The Archaeology and History of the Negev and Neighbouring Areas in the Third Millennium BCE: A New Paradigm

Abstract

Conventional theory described two settlement waves in the Negev Highlands in the third millennium BCE—in the EB II and the Intermediate Bronze Age— and a period with no evidence for stone architecture between them in the EB III. Arad in the Beer-sheba Valley was presented as an EB I–II site, which lay deserted in the EB III. Old and new radiocarbon dates and other lines of evidence from the copper mining districts in the Arabah, Arad and the Negev Highlands make this scenario obsolete. The new data indicate a long period of activity in the south—throughout the Early Bronze and the first half of the Intermediate Bronze Age. Certain changes in the settlement patterns took place in the transition from the EB III to the Intermediate Bronze Age— abandonment of Arad and the rise of central trading sites within the Negev Highlands. Activity in the Negev Highlands was related to the copper industry in the Arabah and transportation of copper to the north and west. Demand for copper in Egypt played an important role in the settlement history of the arid regions: the peak prosperity in the EB III and first half of the Intermediate Bronze Age corresponds to the time of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and deterioration of the Negev system tallies with the collapse of the Old Kingdom ca. 2200 BCE. The data for the third millennium BCE enables the structuring and presentation of a broader model of human activity in the Negev Highlands and neighbouring regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Keywords:

• Negev Highlands
• Arad
• Arabah Valley
• Copper
• Faynan
• Egypt
• Old Kingdom
• Early Bronze Age
• Intermediate Bronze Age

Notes

1 Also Ben-Yosef et al. 2016, based on data from the copper area of Wadi Faynan. This article additionally referred, in passing, to the link between the copper industry in the Arabah and demand of copper in Egypt (on both issues, more below).

2 Results of an archaeomagnetic study of slag from copper production sites in the Arabah Valley demonstrate the existence of metallurgical activity in this region ca. 2900 BCE (EB II–III transition) and between ca. 2600–1950 BCE (late EB III and Intermediate Bronze Age; Ben-Yosef et al. 2016). Evidently, the resolution of archaeomagnetic dating is less accurate than that of radiocarbon dating.

3 For OSL dating of sediments at Mashabe Sade and Ein Ziq, see Junge et al. 2016; Dunseth et al. 2017 respectively. We do not discuss the results here due to their lower precision relative to radiocarbon dating.

4 For a somewhat similar situation, see the Camel Site near Mizpe Ramon. The site was dated to the EB II and Intermediate Bronze Age, but one of the three radiocarbon results falls in the EB III (Rosen 2011b: 60–61).

5 Be<er Resisim provided three radiocarbon dates, two of them seemingly falling in the EB III (Ben-Yosef et al. 2016: Table 3). Yet, the samples were ostrich eggshells, which consistently give early dates of a few centuries (Vogel, Visser and Fuls 2001).

6 For a possible similar shift in the Iron Age—from Tel Masos in the Iron I to Kadesh-barnea in the Iron IIA—see Ben-Dor Evian 2017.