Early Edom And Moab

New evidence and research has challenged old assumptions for the early Iron Age kingdoms of Edom and Moab in southern Jordan; the sixteen essays in this volume focus on the archaeological, textual and literary sources for this region between the thirteenth and seventh centuries BC, and constitute an up-to-date summary of present knowledge. Contributors include: J R Bartlett (Biblical sources for the early Iron Age in Edom); K A Kitchen (Egyptian evidence on early Jordan); A Millard (Assyrian involvement in Edom); P J Parr (Edom and the Hejaz); G L Mattingly (Moabite origins); J A Dearman (settlement patterns in Iron Age Moab); J M Miller (early monarchy in Moab); S Hart (Iron Age settlement in Edom); J P Zeitler (`Edomite' pottery from the Petra region).

Specialists from different fields converge on one relatively circumscribed and, until recently, largely neglected area of biblical archaeology. The eleven papers comprise archaeological reports from Buseira (Biblical Bozrah) and Wadi el Hasa in Moab, technical studies of Midianite and Edomite pottery, Iron Age burial practices and copper smelting in the Arabah, a semantic study of barzel ('iron') in Biblical Hebrew, and three essays of more general interest, on the history of the Ishmaelites and the Midianites.

Israel: Ancient Kingdom or Late Invention? is a collection of essays responding to the radical claims that Israel and its history actually began following the Babylonian exile, and that the history of Israel we read about in the Bible is a fictionalized account. Contributors are leading Bible and archaeology scholars who bring extra-biblical evidence to bear for the historicity of the Old Testament and provide case studies of new work being done in the field of archaeology and Old Testament studies.

Situated south of the Dead Sea, near the famous Nabatean capital of Petra, the Faynan region in Jordan contains the largest deposits of copper ore in the southern Levant. The Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) takes an anthropological-archaeology approach to the deep-time study of culture change in one of the Old World's most important locales for studying technological development. Using innovative digital tools for data recording, curation, analyses, and dissemination, the researchers focused on ancient mining and metallurgy as the subject of surveys and excavations related to the Iron Age (ca. 1200-500 BCE), when the first local, historical state-level societies appeared in this part of the eastern Mediterranean basin. This comprehensive and important volume challenges the current scholarly consensus concerning the emergence and historicity of the Iron Age polity of biblical Edom and some of its neighbors, such as ancient Israel. Excavations and radiometric dating establish a new chronology for Edom, adding almost 500 more years to the Iron Age, including key periods of biblical history when David, Solomon, and the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I are alleged to have interacted with Edom. Included is a 7 gigabyte DVD with over 55,000 files of additional data and photographs from the project.

A comprehensive history of a state on Judah’s border Edom at the Edge of Empire combines biblical, epigraphic, archaeological, and comparative evidence to reconstruct the history of Judah's neighbor to the southeast. Crowell traces the material and linguistic evidence, from early Egyptian sources that recall conflicts with nomadic tribes to later Assyrian texts that reference compliant Edomite tribal kings, to offer alternative scenarios regarding Edom's transformation from a collection of nomadic tribes and workers in the Wadi Faynan as it relates to the later polity centered around the city of Busayra in the mountains of southern Jordan. This is the first book to incorporate the important evidence from the Wadi Faynan copper mines into a thorough account of Edom's history, providing a key resource for students and scholars of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible.

Burton MacDonald presents an in-depth study of the archaeology and history of human presence over the past five-six thousand years in the southern segment of the Transjordan/Edomite Plateau and the Dead Sea Rift Valley to the west. The evidence from archaeology for the area spans the entire period though the time for which literary evidence is available is only the past 4000 years, from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 BC). Once literary evidence is available, however, it complements the archaeological record and, as can be amply demonstrated, the written records can be clarified only through the archaeological data. These two sources are, thus, used to describe environments, resources, industries, settlement patterns, and the lifestyles of the inhabitants of this pivotal region. The result is a “story” of the people who lived in the area from the Bronze Age through the Islamic period. What is evident is that there were differences in certain archaeological periods in settlement patterns, as well as lifestyles, between those who lived on the southern segment of the Plateau and those who lived in the Dead Sea Rift Valley or in the lowlands immediately to the west. Moreover, it is obvious that when there were periods of trade and industry, for example, the spice trade and copper mining and processing, the population of the area was higher. Stable governance brought about growth in population and prosperity. But other factors also played their part in these ebbs and flows of population: climatic fluctuations affecting the availability of water and arable land; the development and adoption of new technologies in farming practices, raw material extraction and industrial methods, processes and transportation; and political change resulting in periods of relative stability and instability in government.