pottery of el-Ahwat is different from any known assemblages from the same period. It is composed of vessels that can be divided into two basic groups, the coarseware of the Iron Age I hill country (Mt. Ebal, Giloh and Shiloh) and Late Bronze Age (1500–1200 B.C.E) traditional pottery. What is unique about the pottery of el-Ahwat, however, is that it contained no imported or painted pottery of any kind. We found not a single imported sherd, and only one or two painted sherds. This is unheard of for a site of this size.

Finkelstein’s claims are groundless. All indications support the uniqueness of the site, which differs from all other known Iron Age I cities. The special characteristics, particularly the corridors and tholoi, may indicate a special ethnic element with architectural traditions very different from those of the local population. The site differs in many respects from contemporaneous sites; the architecture most similar to it is that of Sardinia, where features such as the tholoi originated in the Bronze Age.

Historically, the location and the period of occupation of el-Ahwat coincide well with Egyptian descriptions of the settlement of the Shardana in the northern Sharon plain. Our interpretation is based on data, on historical texts and the fact that no other interpretation explains as well the el-Ahwat site.

In the May/June 2002 issue of BAR, we published Adam Zertal’s “Philistine Kin Found in Early Israel,” in which he argued that the ruins found at el-Ahwat in northern Israel were the remains of an Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E) city built not by locals but by a tribe of Sea Peoples known as the Shardana. Zertal links the Shardana to distant Sardinia, basing his claim on the site’s many unusual features. Among them are small domed structures, known in Greek as tholoi, that resemble edifices found in Late Bronze Age (1500–1200 B.C.E.) Sardinia. Another is the apparent brevity […]