Genetics and the Archaeology of Ancient Israel

This paper is a call for DNA testing on ancient skeletal materials from the southern Levant to begin to database genetic information of the inhabitants of this crossroads region. Archaeologists and biblical historians view the earliest presence in the region of a group that called itself Israel in the Iron I period, traditionally dated to ca. 1200-1000 BCE. These were in villages in the varied hill countries of the region, contemporary with urban settlements in the coastal plains, inland valleys, and central Hill Country attributed to varied indigenous groups collectively called Canaanite. The remnants of Egyptian imperial presence in the region lasted until around 1150 BCE, postdating the arrival of an immigrant group from the Aegean called the Philistines ca. 1175 BCE. The period that follows the Iron I in the southern Levant is marked by the development of territorial states throughout the region, ca. 1000-800 BCE. These patrimonial kingdoms, including the United Kingdom of Israel and the divided kingdoms of northern Israel and Judah, coalesced varied peoples under central leadership and newly founded administrative and religious bureaucracies. Ancient DNA testing will give us a further refined understanding of the individuals who peopled the region of the southern Levant throughout its varied archaeological and historic periods, and put forward scientific data that will support, refute, or nuance our socio-historic reconstruction of ancient group identities. These social identities may or may not map onto genetic data, and without sampling of ancient DNA we may never know. A database of ancient DNA will also allow for comparisons with modern DNA samples collected throughout the greater region and the Mediterranean littoral, giving a more robust understanding of the long historical trajectories of regional human genetics and the genetics of varied ancestral groups of today’s Jewish populations and other cultural groups in the modern Middle East and Mediterranean

Geography and Economic Preferences as Cultural Markers in a Border Town: The Faunal Remains from Tel BethShemesh, Israel

ABSTRACT We present a zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal remains at Tel Beth-Shemesh, a site located in the Shephelah region of Israel, which has been dated to the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I. The site, identified as the biblical city of Beth-Shemesh, was a Canaanite border town between Philistine and Israelite settlements and of great importance in our attempts to understand the social and cultural transformations that occurred in the southern Levant during those periods. This study contributes to a more accurate understanding of the cultural identity of the site's inhabitants by exploring the cultural differences between populations as reflected in their different dietary preferences. We analysed the subsistence economy at the site, the general exploitation patterns, herd management strategies and consumption practices, all of which are based mostly on domestic livestock. We determined the cultural identity at the site mainly by comparing the representation of pig remains with that found at other sites in the region, and offer various explanations for the differences. The comparisons revealed clear differences between Tel Beth-Shemesh and other known nearby Philistine sites. This site appears to have possessed a self-contained production and consumption economy with similarities in the general pattern of animal exploitation between the two periods. These similarities constitute evidence for the continuation of the local population and of its culture at the site during the period of turmoil that swept the region during the transition to the Iron Age