School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemAll the Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites (Samuel 2:15-18)’ - An Up-to-Date Account of Minoan Connections with the Philistines(Ugarit-Verlag, 2018)The ethnonyms Cherethite and Pelethite, and associations of the Philistines with Caphtor in the Old Testament point to a Cretan origin for them in literary tradition. This tradition, combined with the well-known Philistine production of Mycenaean style pottery, has been criticized by those reluctant to simplistically associate pots with peoples. Additional categories of evidence indicating an Aegean origin for the Philistines are well rehearsed. This contribution reviews the current state of understanding of the specific links between the Aegean and Philistia with regard to recent research, and with special reference to Crete. I briefly discuss ritual action, contextual analysis, architecture, administrative practices, inscriptions, and methodology. Using a transcultural approach, it is proposed that some aspects of Minoan culture survived in Philistia, embedded among other cultural components associated with the Mycenaeans, Cypriots, Anatolians, and Canaanites.
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ItemProfessor Louise Hitchcock Interview with Aidan Prewett(Political Animal Press, 2019)An examination of the role of crowds in the Bronze Age as related to crowd psychology.
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ItemThe Late Bronze Age at Tell es-Safi/Gath and the site’s role in Southwestern Canaan(De Gruyter, 2019)The Late Bronze Age in the Levant is a period of much interest to archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars. This is a period with intense international relations, rich in ancient sources, which provide historical data for the period, and is a crucial formative period for the peoples and cultures who play central roles in the Hebrew Bible. Recent archaeological research in Israel and surrounding countries has provided new, exciting, and in some cases, groundbreaking finds, interpretations and understanding of this period. The fourteen papers in this volume represent the proceedings of a conference held at Bar-Ilan University in 2014 (with the additional of several invited papers not presented at the conference), which provide both overviews of Late Bronze Age finds from several important sites in Israel and surrounding countries, as well as several synthetic studies on the various issues relating to the period. These papers, by and large, represent a broad view of cuttting edge research in the archaeology of the ancient Levant in general, and on the Late Bronze Age specifically.
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ItemTomorrow Never Dies: Post-Palatial Memories of the Aegean Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean(Peeters, 2019)The oldest words for future in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Hittite, and ancient Greek can be translated as the back of the day or that, which is behind you. Thus, the future has always been conceived in terms of its relationship to the past. Although the act of remembering the past may lead to remorse and trauma, it can also create a sense of stability through nostalgia, identity maintenance, and belonging. One of us (Hitchcock under submission) has proposed that the Late Bronze Age collapses not from any one catastrophe, but that its social and political structures could not withstand the multiplicity of the changes confronting it. Drought, famine, disease, earthquakes, piracy, and popular uprisings may have all been suggested as being among these changes. Thus, it became necessary for the Late Bronze Age to develop or transform into something else. This transformation was neither peaceful, stable, short-termed, or uniform in character. Yet communities that survived these collapses clung to certain symbols (e.g. horns of consecration), ritualized practices (e.g., feasting, fragmentation, and ruin cult), and ways of life (e.g. curation of architecture) – and in some cases invented behaviors seemingly relating to the past - to preserve some stability in a sea of change. The result is that the preserved remnants of the past provided continuity with the past while forming a gradual transition to the future. Our paper considers how the social memory of what it meant to be Minoan, Mycenaean, and even ‘Mycenoan’ in the transition to the Late Bronze Age was hanging by a thread. Using examples from the Aegean, Cyprus and the ‘Sea Peoples’, we also examine the struggles to find meaning and purpose in the remnants of the Late Bronze Age as the concept of collective and self-identity gradually undergoes a transformation to the great civilizations of the Iron Age.
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ItemCuration in the Bronze Age Aegean: Objects as Material Memories(Peeters Publishers, 2019)The Minoans appear to have placed a special and even ritual premium on curated objects that stimulated memory, such as heirlooms and antiques. Some imported Old and Middle Kingdom Egyptian objects, for example, were curated by the Minoans for centuries before deposition, often in tombs. Minoan stone bull’s-head and relief rhyta – never found intact, and with pieces always missing – appear to have been intentionally smashed, with pieces given to witnesses as mementos of the occasion; some of these pieces were curated for generations before being deposited in ritual contexts. In the same way, antique Minoan objects were sometimes curated into the Mycenaean period, as exemplified by Neopalatial vessels found in LM III contexts, or by the fragments of Minoan stone bull’s-head rhyta found in LH III contexts on the mainland. This practice of curation, however, is not specific to the Aegean; it is in fact common to a large number of cultures, both ancient and modern. Two LH IIIA2/B alabastra found at Ugarit, for example, had been curated there for nearly a century before the city’s destruction. Fragments of animal-headed cups were curated in Philistia, only to be deposited later in ritual contexts. The tomb of Tutankhamun contained a number of curated objects, including a lock of hair from his grandmother Tiye, and travertine vessels from the reign of his great-great-great grandfather Tuthmosis III. Among the Samburu of Kenya, antique Venetian trade beads—prized for their exoticness and distance-value—have been passed down through generations of women at their weddings as symbols of fertility and abundance. The Haya of Tanzania curate the clothing of a deceased head of household; the clothing is subsequently worn by his successor as a means of transferring power to the new generation. After libations at a shrine, the Aymara of Bolivia curate and display the empty libation vessels next to the effigy of the deity, where they serve as reminders (both to the deity and to future visitors at the shrine) of the piety of those who poured the libations – a practice that may very well echo the curation of countless offering vessels at Minoan extramural sanctuaries. In this paper, we explore a wide array of such cross-cultural and ethnographic evidence for curation. Our aim is to illuminate the range of potential meanings that this practice had in the Bronze Age Aegean, and the spectrum of potential ways in which this practice was intended to stimulate Minoan and Mycenaean memory.
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ItemA Brief Contribution to the Philistine Pig Debate(Lockwood Press, 2017)An updated account of the role of pigs in dietary practices and taboos in the southern Levant and Mediterranean.
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ItemGender and Violence in Archaeology: Final Commentary(Oxbow, 2017)Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen have brought together a team of both young and senior researches from many different countries in this first volume that aims to explore the complex intersection between archaeology, gender and violence. Papers range from theoretical discussions on previous approaches to gender and violence and the ethical necessity to address these questions today, to case studies dealing on gender and violence from prehistoric to early medieval Europe, but also including studies on ancient Egypt, Persia and Peru. The contributors deal both with representations of violence and its gendered background in images and text, and with bioarchaeological evidence for violence and trauma with a gendered background. The volume is rich both in examples and approaches and includes opening and closing chapters by senior scholars in the field assesing the current state of work and addressing the scholarship to continue on the line of this volume.
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ItemHesperos and Phosphoros: How Research on Aegean-Eastern Interactions Can Inform Studies of the West(Peeters, 2017)Hesperos and Phosphoros: How Research on Aegean-Eastern Interactions Can Inform Studies of the West The extent of Aegean influence on its neighbors and of neighboring regions on it remains a contentious area of investigation that continues to generate enthusiastic scholarly interest and lively debate. This poster elaborates on the importance of current theoretical perspectives on Aegean interaction with the east because they may be conceptually useful to those studying similar interactions with central and western Europe. Aegean seafarers, traders, and crafters were engaged and entangled in cultural exchanges with the east and west on many scales, and artistic and cultural influence among these regions was multi-directional. Although the authors’ expertise lies in interactions and interconnections between the Aegean and the East (particularly Philistia and Cyprus) it is suggested that their theoretical and anthropological approaches to gift exchange, entanglement, transculturalism, transnationalism, and piracy may offer useful insights to those viewing the Aegean from a western perspective. The Aegean was drawn within the eastern sphere of influence in the late Early Bronze Age (ca. 2200 BCE) with the importation of raw materials from the Near East including copper, tin, gold, and ivory. Gold and ivory were used in the Aegean to manufacture items of elite regalia such as diadems and mace-heads, and other luxury items, particularly ivories (e.g. Maeir et al. 2015), that went on to assume transnational significance in the repertoire of the international style (e.g. Crowley 1989). Once the Minoans acquired the technology for deep-hulled ships with masts as noted by Broodbank (2002), Crete became a key player in Mediterranean trade interactions, which involved gift exchange and trade with the east, the dissemination of ceramic styles and motifs, and the transmittal of Aegean style consumption and feasting practices (Hitchcock et al. 2015). The results of such activities lay in cultural entanglements in the liminal zones of coastal and island regions of the Mediterranean. Our understanding of destruction and collapse that took place in the Aegean (ca. 1177 BCE, e.g. Cline 2014) has gone from simplistic models of migration v. mercantilism, to more sophisticated models of entanglement, transculturalism, transnational identity, limited migration, and piratical activity following the break down secure maritime routes (Hitchcock and Maeir 2014). As Aegean peoples and others from throughout the Mediterranean became entangled in the piratical cultures that resulted in the Sea Peoples phenomenon, a phenomenon that perhaps over emphasizes the biblically well-known Philistines, similar implications may exist for understanding cultural entanglements in the West. Likewise, as we prefer non-simplistic explanatory frameworks for the transformation processes which occurred in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze/Iron Age transition and beyond (with Aegean originating cultural influences playing a definite role in these mechanisms), so we believe similarly complex scenarios should be seen in the western Mediterranean as well. Finally, the comparison with Iron Age east-to-west (Phoenicians and Greeks going west) - and west to east (Greeks going eastward) - connections, may also provide interesting insights for understanding the Bronze Age westward connections of the Aegean cultures. The mixed character of these Iron Age connections – mercantile ventures, colonies, mercenaries and other aspects – led to very complex cultural connections and interactions (Maeir and Hitchcock in press). While there are substantial socio-cultural differences between the Bronze and Iron Age Aegean (and Mediterranean in general), the many aspects of continuity and the longue durée seen throughout Mediterranean history (e.g. Broodbank 2013), indicates that similarities and parallels – and for sure insights – can be gleaned from this. Louise A. HITCHCOCK Aren M. MAEIR Works Cited BROODBANK, C. (2002) An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -------. (2013). The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CLINE, E.H. (2014) 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press. CROWLEY, J.L. (1989) The Aegean and the East: An Investigation into the Transference of Artistic Motifs between the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East In the Bronze Age. (SIMA Pocket-book 51) Jonsered, Sweden: Paul Åströms Förlag. HITCHCOCK, L.A.; HORWITZ, L.K.; BOARETTO, E.; and MAEIR, A.M (2015). “One Philistine’s Trash is an Archaeologists Treasure,” Near Eastern Archaeology 78.1: 12-25. HITCHCOCK, L.A. and MAEIR, A.M. (2014) “Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Seren’s Life for Me,” World Archaeology 46.4: 624-640. MAEIR, A.M. and HITCHCOCK, L.A. (In Press) “The Appearance, Formation and Transformation of Philistine Culture: New Perspective and New Finds,” in P.M. Fischer (ed) “The Sea-Peoples Up-To-Date. New Research on the Migration of Peoples in the 12th Century BCE.” Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Workshop, Vienna (Austria). Vienna: Austrian Academy of Science and Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology. MAEIR, A.M.; DAVIS, B.E.; HORWITZ, L.K.; and ASSCHER, Y.; and HITCHCOCK, L.A. (2015), “An Ivory Bowl from Early Iron Age Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel) - Manufacture, Meaning and Memory,” World Archaeology 47: 1-28.
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ItemLike Dolmen, Like Dromos: Contextualizing the Solar Orientations of Some Mycenaean Tholoi(Peeters, 2017)It has been observed that the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, the most famous Mycenaean tholos tomb, is oriented to the point on the horizon where the sun rises on the equinoxes (Reijs 2009). This example of the orientation of a Mycenaean tholos towards a significant solar event is now supplemented by the authors’ discovery that at least five other well-known Mycenaean tholoi are aligned to significant markers in the solar calendar. Specifically: the Vapheio tholos (LH IIB) is oriented to the summer solstice sunrise (Chapin et al. 2014); the Tomb of the Genii at Mycenae (LH IIB-IIIA1) is aligned to the summer solstice sunset; Tholos 1 at Tiryns and the tholos tomb at Dendra (both LH IIIA) point to the winter solstice sunset; and the Kato Phournos tholos at Mycenae (LH IIA) is sited toward sunset on the equinoxes. These alignments cannot all be accidental. On the contrary, they suggest that elite Mycenaean patrons and their architects had access to detailed knowledge of the solar calendar and intentionally incorporated this information into the placement of certain funerary monuments within their surrounding landscapes.
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ItemRethinking the Philistines: A 2017 Perspective(Eisenbraun, 2017)This article discusses how new discoveries and new interpretive and collaborative frameworks are changing our picture of the Philistines.