The Philistines in the Highlands: A View from Ashkelon

The origin and dissemination of socketed copper-alloy ‘Scythian’ arrowheads throughout the ancient Near East has been a matter of much scholarly interest and debate. Here we present the first comprehensive study of the temporal and geographic distribution of such arrowheads from the Southern Levant. Several previously unnoticed patterns with historical implications for the late Iron Age and the Persian and Hellenistic periods are discussed. The accompanying typology developed for the purpose of this research should further facilitate excavators’ ability to cross-reference new finds against parallels in the existing corpus to date.

The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment, ed. E. D. Oren. University Museum Monograph 108; University Museum Symposium Series 11. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania., 2000

The end of the Late Bronze Age in Canaan is usually identified by the disappearance of imported Mycenaean IIIB and Late Cypriote lIB pottery types which are ubiquitous at 13th century B.C.E. sites throughout Canaan. The dawn of the Iron Age is traditionally seen as a period devoid of international trade and cultural connections with the west. Recent excavations in Israel have modified this interpretation and it has become clear that relations between Canaan and areas in the eastern Mediterranean, especially with Cyprus and the southern and western coasts of Anatolia, continued throughout the 12th century B.C.E., albeit representing a different type of relationship and carried out on a more limited scale. This paper presents recent ceramic evidence regarding interconnections between southern Canaan, Cyprus, and coastal Anatolia during the initial stages of the Iron I period, focusing on early Philistine pottery and its implications for the initial appearance and origins of the early Philistines in Canaan.

In the beginning of the 12th century B.C.E., elements of a new material culture appear in the southern coastal plain of Canaan. These elements are attributed to the Philistines, who are thought to have migrated to the region from somewhere within the greater Aegean world, or, alternatively, Cyprus, or the Anatolian coast. However, their specific place of origin within the Mediterranean littoral has remained elusive. This study investigates the origin of the Philistines by analyzing the two types of painted figural decorations that appear on Philistine pottery – the bird and fish motifs. The source of inspiration for the Philistine figural motifs might suggest the possible origin of the immigrants and the derivation of their material culture. Additional aspects of the Philistine bird and fish motifs, such as their relationship to the Nilotic landscape and their significance in the Philistine ceramic repertoire, are also examined. The survey sample consists of approximately 150 birds and fish in the Philistine 1 (monochrome) and Philistine 2 (bichrome) pottery styles from the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.E. These examples were stylistically compared to some 650 birds and fish on Late Minoan and Late Helladic pictorial pottery, as well as on Aegean-style pottery from Cyprus and coastal Anatolia from the 14th to the 12th centuries B.C.E. The results of the comparative analysis show that the majority of elements comprising the Philistine birds and fish, such as the birds’ triglyph body-fill and chevron wing as well as idiosyncratic features of the fishes’ gill-lines and head, can be traced back to the Aegean world. Particularly revealing was that a number of features indicated inspiration from Cretan prototypes, while inspiration from Cyprus is not well represented. The findings support the notion that the Philistines migrated from multiple regions within the Aegean world, including Crete, and that Cyprus and Anatolia, though perhaps playing a certain role in the process, were not among the primary places of the origin of the Philistines.

Tell it in Gath Studies in the History and Archaeology of Israel Essays in Honor of Aren M. Maeir on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 2018

Six caches of silver and non-silver items totaling 786 items, weighing 1,476.60 grams were excavated at Philistine Ekron in Iron Age II. One of the six came from a Stratum IC foundation deposit of a Stratum IB 7th century olive oil factory building. Found in a small Phoenician-type jug, it contained a group of 14 miniature scarabs set in silver mounts in the Phoenician style. Together with a large assemblage of other material culture items, it demonstrates Phoenician influence at Ekron in the Iron IIB/C as p[art of the expanding Assyrian international economic exchange system as part of the new world order that spread across the Mediterranean.

2013

This dissertation examines the mortuary practices of the Iron I through Iron III / Persian period Levantine Phoenicians to document and analyze material expressions of social identity. Previous scholarship on Iron I-II Phoenicians has emphasized their city-based political allegiances on the one hand, and relatively uniform material culture on the other. But political or cultural affiliation with a particular city does not seem to be consistently signaled in the mortuary record of the central coastal Levant in these early periods. The history of the Phoenicians, or inhabitants of the Iron Age central coastal Levant, has long been told from the perspective of their neighbors -via the texts of the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Roman authors, and inscriptions from Western Phoenician and Punic "colonies." This has been the case in part because the most significant Phoenician cities (e.g. Byblos, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre) have been continually inhabited since the Iron Age (or earlier), and extensive excavation in these urban centers is not fully possible. However, a significant number of Iron Age burials found outside settlement boundaries -in the form of isolated tombs, clusters of graves, and extensive cemeteries -have been explored or excavated since the 1850s throughout coastal southern Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel. This project catalogs the more than 1400 burials known from the Phoenician "homeland" to date, offering a substantive contribution to a social history of the Levantine Phoenicians in the earliest periods of their cultural distinctiveness. The study begins with a reassessment of all inscriptions relating to Phoenician mortuary practice thought to date to the Iron I-II (Chapter II) and Persian -Hellenistic (Chapter III) periods. The literary sources for Phoenician mortuary practice are then analyzed, first addressing the Biblical texts (Chapter IV), and then classical sources (Chapter V). This newly evaluated textual corpus is finally supplemented with a discussion of the burial database and mortuary landscapes of the Iron I through Iron III / Persian period central coastal Levant (Chapter VI). All of this material is incorporated into a discussion of the treatment of the dead as a stage for Phoenician meaning-making in the Iron I through Persian periods, and a reassessment of Phoenician social identity fluctuating across this era, spanning multiple shifts in political power (Chapter VII). An examination of the Phoenician mortuary record indicates no sharp regional distinctions in material culture reflective of an expected city-based model of Phoenician identity. Instead, a significant degree of variation is evident in individual cemeteries, indicating that Iron I-II period Phoenicians wished to "signal" not political allegiance or ethnic identity, but other aspects of their social identities in death. Contrasting the burial data from these early centuries with the innovative mortuary practices which arose in the betterdocumented Iron III / Persian period illustrates how the Achaemenid Persian imperial presence in the region seems to have significantly altered these early Phoenician concepts of social status and affiliation. 1 Chapter I. 51 In particular, a Phoenician ceramic chronology and typology based on excavations at Sarepta, Tyre, Tell Dor, Abu Hawam, and Tell Keisan, as well as correlations with numerous sites on Cyprus, has been established and is being refined (See for example:

Zephyrus. LXXXV, p. 37-52.

This paper presents the results of a study carried out on three previously unpublished Iron Age socketed arrowheads with spur from Monte Figueiró –Central Portugal–, a site located between the Tagus and Mondego rivers. This region is of the utmost importance to understanding how Mediterranean influences penetrated along the Iberian Atlantic coast and up to the inland Portuguese territories, through Phoenician traders, since the Early Iron Age –8th century bc–. The socketed arrowheads with spurs, originally produced in the South-eastern end of Europe, namely in the Black Sea area, are virtually unseen in the Portuguese territory, where only another similar item has been found at Castro Marim –South Portugal–, in contrast with Spain, more specifically with the Guadalquivir region, where they are quite frequently found. Therefore, the occurrence of the three socketed arrowheads from Monte Figueiró is a challenging discovery, since Central Portugal is a peripheral area with respect to the Iberian regions that underwent an actual Phoenician colonisation. Based on this assumption, this paper will not focus just on typological and technological issues, but it will go a bit further, also reflecting on what these three artefacts can reveal about the interaction between indigenous inland communities from Central Portugal and Phoenician traders.

Ekron IV Lower--The Elite Zone, Part 1, The Iron Age I--The Early Philistine City

The Iron Age I ceramic corpus from Field IV Lower represents the largest and most diverse pottery assemblage from this period excavated at Tel Miqne-Ekron in particular and in Philistia in general. It spans approximately 200 years, from the second/third quarters of the 12th through the first quarter of the 10th century bce.1 Its size and typological, chronological, and functional variability provide unparalleled data for examining the initial appearance and development of Philistine culture throughout the Iron I, creating a basis for identifying ceramic traditions originating with or adopted by the inhabitants of Ekron. These traditions continue to develop to some extent in the Iron Age II

The Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near, 29 March – 3 April 2004, Freie Universität Berlin, Volume II. East Social and Cultural Transformation. The Archaeology of Transitional Periods and Dark Ages, 2008

A decade ago, the authors, along with D. Ben-Shlomo, defined Late Philistine Decorated Ware (LPDW, formerly Ashdod Ware) as typical of Iron IIA Philistia and discussed its origins and distribution. We suggested that the decorative syntax of this unique group could be traced to Iron I decorated Philistine pottery. This assertion was recently challenged by Faust, who suggested that its origins should be traced to Phoenician influence. Two LPDW sherds from Tell es-Safi/Gath that are decorated with the iconic Iron I Philistine bird design support our initial concept that the roots of the LPDW are in Iron I Philistia.

IEJ, 2020

The origin and dissemination of socketed copper-alloy ‘Scythian’ arrowheads throughout the ancient Near East has been a matter of much scholarly interest and debate. Here we present the first comprehensive study of the temporal and geographic distribution of such arrowheads from the Southern Levant. Several previously unnoticed patterns with historical implications for the late Iron Age and the Persian and Hellenistic periods are discussed. The accompanying typology developed for the purpose of this research should further facilitate excavators’ ability to cross-reference new finds against parallels in the existing corpus to date.

The co-occurrence of the ethnic designations Cherethite and Pelethite and the association of the Philistines with Caphtor in the Old Testament point to a specifically Cretan origin or affiliation for at least some of the Philistines in literary tradition. This identification, although bolstered by the discovery that the Philistines produced their own version of Mycenaean IIIC pottery, has rightly come under criticism from those reluctant to simplistically associate pots with peoples. However, additional categories of archaeological evidence indicating an Aegean origin for the Philistines are well-rehearsed and include the reel-style of loom weights, drinking habits, consumption of pork, Aegean-style cooking pots, use of hearths and bathtubs, temple architecture, and megaron-style buildings. Yet, in contrast to the strong identification of the Philistines with Crete in the literary tradition, these Aegean characteristics of Philistine culture point to Mycenaean Greece. This paper examines the current state of our understanding of the specific connections between Crete and Philistia with regard to recent discoveries and interpretations of Philistine culture, with particular reference to the author’s excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath and study of other Philistine material in Israel. Among the categories of evidence examined in this paper are architectural features, particularly hearths, but also spatial syntax, plaster, and tool use; the spatial manipulation of artifacts such as the practice of curating animal head cups and seal use, ritual action, and recently discovered inscriptional evidence. It is argued that key features of Minoan culture survived in Philistine culture, embedded among other cultural practices that can be associated with the Mycenaeans, Cypriots, and Canaanites, and that they form an important record of the Cretan and Minoan contribution to human civilization.

Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2013

Recent discussion of the formation and alteration of Philistine identity in the Levantine Iron Age continues to reference primarily pottery styles and dietary practices. Such traditional narratives propose that the Philistines comprised one group of the 'Sea Peoples' and that the cultural boundary markers that distinguished their society in the Iron Age I (twelftheleventh century BC) diminished in importance and disappeared suddenly in the early Iron Age IIA (tenth century BC), with the ascendancy of the Judahite kingdom. Based on data from the Levant (especially Philistia), the Aegean and Cyprus, we argue for a more complex understanding of the Philistines who came to the region with an identity that drew on, and continued to engage with, a broad range of foreign artefact styles and cultural practices with non-Levantine connections. Concurrently they incorporated local cultural attributes, at least until the late ninth century BC, a feature that we argue was unrelated to the supposed tenth century expansion of the Judahite kingdom. ; Hitchcock in press a). The result was encounters, entanglements, appropriations and merging of numerous constituent groups, due to shared economic and/or socio-political interests, each with its own characteristics. Sorting out these varying relations goes beyond the scope of this paper, whose purpose is to initiate debate and promote future research into a range of issues relating to Mediterranean identity. As discussed below, cultural interaction is demonstrated in Philistine culture by the presence of extensive links to many different worlds that served as conceptual and physical sources of material goods and religio-cultural practices: Cypriot (Cypro-Minoan script, hearths, bi-metallic knives, bronze stands, seal styles, pottery styles), Anatolian (hearths, personal names, pottery styles), Mycenaean (cooking jugs, preference for hearths, pottery styles, personal names, loom weights, figurine styles), Minoan (sacrificial practices and ritual activity, seal use, iconography, pottery motifs, plaster technology), south-central European (e.g. Edelstein and Schreiber 2000; Wachsmann 2000; Sherratt 2003) and possibly even Italian (handmade burnished ware ('barbarian ware'), e.g. Karageorghis 2011; Pilides and Boileau 2011).

Advances in Anthropology, 2016

The origin and the nature of the Philistines is an enigma for the contemporary historical studies. They appear to have first settled the Aegean area and then, as a Sea People, around 1200 B.C. to have invaded and settled the south part of present Israel. The recent Harvard Leon Levy Expedition excavations in the area of the port of the ancient Philistine Ashkelon recovered 18 jar handles and one inscribed ostracon made from local clay. The ostracon, classified as RN 9794, hosts the inscription 4.5 that is particularly illuminating about the origin and nature of the Philistines. The analysis of all the possible 27 spellings of the inscription reveals one of them which, compared with the present surviving Slavic languages, appears to have the specific meaning of: People come in, we see, or in loose translation: Come and see. The inscription and the considerations developed in this article indicate that the Philistines of the ancient Ashkelon, or the Philistines in general, was a Proto-Slavic tribe or people which spoke a non-survived Proto-Slavic language, which settled in the south part of present Israel in the Iron Age, i.e. well before the VII century A.D. generally accepted period of the Slavs arrival in Eastern Europe.

Recent discussion of the formation and alteration of Philistine identity in the Levantine Iron Age continues to reference primarily pottery styles and dietary practices. Such traditional narratives propose that the Philistines comprised one group of the 'Sea Peoples' and that the cultural boundary markers that distinguished their society in the Iron Age I (twelftheleventh century BC) diminished in importance and disappeared suddenly in the early Iron Age IIA (tenth century BC), with the ascendancy of the Judahite kingdom. Based on data from the Levant (especially Philistia), the Aegean and Cyprus, we argue for a more complex understanding of the Philistines who came to the region with an identity that drew on, and continued to engage with, a broad range of foreign artefact styles and cultural practices with non-Levantine connections. Concurrently they incorporated local cultural attributes, at least until the late ninth century BC, a feature that we argue was unrelated to the supposed tenth century expansion of the Judahite kingdom. ; Hitchcock in press a). The result was encounters, entanglements, appropriations and merging of numerous constituent groups, due to shared economic and/or socio-political interests, each with its own characteristics. Sorting out these varying relations goes beyond the scope of this paper, whose purpose is to initiate debate and promote future research into a range of issues relating to Mediterranean identity. As discussed below, cultural interaction is demonstrated in Philistine culture by the presence of extensive links to many different worlds that served as conceptual and physical sources of material goods and religio-cultural practices: Cypriot (Cypro-Minoan script, hearths, bi-metallic knives, bronze stands, seal styles, pottery styles), Anatolian (hearths, personal names, pottery styles), Mycenaean (cooking jugs, preference for hearths, pottery styles, personal names, loom weights, figurine styles), Minoan (sacrificial practices and ritual activity, seal use, iconography, pottery motifs, plaster technology), south-central European (e.g. Edelstein and Schreiber 2000; Wachsmann 2000; Sherratt 2003) and possibly even Italian (handmade burnished ware ('barbarian ware'), e.g. Karageorghis 2011; Pilides and Boileau 2011).