Community, Polity, and Temple in a Middle Bronze Age Levantine Village

Authors

  • Bonnie Magness-Gardiner National Endowment for the Humanities
  • Steven E. Falconer Arizona State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v7i2.127

Keywords:

Mediterranean Archaeology, temple, polity, community

Abstract

The social and economic implications of rural ritual behavior during the development of early urbanized society are inferred from material evidence from households and temple compounds at Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan. Textual sources, primarily from the second millennium BC Syria, show that some temples were dependent upon institutional support (e.g. from palaces), while others were firmly embedded in the domestic economy of their surrounding community. Spatial and temporal patterning of animal bones, plant fragments, ceramics and symbolic objects during Middle Bronze Age IIA and B (ca. 2000-1650 BC) at Tell el-Hayyat reflect some specific ritual prescriptions (e.g. in ovicaprid and fig consumption, and deposition of metal objects). However, a variety of congruences between domestic and temple assemblages (e.g. in sheep:goat management, cattle consumption, cooking pot and storage jar manufacture and use) suggest that Hayyat's temple economy generally reflects immediate community support, rather than the intervention of external institutional authority.

Author Biographies

  • Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, National Endowment for the Humanities
    Bonnie Magness-Gardiner is currently the Program Officer for Archaeology Projects at the National Endowment for the Humanities. He research interests include integration of textual and archaeological data, the archaeology of religion, and the archaeology of administrative systems. She co-directed three field seasons of the Tell el-Hayyat Project with Steven E. Falconer from 1982-1985. Her most recent publication is: "Urban-rural relations in Bronze Age Syria: evidence from the Alalah level VII archives," in S. Falconer and G. Schwartz (eds.) Village Communities in Early Complex Societies.
  • Steven E. Falconer, Arizona State University
    Steven E. Falconer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Arizona State University. His current research interests focus on the roles of rural communities in emerging urbanized societies, and on the impacts of complex societies on their natural environments. He co-directed three field seasons of the Tell el-Hayyat with Bonnie Magness-Gardiner in 1982-1985. Recently he edited the volume Archaeological Views from the Countryside: Village Communities in Early Complex Societies with G. Schwartz, and contributed 'The development and decline of Bronze Age civilization in the southern Levant' in C. Mathers and S. Stoddard (eds.) Development and Decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).

Published

1994-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Magness-Gardiner, B., & Falconer, S. E. (1994). Community, Polity, and Temple in a Middle Bronze Age Levantine Village. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 7(2), 127-164. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v7i2.127