Subsistence, Trade, and Social Change in Early Bronze Age Palestine.

• Author: Dever, William G.

This volume, a revised and expanded version of the author's Chicago dissertation, is based on the unpublished materials of Profs. Pinhas Delougaz and Helene Kantor at Beth Yerah, on the Sea of Galilee (1952-53; 1963-64), supplemented by Esse's own extensive surface surveys of EB II-III sites in the Jezreel Valley (ca. 3100-2400 B.C.). The excavation and survey data, important in themselves, are enhanced, however, by being presented here within the larger context of northern Palestine in the main phases of the Early Bronze Age. These include: physical environment, ethnographic data, and culture-history (ch. 1, pp. 1-31); the excavated material itself in larger comparative context (ch. 2, pp. 33-62, with nine plates); the stratigraphy of excavated EB II-III sites in northern Palestine, regional subsistence, international trade, and technology (ch. 3, pp. 63-126); and settlement patterns (ch. 4, pp. 127-70). There follow conclusions (ch. 5, pp. 171-76) and an appendix listing 410 EB II-III sites, with references (pp. 177-95).

The Beth Yerah EB material excavated by Chicago was sparse; and what is presented here is simply a small repertoire of standard EB II-III forms, including some of the well-known EB III Anatolian-style "Khirbet Kerak" polished ware. Esse summarizes, however, a number of other small soundings at this imposing, 200 acre-plus mound, providing us with the best synthesis yet available - especially when taken in the larger context noted above. His contention that "the site of Beth Yerah can play a pivotal role in the definition of the EB II and EB III periods in northern Palestine" (p. 45) is well taken.

Esse, however, has exploited the relatively small corpus of material to do much more. He provides in the end an exemplary, comprehensive view of the rise and collapse of the first urban era in third-millennium B.C. Palestine - where, oddly enough, the northern part of the country had been neglected. I have no hesitation in saying that Esse's monograph will be a point of departure, not only for all future studies of the Early Bronze Age in Palestine, but also for all archaeologists, anthropologists, and cultural historians who are interested in the rise of complex society and urbanism in the Levant. All the issues of the newer interdisciplinary, ecological...