School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications

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    The Legacy of the Sea Peoples: Raiders, Pirates, or Explorers [Interview given to James Blake Wiener]
    Hitchcock, L ; Blake Wiener, J (Karwansaray, 2019)
    An interview on the Sea Peoples as pirates with commentary on the recent study of Philistine DNA. In this interview, James Blake Wiener speaks to Professor Louise Hitchcock – one of the world’s leading experts on the Bronze Age Mediterranean and the ancient Aegean – about the Sea Peoples and their legacy in reshaping the ancient Eastern Mediterranean.
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    The Chronology of the Late Bronze (LB)-Iron Age (IA) Transition in the Southern Levant: A Response to Finkelstein’s Critique
    Hitchcock, LA ; Boaretto, E ; Asscher, Y ; Lehmann, G ; Maeir, AM ; Wiener, S (University of Arizona, 2019)
    The question under discussion is whether the dates of the Late Bronze (LBIIB)-LBIII (Iron IA) transitions in three sites in the southern Levant, namely Megiddo, Tell es-Safi/Gath and Qubur el-Walaydah occur at the same time, as has been proposed by Israel Finkelstein in his article in 2016 in Egypt and Levant. Here we respond to Finkelstein’s comments. We add some new data, clarify the issues that were raised, and conclude that the Late Bronze (LBIIB)-LBIII (Iron IA) transitions occurred at different times in northern and southern Israel.
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    Technological Insights on the Philistine Culture: Perspectives from Tell es-Safi/Gath
    Maeir, AM ; Ben-Shlomo, D ; Cassuto, D ; Chadwick, JR ; DAVIS, BE ; Eliyahu Behar, A ; Frumin, S ; Gur-Arieh, S ; Hitchcock, LA ; Kolska Horwitz, L ; Manclossi, F ; Rosen, SA ; Verduci, J ; Weiss, E ; Welch, E ; Workman, V (Penn State University Press, 2019)
    More than a century of study of the Philistines has revealed abundant remains of their material culture. Concurrently, our understanding of the origins, developmental processes, and socio-political matrix of this fascinating culture has undergone major changes. Among other facets, Philistine technology has been discussed, but in our opinion, a broad view of its importance for understanding Philistine culture is still lacking. The more than twenty years of excavation at Tell es-Safi/Gath, one of the central sites in Iron Age Philistia, offers an opportunity to review a broad range of technologically-related evidence from this site, and from this to offer a current interpretation of Philistine technology within the broader picture of the Iron Age and the processes, mechanisms, interactions, and identity politics of this culture.
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    Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi Survey Project, 2017
    Hitchcock, L (The Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, 2018)
    Summary of the second season of the Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi Survey.
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    New Insights into the Philistines in Light of Excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath
    Hitchcock, LA ; Maeir, AM (American Schools of Oriental Research, 2018-03-01)
    ABSTRACT The excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath have contributed to the formation of a unique collaboration of different area and scientific specialists, that have made it possible to formulate more detailed accounts of the Philistines. These accounts have been inspired by new discoveries which point to traditions associated with many different parts of the Mediterranean such as Cyprus, Greece, the Aegean islands, Anatolia, and Italy. These discoveries represent the globalized flow of information, people, technologies, and goods that characterized the Late Bronze Age. Such discoveries have led us to search for and develop new hypotheses for the emergence of the Sea Peoples that involve cultural entanglement and mixing, studies of regionalism, and cross-cultural comparison with other Iron Age cultures.
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    Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi Survey Project, 2016
    HITCHCOCK, LA (The Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, 2017)
    Summary of the first season of the Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi Survey.
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    Philistine Names and Terms Once Again: A Recent Perspective
    Maeir, AM ; Davis, BE ; Hitchcock, LA (Penn State University Press, 2016)
    In the last decade or so, new data and interpretations on the onomastics of Iron Age Philistia have appeared. In this article, we review, discuss, and suggest some insights regarding some of these Philistine personal names (e.g., Goliath), names of deities (e.g., PTGYH), and terms (e.g., seren). We assess them from linguistic, cultural, anthropological, and historical points of view. We then propose how they can be understood within the wider socio-cultural context(s) of Iron Age Philistia specifically and the wider eastern Mediterranean in general, and how they can be incorporated into efforts to understand the origins, development, and transformation of the Philistines and their culture(s).
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    Transculturalism as a Model for Examining Migration to Cyprus and Philistia at the End of the Bronze Age
    Hitchcock, LA (Peeters, 2011)
    The ethnic identity of the Philistines and their relationship to Greece, Cyprus, Anatolia, and the Sea Peoples continues to be a very lively and interesting area of scholarly debate. This contribution reviews recent work on general categories of cultural interaction with regard to the east Mediterranean including colonisation, migration, and cultural diffusion. The relationship between these categories of interaction and the formation of cultural identity such as creolization, hybridity, assimilation, and acculturation is also considered. An argument in favor of transculturalism, multivocality, and long-term approaches to the formation of cultural identity is then proposed.
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    The Conglomerate Quarry at the Mycenaean Site of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi
    HITCHCOCK, LA ; Chapin, AP, ; Banou, E, ; Reynolds, J (The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2016)
    Although many studies have been published on Minoan quarries, few details have ever been published on Mycenaean quarries. Here we present a conglomerate quarry discovered at the Bronze Age site of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi in Laconia, best known for its tholos tomb. The quarry preserves many unusual features, including a column base in situ and curved cuttings indicating the removal of additional blocks of stone. It is proposed that the quarry should be associated with Late Bronze Age Mycenaean culture based on its topography, the importance of the Eurotas Valley in this era, and the material—namely conglomerate—that characterized and became symbolic of Mycenaean prestige architecture.
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    Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for Me: The Maritime Culture of the Sea Peoples
    HITCHCOCK, L ; Maeir, A (Tay, 2016)
    An anthropological approach to a culture extrapolates social structures, traditions, and general organising principles of that culture from the careful observation of patterns of behaviour as described in case studies. In the absence of a living culture to record, archaeologists extrapolate this information from behaviour reconstructed from spatially determined patterns in the deposition of material remains and from patterns found in the general organizing principles of historically documented cultures, using arguments based on analogy. This contribution builds on our previous research on the “Sea Peoples” as a piratical culture in order to apply an anthropological approach to understanding the cultural identities of the various tribal groups involved in maritime activities at the end of the Bronze Age who are popularly known as the “Sea Peoples”, and place this within the broader context of the current discussions on the transition between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Mediterranean.