Sarepta.

• Author: Greene, Joseph A.
• Position: 4 vols.

Sarepta I-IV are the first in a series of anticipated final reports on excavations at Sarafand/Sarepta, a low mound on the seashore fifty kilometers south of Beirut. There, from 1969 to 1974 a team from the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania led by J. B. Pritchard pursued a long-standing objective in the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean: the excavation of a coastal urban settlement of the late second/ early first millennium B.C. that could provide the chronological key to Late Bronze and early Iron Age Phoenicia. However, the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 brought the field work to a premature close. Later, fighting in Beirut hampered efforts to study the finds stored in the National Museum and delayed the printing of the final reports. In the face of such obstacles, it is remarkable that Professor Pritchard and his team have produced these volumes at all, much less in such full detail and so quickly after the end of excavations.

These reports present the results of the 1971-1974 excavations in the two main soundings on the tell at Sarepta, designated Area II, X and II, Y. (Area I, the Roman port one half kilometer south, was investigated in 1969-70.) Sarepta I and II detail the stratigraphy and architecture of the two soundings in conjunction with typological and statistical analyses of the local Bronze and Iron Age ceramics from each. Sarepta III is a thorough typological and chronological study of the Bronze and Iron Age imported wares, chiefly Aegean and Cypriot, from Area II, X. Sarepta IV comprises a descriptive catalogue of small finds from Area II, X, with extended treatments for the inscriptions and post-Iron Age imports and an additional corpus of pottery from that same area.

In what follows, I treat these four books as virtually a single work, since there are throughout frequent cross references between volumes citing descriptions of finds and stratigraphy as well as chronological evidence to support cultural and historical interpretations. Vol. I defines the typology of local ceramics later applied and extended in vols. II and IV. Vol. III provides the illustrations, descriptions and datings of the Aegean and Cypriot imports on which vol. II directly depends. The artifacts catalogued in vol. IV are fitted into the stratigraphic and chronological framework established in vols. II and III, using the vessel typology introduced in vol I. Such close interrelatedness is in the nature of multi-volume site reports, so it is useful to have all four at hand when using any one of them.

In technical respects all four volumes are very well done. There are relatively few typographical or other printing errors; those that do occur will cause no undue confusion to attentive readers. The line drawings throughout are well reproduced, though the small format (17 x 24 cm) gives the plans, plates and appendices a somewhat cramped look. In vols. I and II a few of the printed field photographs lack sufficient contrast and the consequent loss of detail makes them difficult to read (note that fig. 9 in vol. II is inverted). The distribution graphs in the appendices of vols. I and II might have had greater visual clarity had they been rendered as actual figures rather than as typeset replicas of the arrays of "X"s in the original computer printouts. Still, they make their point. The map in vol. III (pp. 177-79) has three misplaced sites: Gezer (no. 12) is closer to the coast than shown; Mesad Hashavyahu (no. 22) and Tell abu Hawwam (no. 31) are coastal, not inland sites; and there are two no. 43s. The bibliographies in all of the volumes are updated only through 1981. This is apparently due to the long delay (quite beyond the authors' control) between submission of the finished manuscripts and appearance of the printed books (see the note at the head of the bibliographies in vols. I, II and IV). Finally, there is an annoying omission from the ceramic descriptions in vol. I: Munsell color designations are expressed only as numbers without the accompanying color names. This is an inconvenience, at least for this reviewer who cannot immediately recall that, for example, "7.5YR 7/4" is "pink" and "7.5YR 5/2" is "brown." These are merely quibbles and only reflect economies demanded by the skyrocketing costs of academic publishing, especially for complicated, highly technical archaeological reports such as these.

There are, however, criticisms that are more than quibbles. As detailed and accurate accounts of excavations in the soundings at Sarepta, these volumes are important contributions to our knowledge of the character and relative sequence of urban Phoenician material culture in the late second and early first millennium B.C. As keys...