Kiriath-jearim: In Judah or in Benjamin?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-168
Author(s):  
Yigal Levin

The town of Kiriath-jearim, identified at Deir el-ʿAzar above the village of Abu-Ghosh, has come to scholarly attention recently, due to the renewed excavations led by Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Römer. Based on their preliminary finds and on their reading of the biblical texts, they have interpreted the Iron Age II B-C fortified compound that they have begun to expose on the summit of the site as a northern Israelite fortified compound, “aimed at dominating the vassal kingdom of Judah”. This paper reexamines the position of Kiriath-jearim on the border between Judah and Benjamin according to both the biblical texts and the site’s geographical location, within the context of the ongoing discussions on the biblical tribal territories, that of Benjamin in particular, the “ark narrative” and other texts that mention Kiriath-jearim, and challenges the excavators’ interpretation of the character and purpose of the site during the Iron Age II.

Author(s):  
Altan Çilingiroğlu

This article discusses findings from excavations at Ayanis. The Ayanis fortress lies thirty-five kilometers north of the modern town of Van and near the village of Agartı, on the eastern shore of Lake Van. It was originally built on a rocky hill 150 × 400 m in size; the lower town lies below, covering an area of at least eighty hectares. The fortress offers two occupational levels, the earlier dating to the Iron Age II Period and the later to the Medieval, ca. tenth to eleventh centuries CE.


2009 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-359
Author(s):  
John C.H. Laughlin

This article consists of two foci. First, the archaeological history of Tel Dan as revealed by the longest running excavation ever conducted in Israel will be surveyed. Emphasis will be given to the major periods of known urbanization of the site: The Early Bronze Age; the Middle Bronze Age; and the Iron Age II. The materials dated to Iron Age II will be especially emphasized because they have the most significance for any attempt to understand the city of Dan during the biblical period. The second issue to be discussed is the thorny one of relating biblical texts to archaeological data or vice-versa. The Bible is not written as straightforward history, whatever that may be. Thus biblical texts cannot often be taken at face value in evaluating their historical content. It will be argued that is especially true of the mostly negative and hostile attitude seen towards the City of Dan in the Bible. It will be concluded that this view of Dan is due to the literary formation and editing of the texts as we now have them in the Bible. This hostility represents a Judean perspective which is very negative of the northern kingdom of Israel that was created after the death of Solomon.


Gesnerus ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 57 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 238-249
Author(s):  
Valentina Grigorova

The city of Pautalia (Kyustendil in Bulgaria) is located near thermal springs in the Strymon valley (Strouma),on a site occupied from the Iron Age onward by the Thracian tribe of Dentheletes. The temple of Asclepios and the walls of Pautalia, located on the hill of Hissarlaka, as well as the roman thermae in the center of modern Kyustendil are among the more important archaeological vestiges in the area. In 1990, near the village of Dragodan, district of Kyustendil, different surgical instruments in bronze were unearthed in a tumulus attributed to the roman period (Ilnd century A.D.). During the excavation of another tumulus in 1992, a truly exceptional discovery was made near the town of Kotcherinovo, district of Kyustendil: A variety of medicines were discovered in a small bronze case, dating from the roman period (Ilnd century A.D.). The complete results of the analysis of these substances and few hypotheses about their possible use are presented in this publication.


Author(s):  
Ivars Orehovs

In a literary heritage with a developed tradition of genres, works whose main purpose is to attract the attention of readers to a selected geographical location, are of particular culture-historical and culture-geographical interest. The most widespread in this respect is travel literature, which is usually written by travellers and consist of impressions portrayed in prose after visits to foreign lands. Another type of literary depiction with an expressed poetic orientation, but a similar goal, is characteristic of dedicatory poetry. The author’s position is usually saturated with emotional expressiveness as well as the artistry of symbols, encouraging the reader or listener to feel the formation of a spontaneous attitude. It is possible to gain confidence in the engagement of the author of the poetry as an individual in the depicted cultural-geographical environment, which can be conceptually expressed by words or pairs of words ‘resident’, ‘native place’, ‘patriot’. With regard to the devotional depictions on the Latvian urban environment, one of the earliest examples known in the history of literature is the dedicatory poem in German by Christian Bornmann to the town Jelgava with its ancient name (Mitau, 1686/1802). The name of Liepāja town in this tradition of the genre has become an embodiment later – in the poetry selection in German, also using the ancient name of the town (Libausche Dichtungen, 1853), but in terms of contemporary literary practice with Imants Kalniņš’ music, there is a convincing dominance of songs with words of poetry. The aim of the article is, looking at the poetry devoted to Liepāja in the 19th century and at the turn of the 20th/21st century in the comparative aspect, to present textually thematic peculiarities as well as to provide the analytical interpretative summary of those.


Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.


2014 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-389
Author(s):  
Thorsten Lemm

Zusammenfassung: Seit langem nehmen in Norwegen und Schweden Ortschaften und Höfe mit dem Namen Huseby o. ä. zentrale Punkte in der Frühgeschichtsforschung ein. Sie werden dort als seit jeher bedeutende Orte interpretiert, die in der späten Wikingerzeit oder am Übergang zum Mittelalter zu königlichen Höfen aufstiegen und in diesem Zuge mit der standardisierten Bezeichnung *húsabýr versehen wurden. Die dadurch ersetzten ursprünglichen Ortsnamen sind nur selten überliefert. Die Huseby-Orte Alt-Dänemarks fanden in der Forschung hingegen nur wenig Beachtung. Die vorläufigen Ergebnisse der in den letzten Jahren durchgeführten Kontextanalysen und archäologischen Prospektionen erlauben es nun, das einst in dänischem Reichsgebiet gelegene Husby in Angeln in eine Reihe mit den bedeutenden Huseby-Orten Schwedens und Norwegens zu stellen. Archäologische Funde, allen voran die Entdeckung eines Siedlungslatzes mit zahlreichen Metallobjekten, die verkehrsgeografische Lage, Flurnamen in der Umgebung und eine romanische Kirche mit wahrscheinlich hölzernem Vorgängerbau zeichnen für Husby das Bild eines in der jüngeren Germanischen Eisenzeit, in der Wikingerzeit und im Mittelalter (über-)regional bedeutenden Ortes. Résumé: En Norvège et en Suède les localités ou habitats portant le nom d’H useby ont depuis longtemps occupé une place de choix en recherche protohistorique. Là, on les a toujours considérés comme des localités importantes, et ces endroits s’élevèrent au rang de cours royales au courant de l’époque viking tardive ou au début du Moyen Age ; de ce fait ils ont acquis la dénomination standard de*húsabýr. Les toponymes d’origine que ces nouvelles dénominations ont remplacés ne survivent que fort rarement. Cependant très peu d’enquêtes ont porté sur les toponymes Huseby que l’on rencontre dans l’ancien Danemark. Les résultats préliminaires d’études contextuelles et de prospections de terrain effectués au cours des dernières années nous permettent de ranger le site d’Husby en Anglie (Angeln), qui faisait anciennement partie du royaume danois, dans la série des sites importants portant le nom d’Huseby en Suède et en Norvège. Les données archéologiques, en particulier la découverte d’un habitat contenant de nombreux objets en métal, sa situation géographique, les noms des parcelles aux alentours et la présence d’une église romane avec probablement un précurseur en bois indiquent qu’Husby jouait un rôle (supra)régional significatif pendant l’âge du Fer germanique tardif, l’époque viking et le Moyen Age. Abstract: Settlements or farmsteads bearing the name Huseby or similar have occupied a central position in protohistoric research in Norway and Sweden for a long time. There they have always been interpreted as significant places, which rose to being royal courts in the Late Viking period or at the beginning of the Middle Ages and in the process were given the standard denomination of *húsabýr. The original place-names that these new denominations replaced rarely survive. Research has however paid little attention to the Huseby place-names of ancient Denmark. Preliminary results from contextual studies and archaeological surveys conducted over the last few years allow us to now align the site of Husby in Anglia, which once lay in the Danish realm, with the important Huseby sites of Sweden and Norway. Archaeological finds, especially the discovery of a settlement containing numerous metal objects, its geographical location, field names in its surroundings, and a Romanesque church with a probable timber precursor indicate that Husby was a significant (supra-) regional place in the later Germanic Iron Age, the Viking period and the Middle Ages.


2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitka R. Golub

In this study, I investigated all personal names with the element שלם in the Land of Israel during the Iron Age ii period. I collected the names from archaeological and biblical sources, analyzed and compared their distribution according to geography, chronology, and political affiliation. The results show that while שלם is a popular element in Judah from the eighth to the early sixth centuries, it is absent from Israel. The element שלם in unvocalized names from archaeological sources is interpreted mostly as ‘replacement, substitute’ (for the deceased child). However, the popularity of the element שלם solely in Judah may indicate that שלם was used more often than we assume as a divine name referring to YHWH, as do all other Judean popular names. In addition, the comparison between the names from archaeological and biblical sources may be interpreted to indicate that the Bible reflects Judean and not Israelite onomastic traditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 37-46

The subject of the research is the analysis of the land cover changes in the area of the town of Goražde. In the period after 1995, throughout the entire Bosnia and Herzegovina, a visible spontaneous spatial planning contributed to significant changes in the land cover. The research aims to determine how many changes have taken place in the last few decades in the researched area when it comes to land cover. The analysis is based on topographic maps from 1980, Google Earth images, then Corina Land Cover images from 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2018. Research on the topic was conducted through several phases. The first part of the paper refers to determining the geographical location of the research area and defining all its components. The second part of the paper deals with a detailed analysis of all categories of land cover in the last twenty years. The third part of the paper involves a comparative analysis of quantitative and qualitative indicators of land cover in the town of Goražde. The complete procedure of the analysis was performed using GIS, where the corresponding databases were created and a cartographic visualization for the investigated area was performed.


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