Tel Beth Shemesh Part One Introductory Essays

"Located at the geographical meeting point of three cultural entities: Canaanites, Philistines and Israelites, Tel Beith-Shemesh is an ideal site for inverstigating geopolitical, social and cultural dynamics at a border zone. Applying the interpretive methods of anthropology and archaeology of borders, the renewed excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh, initiated by Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman in 1990, provide novel insights, "a view from the border", about major topics in the Iron age archaeology of the southern Levant. They also allow comprehensive reevaluation of the two early excavation cycles at the site conducted by Duncan Mackenzie (1911-1912) and Elihu Grant (1928-1933). The results of the first decade of the renewed excavations are presented contextually under four main themes: the Iron I peasant community on the Philistine border; the Iron IIA transformation of the site into a state administrative center characterized by monumental architectural enterprises; the Iron IIB olive oil producing town; and a previously unknown short and unsuccesful attempt to resettle the site in the twilight of Assyrian domination in the southern Levant"--