Pacal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Why "Israeli" settlement would be so distinctivly
> different from the remains of other Cannanite
> settlements at the time, 1200-1000 B.C.E. as to be
> obviously, archaelogically distinct, is beyond me.
> The question is is there archaelogical evidence
> consistent with "Israeli" settlement during that
> time period and the answer to that seems to be
> yes. That and the Isael Stela of Metrapath would
> seem to estaqblish a "Israel" c. 1200 B.C.E. Oh
> and just how would you be able to distinguish
> non-"Israelite" and "Israelite" settlements c. 600
> B.C.E? As far has I am aware it is pretty hard to
> distinguish such settlements archaeologically even
> though the state of Judah indisbutabily existed.
> It is also accepted that c. 800 B.C.E. the state
> of Israel existed and again how easily can it be
> distinguished archaeologically from sourounding
> cultures?

Is this directed at me? If so, I'm afraid it's gone right over my head. Are you taking issue with something I've written?

> Oh and by the way the highland settlements of the
> period 1200 B.C.E. - 1000 B.C.E., in central
> Cannan seem too have a remarkable lack, (although
> not total abscence) of pig bones according to
> Dever. Hardly conclusive but intriguing.

From "Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology Preserves What is Remembered and What is Forgotten in Israel's History" by Elizabeth Bloch-Smith (Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003, 122/3: 401-425):

"[...] Zooarchaeologists seemingly rescued the early Israelites from obscurity. The apparent abstinence from pork in fulfilment of the biblical injunction (Lev 11:7-8; Deut 14:8) was embraced as the elusive marker of Israelite ethnicity. Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish tabulated percentages of pig bones among faunal collections from Israel, Syria, Iraq, eastern Anatolia, and Egypt, spanning the ninth to the first millennium. Relevant to this discussion are their findings from second- and first-millennium Cisjordan. Their efforts are hamstrung by the small number of faunal assemblages analyzed, samples of widely varying size (from 47 to 3,950 bones), and the variability of intrasite distribution depending on context. Isolating the results of southern Levantine sites, five Middle Bronze Age sites demonstrated 'intense exploitation' of pig, from 8 to 34 percent of identified animal bones in domestic debris. Late Bronze Age sites yielded 'scant' Late Bronze Age evidence, with the sole highland site of Shiloh yielding a mere 0.17 percent (one bone). Pig was rare but present in Iron I highland sites: 0.7 percent at Shiloh, one bone each at Ai and Khirbet Raddana, and 'some' from the City of David (none from the Ophel). by contrast, the pig samples of 18 and 19 percent respectively from Iron I Tel Miqne and Ashkelon constitute incontrovertible evidence of Iron I Philistine pork consumption. At all Philistine sites analyzed, Ashkelon, Tel Miqne, and Tell Batash, pig exploitation decreased through the centuries, beginning in the eleventh century BCE. Overall, Hesse and Wapnish's results demonstrate reliance on pig in the Middle Bronze Age, with greatly diminished use from the Late Bronze Age through the Persian period except for Iron I Philistia, with a return to pork as a dietary mainstay in the Hellenistic and later periods. Based on these findings, those who seek to identify Israelites on the basis of abstinence from pork are hampered by the single Late Bronze Age highland site with a 'trace' of pig, which precludes distinguishing the Iron I highland 'Israelites' from their predecessors [...]" (pp. 409-410).



From The View from Nebo: How Archaeology is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East by Amy Dockser Marcus (2000. Boston: Little, Brown and Company):

"[...] Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish, zooarchaeologists based in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, have spent their careers studying the remains of animal bones at sites around the Middle East. In the past few years, they have focused their attention in particular on pig remains, and on discovering how avoidance of the animal became a signal part of Jewish, and later Muslim, ethnic identity. Many archaeologists, particularly the Israelis, have been eagerly following their work, hoping that it might help ascertain when the Israelites emerged as a distinct ethnic group. Israel Finkelstein had led the charge on this issue, enthusiastically declaring in one [1997] article that 'food taboos, more precisely pig taboos, are emerging as the main, if not the only avenue that can shed light on ethnic boundaries in the [Iron Age I period]. Specifically, thisa may be the most valuable tool for the study of ethnicity of a given, single Iron Age I site'.

"Many archaeologists have assumed that the presence or absence of pig bones at different sites might be a useful index of ethnic identity in a given region. In many respects, this line of reasoning makes eminent sense [...].

"When their research was completed, they reached a startling conclusion, one at odds with the conclusive results that Finkelstein optimistically had predicated in his paper. After studying bone remains at archaeology sites through the Middle East, they determined that during the biblical period virtually no one in the region was eating pig. Similarly, the refusal to use pigs as sacrifices in official religious rituals hadn't been limited to the Israelites, but was a common feature of religions throughout the Middle East. Hesse and Wapnish developed a set of what they called 'pig principles' to try to explain why this might be the case [...].

"These various [social, economic, and environmental] factors had resulted in a significant, long-term, historical decline in the use of the animal. The peak of pig consumption, according to Hesse and Wapnish's study, had been in the prehistoric era. The low point was in the early Iron Age period, from the twelfth to the tenth centuries BCE, the time when, according to the Bible, King David and King Solomon reigned. Israelites weren't eating pigs then, Hesse and Wapnish concluded, but neither was anyone else.

"As a result, it was difficult to propose any valid generalizations about who used pigs and why. Some archaeologists had assumed early on that pig bones, which were found in southern coastal cities in Palestine known to have been conquered by the Philistines, a seafaring people from the Aegean region who arrived in Canaan in the twelfth century BCE, might be a key to determining the presence of Philistines at other sites. However, the study by Hesse and Wapnish showed that, while pig use was found in some Philistine cities in Canaan, such as the port of Ashkelon and the more mountainous cities Ekron and Timna, not all the Philistine sites had pig bones. The most interesting finding was that pig use by the Philistines took place only within the first century or two after their arrival in Canaan. By the time the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Ashkelon in 604 BCE during one of his campaigns in Palestine, the Philistines had generally stopped eating pork, just like their neighbors. 'Rigorously applied, such a procedure of equating the absence of pigs with cultural identity would lead to a remarkable (and preposterous) expansion of early Israelite hegemony', Hesse and Wapnish wrote [...]" (pp. 23-25).

Intriguing, but not necessarily for the reasons you've alluded to above.

Damian


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My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all.

- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

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'I am beginning to believe that nothing is quite so uncertain as facts.

- Edward S. Curtis

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'We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork', said Dr Mortimer.
'Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation', [replied Holmes].

- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

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'It never does to be too sure, you know, in these matters. Coincidence killed the professor.'

- "Novel of the Black Seal" by Arthur Machen