Reassessment: Just Another Israelite Village

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In a recent issue of BAR, the archaeologist Adam Zertal put forward a theory that was bound to raise eyebrows: The site of el-Ahwat in north-central Israel was not, he argued, an early Israelite settlement (as other scholars have assumed), but a town built by the Shardana, one of the Sea Peoples who invaded Israel in the 12th century B.C.E. (“Philistine Kin Found in Early Israel,” BAR 28:03).

Additionally, Zertal claimed that the Shardana originated from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia—as the tribe’s name would seem to suggest. As evidence, Zertal cited the architecture of el-Ahwat, which appears to be built in the Sardinian style.

Now another prominent archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, has rejected Zertal’s theory. His rebuttal appears in the Israel Exploration Journal, an eminent but hard-to-find academic journal. Because the Zertal-Finkelstein debate is important to the field of Biblical archaeology, we summarize here its main points for our readers.—Ed.

“Almost from the beginning the site… was different… strange,” wrote Adam Zertal concerning el-Ahwat in north-central Israel, which he has been excavating since 1992. The settlement is securely dated by potsherds to Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E.), the period of the Judges in Biblical terms. It was enclosed by a meandering city wall of enormous width—between 18 and 24 feet—which has survived in places to a height of 15 feet! Over 200,000 cubic feet of stones were used to construct this wall. The twisting course “certainly was not dictated by the moderately sloping topography”; rather, it was shaped this way by “aesthetic choice.” Zertal was “surprised to discover a strange emptiness in the town.” Most of the area inside the wall was unoccupied.

The town was abandoned only about 50 years after its initial settlement. The site was not occupied again until the Late Roman period; the excavator has found evidence of agricultural activity from that time onward. Who built el-Ahwat, with its strange meandering wall? One of the candidates Zertal considered in his BAR article was one of the Sea Peoples—not the famous Philistines, but another tribe called the Shardana. The Shardana came from the Aegean region and, because of the linguistic similarity between “Shardana” and “Sardinia,” Zertal suspected that this island was their original home. When he explored the possibility further, he found parallels between construction at el-Ahwat and the unusual stone structures of Sardinia called nuraghi. Indeed nuraghi in Sardic means “heap of stones.” The nuraghi are made of large stones and are most often irregular or wavy in design, like the city wall at el-Ahwat. The nuraghic civilization on Sardinia reached its height from about 1500 to 1200 B.C.E., a little earlier than el-Ahwat.

Some of the nuraghi have an internal labyrinth of corridors and corbelled roofs. (A corbelled roof is made of rows of overlapping stones, eventually forming a dome-like shape.) Significantly, the city walls of el-Ahwat are built with corridors leading into the street; at the other end, the corridors form rooms with corbelled roofs. Zertal went to Sardinia himself to check out the similarity and became more convinced than ever: He had found the Shardana. “The key characteristics of Sardinian architecture were fully preserved at el-Ahwat,” he wrote. Zertal added, “We were forced to conclude that el-Ahwat must have some cultural connection to Sardinia. The most compelling argument arises from the process of elimination. If the cultural connection with Sardinia is not valid, is there any alternative connection that would explain what we have found? In my best judgment, the answer is no.”

Now Israel Finkelstein, of Tel Aviv University, says he has a better explanation—a much better one. El-Ahwat is a typical unwalled Iron Age I village, like hundreds of others, Finkelstein claims in a recent article in the Israel Exploration Journal.¹ These are the villages that William Dever—and many others following him—identify with the 023emerging Israelites (or “proto-Israelites”), not the Sea Peoples.

What about that huge, meandering wall? In Finkelstein’s judgment, it is not a city wall at all—not even the wall of a village, as Finkelstein characterizes the site. What Zertal perceives as a wall is simply “the remains of a Late Roman (and later) agricultural system of fences, terraces and piles of stones from clearing plots for cultivation—a phenomenon well known in the hill country.”

Finkelstein notes that the supposed city wall has survived to a height of at least three feet taller than the Iron Age I buildings within the site. Zertal explains this by saying that the later agriculturalists dismantled the internal houses. Why, then, did they not also dismantle the wall? A much better explanation, says Finkelstein, is that this “city wall” was “originally built as a fence/terrace in the Late Roman period on top of the Iron [Age] I buildings.”

Some of the buildings inside the site are built diagonally to the so-called city wall, again indicating that the “wall” had been built at a different time, probably on top of the buildings inside. Moreover, part of the wall runs inside the city; this section is clearly built over the Iron Age I buildings (see plan).

While Zertal describes this wall as between 18 and 24 feet wide, “in most places it is much thinner,” Finkelstein writes. He adds that “sites with similar shapes of large terraces, fences and piles of stones cleared from the fields are a well-known phenomenon in the hill country… The routine of clearing stones in order to create cultivation plots is typical of hilly Mediterranean regions in all periods, and has nothing to do with the identity of Iron I peoples.”

Another factor weighing against this site belonging to the Shardana is that it is inland, not on the Mediterranean coast, where the Sea Peoples landed and built their cities. Zertal himself notes this problem. We would hardly expect to find the Shardana settling deep in the hill country.

Finally, as for the corridors and corbelled roofs: They are nothing but agricultural field towers, says Finkelstein. Just “another well-known phenomenon in the highlands, which is related, in many cases, to the practice of clearing stones from the fields.”

Finkelstein also discusses the “funnel-shaped plaza” (Zertal’s interpretation) in front of the purported gate of the city. Look at the walls of the funnel-shaped plaza; they are nothing but terrace walls, created with the stones cleared from the fields, says Finkelstein.

As for the pottery, Finkelstein notes that—based on what he has seen at the site, courtesy of the excavator, and what little has been published—it appears to be similar to the Iron Age I pottery found in scores of hill country sites from this time.

Zertal’s argument depends on two pottery sherds decorated with herringbone incisions that are similar to a few sherds found in Sardinia. To which Finkelstein replies: “Similar incised sherds” have been found at a number of Iron Age I sites in Israel, so “there is no need to go as far as Sardinia for parallels.” And none of the other pottery from el-Ahwat bears the characteristic decoration of pottery made by the Philistines (another Sea People) or of the pottery of the northern seacoast of Israel and Lebanon (where other Sea Peoples, such as the Tjeker and Denyan, are thought to have settled), nor of the pottery from Cyprus, where the Sea Peoples are thought to have sailed from.

As for Zertal’s comparison of his architecture with that of the Sardinian nuraghi, Finkelstein notes that the nuraghi which Zertal discusses are several centuries earlier than the el-Ahwat structures.

In sum, Finkelstein concludes, “el-Ahwat is an ordinary unfortified Iron [Age] I village… The inhabitants belonged to the local population of the region.”

In a recent issue of BAR, the archaeologist Adam Zertal put forward a theory that was bound to raise eyebrows: The site of el-Ahwat in north-central Israel was not, he argued, an early Israelite settlement (as other scholars have assumed), but a town built by the Shardana, one of the Sea Peoples who invaded Israel in the 12th century B.C.E. (“Philistine Kin Found in Early Israel,” BAR 28:03). Additionally, Zertal claimed that the Shardana originated from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia—as the tribe’s name would seem to suggest. As evidence, Zertal cited the architecture of el-Ahwat, which appears to […]