An Iron IIA Iron and Bronze Workshop in the Lower City of Tell es-Safi/Gath

Abstract

An iron and bronze workshop in the lower city of Tell es-Safi/Gath, dated to the mid-late Iron IIA, contributes new data on the chronology, organization, and practice of metal production in the urban Philistine setting. Analyses show that iron objects were likely produced and maintained on a large scale, alongside bronze, employing regionally unique forms of crucibles and tuyères. The material culture of metalworking is discussed in relation to contemporaneous iron production sites in the region, building a more robust picture of the adoption of iron metallurgy in the Levant versus the status of bronze and iron.

Keywords:

• Iron production
• Copper/bronze working
• Metal crafts
• Philistia
• Iron IIA
• Tell es-Safi/Gath

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by two Israel Science Foundation grants (no. 1047/17 to A. Eliyahu-Behar and no. 911/18 to A.M. Maeir). V. Workman is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation, the RIAB Minerva Center, and ISF grant no. 1047/17 for scholarship support. The authors are grateful to Maria Eniukina and Jay Rosenberg for help with figure preparation.

Notes

1 In recent years a consensus has developed that iron was not extensively produced in the southern Levant until well into the Iron IIA, in the late 10th/early 9th centuries BCE (Pigott 2003; Veldhuijzen and Rehren 2007; Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2012; 2013; Yahalom-Mack and Eliyahu- Behar 2015; Erb-Satullo and Walton 2017; Eliyahu and Yahalom-Mack 2018a; Erb-Satullo 2019; Rabinovich et al. 209); an exception is the Iron I (11th ca. BCE) workshop at Tell Tayinat (Roames 2011; Welton et al. 2019).

2 A stone-paved floor with transitional Iron I–IIA ceramics was found below the floor and walls of the metal workshop. In a room immediately to the south, a fragment of a bronze crucible was found in this layer, which may indicate that bronze working had been practiced here prior to Stratum D3, suggesting spatial continuity of metalworking, similar to evidence revealed at Hazor and Megiddo (Yahalom-Mack et al. 2014a; 2017; Kleiman et al. 2017).

3 The body of the Tell es-Safi/Gath tuyères are similar to Type Tu4 in Yahalom-Mack’s typology (2019: 68–69, Fig. 4), but continue straight and truncate with a non-tapered nozzle.

4 This slag type was also identified and characterized by Veldhuijzen 2005: 182–185 (technical ‘Ceramic-Rich’ slag) at Tell Hammeh and by Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2008 at Tel-Dor (Group 2). See Workman, Maeir and Eliyahu-Baher forthcoming for an analytical study of this type.

5 We are grateful to Profs. Amotz Agnon and Ruth Shahack-Gross for identifying the stone type and to Prof. Danny Rosenberg for reviewing the wear marks.

6 Coinciding with recent analysis showing little to no copper content in the vitrification layers of round tuyères (Workman, Maeir and Eliyahu-Behar forthcoming).

7 It is noteworthy that the two types were found together in heaps of iron smelting waste from 8th to 2nd century BCE phases at the massive iron production sites of Meroe and Hamadab in Sudan (Ting and Humphris 2017: 35, Fig. 3b.).

8 Elbow tuyères, sometimes confused in the literature with the Levantine bent-tipped style, are well-known in copper production in LB Cyprus (Knapp 2012: 18, Fig. 3.4; Kassianidou 2012, 2013: 136, 139–140). Their appearance in the iron/bronze workshop at Iron I Tell Tayinat (Roames 2011; Welton et al. 2019: 320–322. Fig. 27.5) is a curious synchronism that may be connected to the contemporaneous appearance of LH IIIC style ceramics and spool-shaped loom weights, supposed signifiers of the cultural influence of the Sea Peoples. This bronzeworking tool has yet to be uncovered in the southern Levant.

9 Examples can be found in Israel: MB to Iron Age Hazor and Megiddo, LB–Iron I Timna; Cyprus: LB Enkomi, LB Kition; Cyclades: LB Ayia Irini, LB Troullos; and Greece: Olympia, Athens.

10 For a discussion on local or foreign production, see Yahalom-Mack and Eliyahu-Behar 2015.

11 See Bourogiannis 2018: 50–54; Kourou 2019 for a similar conclusion from an Aegean perspective.

12 Bronze was still the primary metal for artefacts of adornment (Yahalom-Mack and Eliyahu- Behar 2015: 290).