Retrieving the Past: Essays on Archaeological Research and Methodology in Honor of Gus W. Van Beek.

• Author: Knapp, Bernard
• Position: Review

Edited by JOE D. SEGER. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 1996. Pp. xxxi + 312. $39.50.

This attractive and well-produced volume serves as a Festschrift for Gus W. Van Beek, long-time Curator for Old World Archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution. The volume opens with a biography, both professional and personal, by his wife and collaborator, Ora Van Beek, a list of his diverse publications, and an assessment of his correspondence with Joseph A. Callaway, by Gerald Mattingly. The subtitle of the volume aptly fits this pleasingly diverse collection of essays that explores facets of the Near Eastern and Levantine archaeological record - from the Neolithic through Byzantine periods - and highlights research techniques and methodology. In so doing, the volume follows the trajectory and geographical extent of Van Beek's own career.

This volume includes chapters dealing with south Arabia (J. Blakely and W. Glanzman), north Arabia (P. Parr), Yemen (B. Hesse), and many stations north. The chronological extent is indicated by papers on Neolithic Ain Ghazal (G. Rollefson), the Chalcolithic southern Levant (T. Levy), the Nabatean Negev (J. Elliott), and an intriguing study of settlement and demography in the southern Levant during the Byzantine period. Field methodology and the associated technology receive special emphasis in papers by the editor, Joe Seger, on his long-standing work at Tel Halif, and by O. Borowski and J. Doolittle on remote sensing at the same site. The study by B. Mazar (et al.) is essentially a site report on an Iron Age village in the Judean Desert. Several papers focus on pottery technology and production: S. Gitin, on the Iron Age II-Hellenistic pottery from Gezer; J. Magness-Gardiner, on Middle Bronze II pottery from Tell el-Hayyat; R. T. Schaub, on Early Bronze Age "pots as container" at Bab edh-Dhra; Blakely and Glanzmann on south Arabian cooking bowls; and A. Killebrew's impressive study of pottery kilns at Late Bronze-Iron Age Deir el-Balah and Tel Miqne.

Other artifacts are considered in chapters by Jacob on an Early Bronze cosmetic palette and by E. Futato on Early Bronze III flint blade cores, both from Tel Halif. As one might expect, some of the most comprehensive and informative studies in this volume reflect Van Beek's special interest in faunal studies. Brian Hesse presents an in-depth study of the pastoral economy at the Iron Age site of Hajar er-Rayhani in Yemen, balancing behavioral models against the faunal...