Hoarding at Megiddo in the Late Bronze and Iron I

Abstract

The article focuses on Megiddo hoards dating to the Late Bronze Age and Iron I. As many as 17 such hoards have been discovered thus far. One particular hoard, as yet unpublished, is presented. The remaining 16 hoards, several of which have never been identified as such, are cataloged. A classification of the hoards based on their ritual versus non-ritual nature is presented, as well as an analysis of other aspects of hoarding activity at Megiddo.

Keywords:

• Hoards
• Ritual deposits
• Megiddo
• Late Bronze Age
• Iron Age I

Acknowledgments

This article is based on my M.A. thesis, Hoarding at Tel Megiddo in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I (Tel Aviv University: 2016).Special thanks go to my thesis advisors, Israel Finkelstein and Benjamin Sass, for reading drafts of this article and for providing me with many helpful insights. I would also like to thank Adi Eliyahu-Behar, Naama Yahalom-Mack, Orit Shamir and Mark Cavanaugh for their analyses on matters pertaining to the TAU 12/Q/76 hoard and Elon Heymans for allowing me to assist him in his reassessment of OIC Hoards 2012 and 5213 at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute’s Museum. I would also like to thank Eli Itkin for the useful comments he provided.

Notes

1 For work on hoards from various periods, see Seger 1976; Philip 1988; Ilan 1992; Golani and Sass 1998; Stern 2001; Feldman 2009; Zarzecki-Peleg 2016; Panitz-Cohen et al. 2016; Arie et al. 2019; for recent archaeometallurgical analyses on hoards, see Ashkenazi et al. 2018: 387–390; Eshel et al. 2018.

2 Loud (1948: 7) used the sign ‘=’ to represent the general area surrounding the locus in which finds were discovered. ‘N’, ‘E’, ‘S’ and ‘W’ represent the direction in which the finds were uncovered in relation to the locus, but the exact location of the findspots was not provided.