cities of the sea: maritime trade and the origin of...

ALEXANDER A. BAUER

CITIES OF THE SEA: MARITIME TRADE AND THE ORIGIN OFPHILISTINE SETTLEMENT IN THE EARLY IRON AGESOUTHERN LEVANT

Summary. The question of the origins of the Philistines, who settled in thesouthern Levant in the early Iron Age (12th century BC) has long been thesubject of debate. Traditionally, they have been understood to lie with the ‘SeaPeoples,’ raiders who were thought to have wreaked havoc in the easternMediterranean at this time. A new conceptualization of the ‘Sea Peoples’phenomenon as the emergence of decentralized maritime trade leads to newquestions regarding the settlements associated with it, namely those along thesouthern Levantine coastal plain and especially those considered ‘Philistine.’It is the aim of this paper to reinterpret these sites in terms of their functionalrole within this decentralized network and it is suggested that they wereestablished and maintained specifically for that purpose. Finally, thedevelopment of this network of interconnections is related to the parallelemergence of the Phoenicians and the Israelites in the eleventh and tenthcenturies.

For more than half a century debate hasraged regarding the origin of the Philistinesand the nature of their settlement in thesouthern Levant in the years following theend of the Bronze Age. A new book by T.and M. Dothan (1992), based largely on therecent excavations at Tel Miqne, has revivedquestions regarding their ethnicity, and a newseries of papers have focused on when andhow they settled (Finkelstein 1995; Mazar1997). Theories explaining the appearance ofPhilistine material culture, primarily thedistinctive ‘Philistine Bichrome Ware,’ inearly Iron Age (12th–11th cent. BC)contexts, have ranged from describing a

wave of immigration from the Mycenaeanheartland (T. Dothan 1982; T. Dothan and M.Dothan 1992) to interpreting it asrepresenting new material used by theindigenous socio-economic group(Bunimovitz 1990). While the direct linkassumed by the former thesis is unlikely, thelatter is undermined by the archaeologicalevidence from the excavations at Tel Miqne-Ekron and elsewhere in Philistia, whichsuggest that the processes occurring in thatarea in the early Iron Age, indicated by thedifferences in material culture and theexclusively urban nature of the settlements,are quite distinct from the rest of the southern

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Levant (T. Dothan 1989; 1995; Stager 1995;Killebrew in press).

Literary evidence has long pointed scholarsto find the origins of the Philistines in the‘Sea Peoples’ mentioned in Egyptianinscriptions, largely due to the correlationbetween one of the ‘Sea Peoples,’ thepeleset,named in the reliefs of Ramesses III’s templeat Medinet Habu, with the ‘Philistines’ (T.Dothan 1982: 5–13). The ‘Sea Peoples’themselves have been held responsible forthe destruction of such disparate Late BronzeAge areas as Mycenaean Greece (Baumbach1983; Vermeule 1960), Thrace (cf. O¨ zdogan1985: 538), Cyprus (Dikaios 1971: 529), andthe Levant (T. Dothan 1982; 1989). For manyof these regions, however, there is noevidence to support such a theory (Muhly1984), and the hypothesis for the easternMediterranean of a foreign invasion based onthe appearance of the so-called MycenaeanIIIC: 1b pottery, seen as diagnostic of anintrusive Aegean population, has recentlycome under attack as the pottery has beenshown to have as many local Levantine andCypriot parallels as Mycenaean ones (Kling1989). But while the ‘Sea Peoples’ as a wholemay be a somewhat ephemeral phenomenonarchaeologically, the appearance of thePhilistines in the southern Levantine coastalplain is becoming more real archaeologicallyas more data come to light. This, coupledwith the fact that other sites in the southernLevant are often interpreted in terms of ‘SeaPeoples’ occupation, has led to a renewedinterest in identifying and understanding whothe Philistines were.

More recently, the ‘Sea Peoples’phenomenon itself has been reinterpreted asrepresenting an emerging socio-economicgroup with mercantile interests rather than anew population element in the easternMediterranean (Sherratt in press). Thishypothesis, put forward by Susan Sherratt,

is the most compelling conceptualization ofthe nature of the ‘Sea Peoples’ to date. Shesees the ‘Sea Peoples’ not as an intrusiveethnic group in the eastern Mediterranean,but as a name that arose from Egyptianpropaganda to explain what was probably theemergence of powerful freelance seamerchants in the Late Bronze Age. Themercantile ambitions of these‘institutionalised ‘‘Sea Peoples’’’ would have‘generated their own culture and culturalactivities’ (Sherratt in press; following Artzy1997), therefore making them seemculturally or ethnically unified to morecentralized powers like the Hittites andEgypt, who may have felt threatened bythem.1 Evidence suggests that thecommercial ‘hub’ of these maritime activitieswas Cyprus, with these merchants engagingin a ‘long-term marketing strategy’ todominate trade in the eastern Mediterranean(Sherratt 1994). In addition to their ownproducts, they are most likely responsible forthe trade in Mycenaean goods to the Levant,and in the thirteenth century BC probablybegan their own production of ‘Mycenaean’pottery (Muhly 1996; Sherratt and Sherratt1991), which was either a result of thedwindling supply exported from the troubledMycenaean palatial centers (Muhly 1996) or,conversely, a contributing factor to theMycenaeans’ demise (because theyundermined the Mycenaean export market)(S. Sherratt personal communication).

While the ‘hub’ of the maritime activitiesassociated with the ‘Sea Peoples’ may in facthave been Cyprus, it is clear that these traderswere, as Sherratt (in press) puts it, ‘a prettycosmopolitan bunch’; and attempts todetermine the port-of-origin of the Gelidonyaand Uluburun ships (Muhlyet al. 1977; Bass1991), among more recent discussions, hasconvincingly shown that these merchantswere from all over the eastern Mediterranean

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(Knapp and Cherry 1994; Knapp 1997). Theconcept of the ‘Sea Peoples’ has its rootsmainly in the evidence from the Egyptianinscription of Ramesses III’s temple atMedinet Habu, which describes enemygroups (the Peleset, Tjekker, Sheklesh,Denyen and Weshesh) as ‘making aconspiracy in their islands.’ While writtenas an historical document, ‘as a historicalrecord it is meagre’ (Sandars 1978: 120), andthe ‘ethnic’ identification of various groupsmay not have a basis in any historical reality,but rather may be the result of an Egyptianneed to explain their appearance in termscompatible with their own world view. Thevague geographic location in the text neednot imply the great distance of a ‘SeaPeoples’ homeland, but may instead indicatethe decentralized nature of this maritimephenomenon — probably a difficult conceptfor centralized states such as Egypt tounderstand. Certainly the emergence of apowerful decentralized system would act toundermine the authority of the relativelycentralized powers of the Late Bronze AgeMediterranean. In fact, it is more likely that

‘what we see represented in conventionalrhetoric by the Egyptian state at MedinetHabu as a purely military menace cloaks aperceptian of a far deeper and more longterm danger: an insidious economic andpolitical threat to the very basis of thattheocratic state itself’ (Sherratt in press).

While it is possible that some militaryconfrontations may have taken place, thereis no reason to believe that they were withspecific migrating ethnic groups, andoccurred at a single ‘event’ in time.

It is not the aim of this paper, however, toanalyse the historicity of the Medinet Habuinscription. The purpose here is to investigatehow the reinterpretation of the ‘Sea Peoples’as a socio-economic ‘phenomenon’ rather

than a discrete ethnic group affects ourunderstanding of the Philistines, who havebeen considered a group of ‘Sea Peoples’ thatsettled in the southern Levant during theearly Iron Age. To this end, it is necessary toexamine those settlements traditionallyconnected with the ‘Sea Peoples,’ and toask, if they are indeed part of thisphenomenon, how exactly they are connectedto it, and why those sites were chosen.

While numerous early Iron Age sites alongthe Levantine coast have been interpreted aspart of the ‘Sea Peoples’ phenomenon, thebest evidence comes from the southerncoastal plain with the cities of the Philistines.If, as the archaeological evidence from TelMiqne and elsewhere in Philistia suggests,there is some new population element in thesouthern Levant at the beginning of thetwelfth century BC, the question of theirorigins inevitably arises. While a direct linkwith Mycenaean Greece is improbable (T.Dothan 1982), as was mentioned above, so isa purely local development (Bunimovitz1990). The answer, it seems, may liesomewhere in between these two extremes.Geographically, in between the Aegean andthe Levant lies Cyprus, seen by some as theanswer to this perplexing problem (Sherrattin press; Killebrew in press). Moreover,while Bunimovitz’s (1990) ‘local’ hypothesismay not be able to withstand thearchaeological evidence of new and distinctstyles of settlement, ceramic forms anddecoration, and foodways — indicated bythe appearance of new cooking pot forms(Killebrew in press) and faunal remains,namely pig (Hesse 1990) — it should notbe totally disregarded. Even the excavators ofPhilistine sites have noted the swiftacculturation of ‘Philistines’ into localsouthern-Levantine (‘Cannaanite’) cultureover their first hundred years in the region(T. Dothan 1989; Stager 1995), a point

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Bunimovitz (Bunimovitz and Yasur-Landau1996) emphasises, while conceding thatinitial Philistine settlement does appeardistinct. If we follow Susan Sherratt andagree that the ‘Sea Peoples’ represent thesocio-economic phenomenon of an emergingdecentralized maritime trade network, whoseparticipants were probably from manydifferent regions rather than a people of asingle regional origin, we might consider thatthe Philistine settlements (and those sitesthought to be part of the ‘Sea Peoples’interaction sphere) in the early twelfthcentury BC were driven by these samemercantile activities, and were establishedprimarily to maintain the trade network thathad grown during the Late Bronze Age.2

Especially if the Late Bronze Age networkwas threatened with imminent collapse, asthe major powers became unstable (perhapspartially due to the merchants’ growingability to move goods independently of theestablished ‘palatial’ networks), it wouldmake sense that the traders would turn tocreating their own ‘colonies’ to ensure thecontinuation of this network (cf. Sherratt andSherratt 1991). If this is the case, one mightexpect that the new ‘Sea Peoples’ settlementswould be in locations strategic to themaintenance of the trade network, ratherthan simply at major strongholds where alarge indigenous population, as well as theEgyptians, would have to be confronted. Inaddition, the material culture of these siteswould primarily reflect mercantile activities,rather than being simply ‘cultural’ indicators,and in any event would reflect the multi-cultural traditions of those involved in themaritime trade network.

To examine this hypothesis more closely,it is necessary to review the latest dataavailable from the Philistine sites and themajor sites outside Philistia proper whichhave been traditionally discussed in terms of

the ‘Sea Peoples’ (Figure 1 and Table 1). Asmost of these sites are currently beingexcavated, much new information is comingto light each year. Our knowledge of thesesites now greatly exceeds that available whenthe English version of Trude Dothan’sThePhilistines and their Material Culturewaspublished in 1982, and consequently it is nosurprise that our interpretation of these eventsis in need of a revision. In the followingsection, the sequences and material culturefrom each excavated Philistine site will bediscussed, as well as those sites in thesouthern Levant which also are thought tohave been part of the ‘Sea Peoples’interaction sphere, whether due to thematerial culture found there or literaryreferences. These sites can be arrangedaccording to three geographical zones: (1)Philistia proper, where the sites of Ashdod,Tel Miqne-Ekron, and Ashkelon have beenthoroughly excavated; (2) the central coast,in which lie the sites of Akko, Tell AbuHawam, Tell Keisan, Tel Nami, and Dor, allof which participated in Late Bronze Agemaritime trade; (3) the Philistine periphery,which includes sites like Tel Qasile in thenorth, to Gezer, Tel Sera’, Tel Haror, and Telel-Far’ah (S) among other further south. Thepresent hypothesis will be assessed in termsof the archaeological evidence available foreach region, and a revised interpretation ofthe ‘Philistine’ and other ‘Sea Peoples’ sitesin the southern Levant will be proposed.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ‘SEA PEOPLES’SETTLEMENTS IN THE SOUTHERN LEVANT

Zone 1: Philistia proper

Recent excavations at three of the five‘pentapolis’ sites,3 Ashdod, Tel Miqne-Ekronand Ashkelon, have provided much morecomprehensive data relevant to the nature of

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Figure 1‘Sea Peoples’-related Settlements Discussed in the text

ALEXANDER A. BAUER



Philistine settlement in the early years of thetwelfth century BC and its development insubsequent phases than has been previouslyavailable. In all three cases, the local‘Canaanite’ settlement during the LateBronze Age was considerably smaller thanthat of the Iron I Philistine city, and it may besignificant for the present thesis that thenature of Philistine settlement seems to beexclusively urban (Stager 1995).

Of the three ‘pentapolis’ sites to have beenexcavated recently,Ashdodis the only onewhich seems to have housed an Egyptian‘governor’s residency’ in the Late BronzeAge, and, along with Tel Mor nearby, mayhave been an Egyptian stronghold of thethirteenth century (M. Dothan 1993a, 96). Asin many Late Bronze II sites, much importedCypriot and Mycenaean pottery was found

(M. Dothan 1993a, 96). Following thedestruction level attributed to the ‘SeaPeoples’ and dated to the end of that century,a new settlement was established, reusingsome of the LB II structures (M. Dothan1989, 65). In this twelfth century ‘Philistine’city were many pottery workshops (M.Dothan 1989, 65), and much of theassemblage was a locally-made imitationMycenaean ware (Asaroet al. 1971),4

although it should be noted that ‘Canaanite’types also appeared in utilitarian forms (M.Dothan 1989, 66).

Following the destruction of the largeMiddle Bronze Age city, the Late BronzeAge settlement atTel Miqneconsisted of amere ten acres in the area of the upper tell(T. Dothan 1995, 42; Gittlin 1992), althoughthe high number of objects imported from

TABLE 1

Stratigraphical Sequences of Selected ‘Sea Peoples’-related Sites

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the Aegean, Cyprus and Egypt suggested tothe excavator that the settlement ‘wasengaged in extensive trading’ (T. Dothan1995, 42). In the beginning of the twelfthcentury, a new city was built, attributed bythe excavator to thepelesetSea Peoples, orthe Philistines, covering an area of 50 acresacross the upper and lower tells (T. Dothan1995, 42). The pottery assemblage of thisperiod is almost entirely the imitationMycenaean ware and new undecorated forms(Killebrew in press), although, as is the caseat Ashdod, some local Late Bronze Age(‘Canaanite’) forms continue to appear, suchas storage jars, juglets, bowls and cookingpots (T. Dothan 1995, 46). Anotherprominent feature of the new Iron I city isthe large number of pottery installations, theappearance of which most likely correspondsto the production of the imitation Mycenaeanware (Killebrew 1996).

Although the Late Bronze Age atAshkelonhas not yet been excavated in largeexposures, the excavator does say that thesettlement was ‘much smaller’ then than inthe Iron I period (Stager 1995, 345). In thelevels corresponding to the new city, whichprobably extended 50–60 ha in size,monumental architecture, as well as anabundance of imitation Mycenaean andPhilistine ware was uncovered (Stager 1993,107). The excavator thinks he has alsoidentified evidence of a textile industry thatis unlike local Levantine traditions, but hasparallels on contemporary or earlier sites onCyprus (Stager 1993, 107; 1995, 346).

All three sites seem to parallel each otherin their development during the Iron Age I. Inlater stages, imitation Mycenaean wares arereplaced by ‘Philistine Bichrome Ware,’ longargued by T. Dothan to be their directdescendant (T. Dothan 1982; 1989). As theperiod continues, however, the Philistinesettlements seem to undergo a process of

‘acculturation,’ so that by the end of theeleventh century, ‘Philistine’ culture ceasesto exist as an entity unique and separatewithin the southern Levant (T. Dothan 1989;1995; Stager 1995; Bunimovitz and Yasur-Landau 1996). The swiftness of this processhas interesting ramifications for the presentargument and will be discussed below.

Zone 2: the central coast

In the area of the Akko plain, north and westof the Bay of Akko, a few large lowlandurban centers which existed in the LateBronze and early Iron Ages are relevant toour discussion here. The material fromAkkothat has been published to date, althoughunclear, indicates that a small Late BronzeAge II settlement continued to thrive,following the apparent abandonment of thelarge fortress of the fourteenth century (M.Dothan 1993b, 21). Imported Mycenaean andCypriot wares are plentiful in the ceramicassemblage, and were replaced by locally-made imitation Mycenaean wares in the earlyIron Age, which the excavator says bear acloser resemblance to Cypriot examples thanthose from Ashdod (M. Dothan 1989, 60).Also notable is the appearance of potter’sworkshops in early Iron Age contexts (M.Dothan 1989, 60), which again are probablyrelated to the production of imitationMycenaean wares.

While there seems to be a gap inoccupation during the twelfth century at theport city of Tell Abu Hawam, located on thesouthern side of the Bay of Akko, it emergesas an important coastal center in the eleventhcentury (Balensi 1985; Balensi and Herrera1985) at a time when Akko seems to beexperiencing a period of decline or evenabandonment (M. Dothan 1976, 20, 23;1993b). Traces of material from the LateBronze/Iron I horizon have been found,

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containing imported Cypriot and Aegeanpottery (Balensiet al. 1993, 13), althoughthis level’s relation to the following one isnot easy to assess. In this eleventh centurylevel, there appears Philistine-related potteryas well as Phoenician wares, and it isprobable that the city was walled at this time(Balensi and Herrera 1985). The site’sgrowth during the same period as Akko’sapparent decline may indicate that it replacedthe latter as the major port for the region.

Following a clear destruction layerrepresenting the end of the Late BronzeAge at the inland site ofTell Keisan, a newsettlement containing Philistine wares is built(Humbert 1981, 388–9). Interestingly, astirrup jar, of LH IIIC: 1 type, found in apre-destruction (end of the thirteenth century)context (Balensi 1981), was analyzed byNeutron Activation Analysis and found tohave probably originated in Kouklia onCyprus (Humbert 1993, 864). This suggeststhat these Mycenaean-imitations were tradedbefore the end of the Bronze Age, and do notnecessarily reflect the settlement of a discrete‘Sea Peoples’ ethnic group. As at AbuHawam, the eleventh century at Keisanseems to be a time of prosperity, with thebuilding of well-planned domestic structures,and the appearance of Phoenician pottery,with some Philistine examples as well(Humbert 1981, 389), suggesting a processthat is intrinsically linked to the ‘SeaPeoples’ settlements in Philistia and alongthe coast (see discussion below).

The Late Bronze Age settlement ofTelNami, located along the Carmel coast, isrelevant here, despite that fact that it does notseem to continue into the Iron Age (Artzy1995). The LB II material uncovered at thesite consists of local wares as well asnumerous imports from the Aegean, Cyprus,northern Syria and Egypt (Artzy 1995).Moreover, the excavator remarks that the

necropolis of Nami East shows ‘anamalgamation of burial practices’ (Artzy1995: 25), which may confirm its‘international’ nature. The great amount ofwealth accumulated at Nami at this time haslead the excavator to suggest that ‘thegeopolitical peculiarities of this period’allowed the site to become the point ofintersection between the specialized trade ofincense from the desert in the east and theMediterranean maritime interaction sphere(Artzy 1994: 139; 1995; cf. Sherratt andSherratt 1991).

Further down the Carmel coast isDor, aport city located about 20 km south of TelAbu Hawam and the Bay of Akko, and about5 km south of Tel Nami. Recent excavationshave only uncovered material from theearliest Iron Age I levels, but preliminarystudies of the Late Bronze Age pottery foundin fill deposits shows that ‘the number ofimported vases found here was larger thanthat of the local ware’ (Stern 1995, 82). Thesettlement of the early Iron Age I is also notwell known yet, but the succeeding levels ofthe eleventh century seem to indicate therebuilding of the city (Stern 1993). WhileStern concludes that the occupants of Dor inthe second half of the eleventh century arePhoenician, he understands the earlier levelas being the major city of the Tjekker (Shkl)Sea Peoples (Stern 1990; 1993; Stern inWolff 1994, 493), based primarily on theevidence from the Wenamun text (cf.Goedicke 1975), which tells the story of anemissary from Egypt who, when visiting Dor,is taken to meet a Tjekker ‘prince.’ Themajority of the pottery from this stratum,however, consists of a group of jars whichcontinues from the Late Canaanite tradition,about which Stern (1993, 328) wrote ‘there isnothing in them to indicate that a new peoplehad arrived at Dor.’ In fact, only one vesselseems at all a possible link to the Sea

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Peoples, and its parallels to Phoenicia areequal if not stronger (cf. especially Biran1989; Stern 1993, 333 n. 10). Otherwise, ‘nopottery connected with the Sea Peoples hasbeen discovered so far among the ruins ofthis stratum’ (Stern 1990; 1995, 82). Theonly such finds have been from the surfaceand not in situ (Stern 1990, 29). What thismeans in terms of the ‘Sea Peoples’phenomenon will be discussed below. In thefollowing levels, dating to the eleventhcentury, numerous examples of PhoenicianBichrome ware and imported Cypriot pottery,known elsewhere from Phoenicia andPhoenician-related sites on Cyprus, havebeen uncovered, indicating the site’s role inthe renewed (or continuing) maritime trade ofthe early Iron Age (Gilboa 1989; Stern 1993;1995).

Zone 3: The Philistine periphery

The site of Tel Qasile, located on thenorthern edge of modern-day Tel-Aviv, hasbeen extensively excavated and published,and seems to represent an Iron Age IPhilistine settlement outside Philistia proper(Mazar 1980; 1985b). The site seems to havebeen founded in the twelfth century by thePhilistines during the time of their‘expansion’ into the peripheral regions ofPhilistia (T. Dothan, 1982; 1989; Mazar1994), with rebuilding and refurbishment ofthe site continuing through the eleventhcentury until its destruction and new layoutin the beginning of the tenth century BC(Mazar 1980, 46–7). The earliest levelscontain early examples of ‘PhilistineBichrome Ware’ but none of the imitationMycenaean ware elsewhere referred to asMycenaean IIIC: 1b. The pottery from thelater Iron Age I level (of the eleventhcentury) reveals a mixture of Phoenicianand Philistine painted traditions in local

forms (Mazar 1985b, 83–4, 123–4), possiblyreflecting the ‘homogenization’ of Philistineculture that occurs during the latter half ofthe eleventh century (T. Dothan 1989, 11–12).

A number of large tell sites have beenexcavated in the Shephelah, and their IronAge I levels traditionally attest to theirconnections to both the Philistines in the westand local groups that continue Late BronzeAge traditions. AtGezer, after a short gap orephemeral phase following the destruction/abandonment of the Late Bronze Age city, thesite was reoccupied during the first half of thetwelfth century, with architecture and materialculture assemblages that continued LateBronze Age traditions (Dever 198: 87; Deveret al. 1974, 54). While this level contained asmall amount of Philistine bichrome pottery,its more significant presence in the followinglevels, along with the new architecturalelements (Deveret al. 1974, 55), suggestedto the excavator that the site was not withinthe Philistine sphere of influence until the lastquarter of the twelfth century. Two large well-constructed houses on the ‘acropolis’ areaduring this period led the excavator toconclude that there was a rising Philistineelite at the site (Dever 1986, 116), althoughthe continuation of local Late Bronze Agepottery forms (Deveret al. 1974, 56) shouldremind us that the appearance of Philistinematerial does not have to indicate thepresence of ‘Philistines’ (cf. Kramer 1977).In the second half of that century, the siteseems to have been abandoned and resettledwith a ‘squatter’ or ‘ephemeral’ occupationthat is characterized as ‘post-Philistine’ and‘pre-Solomonic,’ as it contains no Philistinepottery (Deveret al. 1970, 59–61) and pre-dates the appearance of burnished, red-slippedpottery characteristic of the following‘Solomonic’ stratum (Dever 1986, 126;Holladay 1990).5

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The last Late Bronze Age Canaaniteoccupants atTel Batash seem to haveabandoned the site peacefully at thebeginning of the twelfth century BC, as thereare no signs of a destruction at that time(Kelm and Mazar 1982, 14–15). While newarchitectural elements as well as Philistinepottery appear in the Iron Age I (stratum V),the continuation of some structures and localpottery forms from the Late Bronze Age ledthe excavator to suggest that the populationwas mainly Canaanite, and was ruled by aPhilistine elite (Kelm and Mazar 1982, 17–19; 1985, 101; 1995, 102). Just to the south,the Iron Age I stratum atBeth Shemeshfollows the widespread destruction of a LateBronze Age Canaanite city (Grant andWright 1939: 11). That occupation,characterized by simply-built houses,furnaces for metalworking, and a largeamount of Philistine pottery seems to havebeen destroyed and then abandoned for ashort time (Grant and Wright 1939;Bunimovitz and Lederman 1993, 253). Whenthe site was resettled at the beginning of thetenth century, it followed a systematic planwith the houses built around the edge of thesite, abutting the casemate wall (Grant andWright 1939, 71). It was also noted that whilethe metallurgy industry continued, the oil andwine industries seem to have gainedprominence in this period (Grant and Wright1939, 75–7).

In the northern Negev, around theperiphery of Philistia, the sites that havebeen excavated all have strong links to thatregion and are traditionally discussed interms of the Philistine cultural expansionduring the late twelfth and eleventh centuriesBC. The earliest Iron Age Level atTel Sera’follows the last Egyptian occupation at thesite, which was characterized by a so-called‘governor’s residency’ (Oren 1993b).Philistine pottery did not appear at the site

until the late twelfth century, when it appearsalong with the earliest phases of housesbelonging to the ‘four-room’ type, accordingto the excavator (Oren 1982, 163). Thesehouses continue into the following stratum,which follows without a break, and are joinedby the first examples of hand-burnishedpottery (Oren 1982, 161–2). Thesimultaneous appearance of Philistine wareand ‘four-room’ houses led the excavator toconclude that ‘this class of domesticarchitecture at Tel Sera’ should be consideredpart of the architectural tradition of thePhilistine settlers in the western Negev’(Oren 1993b, 1331).6

Two settlements in the vicinity of TelSera’ have similar, if less clear, sequences.The Iron Age I atTel Ma’aravim is dividedinto two phases, the first of which dates to thethirteenth century and contains a typical LateBronze Age courtyard house (Oren andMazar 1974). After a gap in the sequence, alevel dating to the eleventh century wasuncovered, and although the architecture wasfragmentary, the pottery assemblage wasfound to contain both Philistine and red-slipped hand-burnished types. At the site ofTel Haror, the early Iron Age sequence isclearly seen in area B, where an early twelfthcentury, ‘pre-Philistine’ stratum is succeededby three phases containing well-plannedbuildings, silos, and Philistine pottery (Oren1993a, 582). At the end of the eleventh/beginning of the tenth century, the settlementis walled, and Cypro-Phoenician and red-slipped hand-burnished wares appear.

Two other sites in the Philistine peripheryhave been excavated, using methodsrepresenting two ends of a methodologicaltradition: Tell el-Far’ah (S), compre-hensively dug by Petrie in two seasons,1927 and 1929, andTell Jemmeh, also dugby Petrie in the ‘20s, and more recently thesubject of a long-term ‘total-retrieval’

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excavation directed by Gus Van Beek (1989).At the former site, Tell el-Far’ah (S), a large‘Egyptian governor’s’ residence, containingPhilistine pottery, was built during thetwelfth century (Petrie 1930, 17–18). Thelack of ‘late’ Philistine pottery in the buildingled the excavator to suggest that the buildingwas destroyed sometime in the early eleventhcentury at the latest (MacDonaldet al. 1932,29–30), though the stratigraphy here isproblematic. The building level followingthe destruction is characterized by a‘confused’ plan, which is then replaced by anew, regular layout in the tenth century(Petrie 1930, 19). The graves from Cemetery500 also date from the Iron Age I and manyof them contain Philistine pottery as well(MacDonald et al. 1932). The Iron Age Ilevels at Tell Jemmeh also indicate a strongPhilistine presence at that site, although thelack of published reports does not permit athorough analysis of its stratigraphy. Worthspecial mention, however, is the discovery ofa potter’s kiln and workshop area dating tothe Philistine period (the twelfth century),which was destroyed and replaced by an asyet unclear occupation level (Van Beek 1993,669–70).

FROM ‘SEA PEOPLES’ TO LAND-PEOPLES

During most of the Late Bronze Age, thesouthern Levant seems to have consisted of anetwork of loosely-related, semi-autonomouscity-states under the nominal jurisdiction ofNew Kingdom Egypt (Bunimovitz 1995).Along the coast, as the case seems to be onCyprus (Knapp 1996, 63ff.), urban trading‘nodes’ prospered as the maritime exchangenetwork in the Mediterranean grew in sizeand intensity. Sites like Tel Nami probablyaccumulated their wealth because of its placewithin this network (Artzy 1995), and muchthe same can be hypothesized for other major

coastal sites. The evidence from Cyrpus isvery important here: during the latter half ofthe Late Bronze Age (13th century),decentralized polities emerged whichoperated independently of the established‘palatial’ system that existed within andamong the major powers of the easternMediterranean (Knapp 1996, 68; Sherratt inpress). The fact that this development may inpart result from Cyprus’ being a coastalculture, separated from the centralized land-based superpowers (Sherratt in press),suggests that coastal sites in the southernLevant may have also been able to emergeindependent of the inland ‘palatial’ systemduring the Late Bronze Age and early IronAge (cf. Revere 1957). It should come as nosurprise, then, that many of the sites that arethought to have been settled by the ‘SeaPeoples’ in the early Iron Age are either nearor at these Late Bronze Age coastal tradingposts. Texts from thirteenth century Ugarit,which was undoubtedly a major entrepoˆt atthat time (Knapp and Cherry 1994, 135–7),mention people from Akko, Ashdod, andAshkelon, suggesting that it probably hadmaritime relations with these three cities (M.Dothan 1989, 60). If indeed the ‘Sea Peoples’represent an economic phenomenon of anemerging merchant class, which is thesuggestion of Susan Sherratt pursued here,it would make sense that these merchantswould try to stabilize their threatenednetwork by settling in the very cities thatacted as trading ‘gateways’. Thearchaeological evidence can support this: atmany of the ‘Sea Peoples’-related settlementsdiscussed above, the previous Late BronzeAge levels contained great quantities ofimported goods, especially Aegean andCypriot ceramics, indicating that the ‘SeaPeoples’ specifically wished to maintainthose sites which had served well the tradenetwork during the earlier period; evidence at

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these sites of continued involvement inmaritime trade during the early Iron Age(Sherratt in press) suggests that they fulfilledthat purpose. The appearance of potters’workshops at most of the sites goes furtherto support the hypothesis that the settlers inthe early Iron Age Levant are the very samemerchants, based in Cyprus, who marketedthe authentic, and eventually their ownimitations of, Mycenaean wares throughoutthe eastern Mediterranean (Sherratt in press).

If such merchants were establishing thesesites to maintain the trade network withinwhich they had thrived during the LateBronze Age, one may wonder why there isno apparent ‘Sea Peoples’ settlement outsidethe southern Levant, and further, why someof the major Philistine sites are inland, ratherthan directly on the coast. Leaving aside thespecific socio-political situation of otherregions for discussion elsewhere, it issuggested here that those merchants whowanted to maintain their livelihood would nottry to sustain the entire trade network, butonly that part from which they directlybenefited. The sheer volume of Mycenaeanand Cypriot pottery which has been found inthe southern Levant attests to the market thatexisted there for such items (see mostrecently Leonard 1994),7 so it is natural toexpect that those who were able to imitate itwith such aplomb would move to maintainthat part of the market which they could bestexploit. Once in the same land as theirbuyers, the need to be exclusively maritimediminishes. The desire to link their networkto that of emerging Arabian trade(Finkelstein 1988a; Artzy 1994) may alsohave precipitated a move to establish inlandcenters.8

This ‘market-oriented’ settlement may alsoserve to explain the correlation between the‘Sea Peoples’ and the metalworking industryin the early Iron Age southern Levant, which

until recently has been mostly an argument ofcultural diffusionism (Pritchard 1968; Tubb1988,contraNegbi 1991), probably based onthe Biblical tradition that the Philistines keptall knowledge of metallurgy to themselves,away from the Israelites.9 The important rolethat metals played in the economy of Cyprushas been well-documented (Muhlyet al.1982; Muhly 1991; Knapp and Cherry1994), and the metallurgical innovationscoming from the island may have been thedriving force behind the commercial strategyof its merchant class (Sherratt 1994; in press;Muhly 1996) — the same merchant classwho are collectively known as the ‘SeaPeoples’ when they settle in the southernLevant.

The peculiarities of the ‘Philistine/SeaPeoples’ settlement pattern make sense whenseen in this light. One of the factors that hasalways distinguished these sites from local‘Canaanite/Israelite’ sites is their exclusivelyurban nature (Stager 1995). Setting aside theproblems with drawing ethnic lines alongsocio-political ones (London 1989), makingsuch a distinction is feasible if these siteswere not the product of a mass migration butrather set up as tools for trade. The fact thatthe ‘Philistine’ cities were not establishedwith a supportive agricultural hinterlandshould have indicated that these urbandwellers were probably importing foodstuffs,and in any event were wealthy enough bysome other means to survive without oneunder their immediate control. Many of thesites where ‘Philistine’ material was found inlesser quantities have been regarded by someas being Canaanite, but ruled by a Philistineelite (e.g. Gezer [Dever 1986, 116], TelBatash [Kelm and Mazar 1985, 101], Dor[Stern 1993], Megiddo [Kempinski 1989, 83;Mazar 1994, 42; cf. also Raban 1991]). If weunderstand the ‘Sea Peoples’ in terms of thecontinuity of a trade network into the Iron

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Age, along with its associated goods (i.e.Cypriot and imitation Mycenaean wares, andmetal items), then what Bunimovitz (1990)suggested about the ‘Philistines’ may beapplicable after all. At the aforementionedsites where a few examples of ‘Sea Peoples’-related material culture has been found, it isnot so much that a ‘Philistine elite’ is there,but that the local elite may be using thispottery as a prestige marker, much like theyused imported Cypriot and Aegean waresbefore the end of the Bronze Age.10

Another characteristic that has been notedabout the ‘Philistine’ settlement in thesouthern Levant is its swift acculturation intothe region, so that by the end of the eleventhcentury, ‘Philistine’ sites are barelydistinguishable from ‘Canaanite/Israelite’ones (T. Dothan 1982, 296; 1989; Stager1995). While it is not easy to switch ourunderstanding of the term ‘Sea Peoples’ fromrepresenting a discrete ethnic group on onehand to representing a socio-economicphenomenon on the other, understanding thelatter interpretation is vital if we are todiscuss questions of ‘origins’ in anymeaningful way. While Sherratt (in press)may have remarked that the ‘hub’ of the ‘SeaPeoples’ activities probably lay in Cyprus,these peoples cannot and should not simplybe called ‘Cypriots’ (lest we lead to themistaken conclusion of a ‘wave’ of Cypriotmigrations). As a merchant class, they by nomeans representedall Cypriots, and Cypriotscertainly did not representall ‘Sea Peoples.’As mentioned above, the ethnicity ofmaritime merchants has long been discussed,and it seems more likely that people fromalmost every region of the easternMediterranean took part in this mercantile(non-territorial) network (Muhly et al. 1977;Bass 1991). This being the case, it is likelythat some of the ‘Sea Peoples’ whoestablished trading posts on the southern

Levantine coast were not ‘foreigners’ at all tothe region. Thus the appearance of ‘local’utilitarian forms at these sites (M. Dothan1989, 66; T. Dothan 1995, 46), in addition tothe new ones (Killebrew in press), should notcome as any surprise.11 Furthermore, there isno reason to believe that the city would havebeen exclusively populated by the merchants.Where a mercantile centre exists, it seemsreasonable to expect that people looking foropportunity would establish themselves. Inthis way, the ‘acculturation of the Philistines’was more likely caused by others movinginto the city, then by ‘Philistine’ expansion tothe periphery and the ‘spatial and temporal‘‘distancing’’ from the original templates andconcepts’ (Stager 1995: 335).

Recent excavations at Dor (Stern 1993;1995), combined with discoveries from othercoastal sites like Tel Qasile (Mazar 1985b,84) and ones in the northern Negev, like TelHaror (Oren 1993a, 583), have suggested tosome that the Phoenicians are responsible forhaving revived a local exchange networkbetween Cyprus and the Levant and down theLevantine coast as early as the eleventhcentury (Stern 1993; 1995; Mazar 1994). It isbeing suggested here that a ‘revival’ wasunnecessary, as the ‘Sea Peoples’ and their‘settlement’ in the southern Levant should beunderstood as the continuation (diminished ingeographical size and intensity) of themaritime trade network of the Late BronzeAge. While the nature of the Phoenicians as asocio-cultural group is difficult to identifywithout further excavation of the northern‘homeland’ sites like Sidon and Tyre, andwithout an analysis of the interrelationshipamong the regions in question, it might bepossible to view the ‘settlement of the SeaPeoples/Philistines’ and the ‘emergence ofthe Phoenician trade network’ as essentiallytwo parts of a single process — that of thetransformation of the maritime exchange

ALEXANDER A. BAUER



network of the Late Bronze Age and itsreorganization as a decentralized one in theIron Age.

Evidence from early Iron Age sitessuggests that the Phoenicians may in partbe a product of this transformed network.Pottery identified as ‘Phoenician’ or ‘Cypro-Phoenician’ appears in eleventh-centurycontexts at the coastal sites of Tell AbuHawam, Tell Keisan, and Dor — all of whichare interpreted as having strong links to the‘Sea Peoples,’ as discussed above. The sameoccurs in the later Iron I levels at the‘Philistine’ settlements of Tel Qasile andTel Haror (which Stager [1995, 343]identifies as the ‘pentapolis’ site of Gath),and Mazar (1994, 44) suggests a direct linkbetween the pottery decorated with a drab redslip and black stripes that appears at TelQasile, Ashdod and Tel Miqne with black-on-red Cypro-Phoenician pottery. If weconsider that the Phoenicians emerge asmaritime traders in the eleventh century,and the ‘Sea Peoples/Philistines’ are the samein the twelfth century — taken together withthe archaeological evidence that some of theearliest examples of Phoenician or Cypro-Phoenician pottery in the Levant appear atsites that are either ‘Philistine’ or related tothe ‘Sea Peoples’ — we may reasonablyconclude that they are both functioningwithin the same structure of inter-connections.12 We might even suggest thatthe class of mercantile societies whichincluded the ‘Sea Peoples’ also comprised‘Land Peoples’ who worked at maintainingthe overland trade routes across the Levantand the Arabian desert (Finkelstein 1988a;Artzy 1994). The appearance of Philistine,Phoenician and Midianite wares all at TelMasos (Fritz 1981, 65–6) may indicate thatsites in the northern Negev served this veryfunction. The emergence of new overlanddesert trade routes linking Arabia to the

Mediterranean may also explain why thePhilistine sites appear where they do, and it ispossible that desert traders also played anactive role in the founding of these newdecentralized trading posts.13

Finally, the emergence of red-slippedburnished pottery, regarded as the hallmarkof the Israelite ceramic tradition in the IronAge II, may also be linked to this tradenetwork in the Iron Age I, as the firstappearance of red-slipped pottery (unbur-nished or irregularly hand-burnished) seemsto be at sites along the trade route discussedabove.14 Early examples appear at Tel Qasile(Mazar 1985b, 83–4, 123–4) and nearby TelGerisa (Herzog 1993, 484) on the coast, and inthe Shephelah and northern Negev at TelSera’ (Oren 1982, 161–2), Tel Ma’aravim(Oren and Mazar 1974), Tel Haror (Oren1993, 583), and Tel Be’ersheva (Herzog 1984,43). If and how this pottery type is related tothe Phoenician red-slipped burnished traditionmentioned by Mazar (1994, 44) is a separatequestion; what is important here is that itappears at these sites first and may be linkedto the trade in painted ceramics or even potsmade in imitation of metal wares (Holladay1990, 43, 47 and n. 16). In his recentdiscussion of the rise of the United Monarchyof Israel in the Iron Age II, Holladay (1995,383–6) suggests that the emergence of anArabian trade route in the eleventh centurymay have contributed to the economicprospects of those living in the northernNegev and the hill country. But whereasHolladay’s argument is limited to suggestingits importance during the Iron Age II,after theformation of the nation-state, it seems morelikely that its existence, along with the rest ofthe trade network discussed here, acted as afactor which itself contributed to the rise ofthe Monarchy.15 With a trade networkoperating to the north, west, and south of theCentral Hills and the Galilee, it is not

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surprising that a unified state arose in thoseareas to exploit the economic possibilities thatsuch an exchange system must have offered.

Thus it is proposed here that, rather thanalready defined ethnic groups manifestingterritorial behavior, such entities arose fromthe structure of interconnections and theiroperation within that structure. The emergenceof decentralized maritime trading activities inthe early Iron Age became collectively knownas the ‘Sea Peoples’ and those whoparticipated in this network became groupedas such by outsiders because of their perceivedcollective behavior. In this way, too, thosewho became known as ‘Israelites’ were likelyto have been grouped together because of theirlocation and role within the maritime andoverland interaction spheres (Wengrow 1996).Whether, in that specific case, the impetus topolitical unification came from uniting againstEgypt (Wengrow 1996, 323) or from wanting

to take advantage of economic opportunities,as suggested here (cf. Holladay 1995), itshould be understood that structures ofinterconnections themselves often engendernew socio-political entities, rather than arisethrough the interaction of preexisting ones.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Susanand Andrew Sherratt for their discussion and manythoughtful comments regarding this paper. Their ideashave been an inspiration to me. I would also like tothank Bruce Routledge and James D. Muhly for theirhelpful suggestions, and for bringing some key articlesto my attention. Finally, I wish to thank my teacher andfriend J.P. Dessel for his discussion and advice on manyof the questions explored in this paper.

Department of Anthropology,University of Pennsylvania,

Philadelpha, PA 19104

NOTES

1 ‘Ethnicity’ is a problematic term to use, and muchrecent literature has been devoted to the subject of how,or whether, it can be detected archaeologically (e.g.Shennan 1989). With regard to the present paper, I onlyuse the word in terms of previous scholarship and itsattempts (wrongly, I believe) to determine the nature ofthe ‘Sea Peoples’ and ‘Philistines’ as a single culturaland ethnic entity distinct from the indigenous‘Canaanite’ population of the Levant, based on thetextual sources.2 The term ‘‘‘Sea Peoples’’ settlement’ as used in thispaper refers to a site that has been traditionallyinterpreted as such based on both material and literaryevidence. It is not meant to suggest a settlement of aspecific group, as it is being argued here that the ‘SeaPeoples’ concept itself does not represent a specificgroup, but rather the emergence of decentralizedtrading.3 Tell es-Safi, identified as Biblical Gath (Rainey1975), has not been excavated since the turn of thiscentury (Bliss and Macalister 1902, 38–43) (a newexpedition is currently underway under the direction ofA. Maier and A. Boaz), and in any case, its

identification as Gath is disputed by some (Stager1995). Gaza, which lies beneath the modern city, iscurrently being excavated by J.-B. Humbert.4 This were, known as Mycenaean IIIC: 1b in theLevant and Mycenaean IIIC: 1b or White PaintedWheelmade III in Cyprus, is distinctive as a locally-made imitation of the Mycenaean wares that wereimported to the eastern Mediterranean during the LateBronze II period. In the present paper, I shall try toavoid these terms because of their problematic nature(Kling 1989; Killebrew in press), and instead just referto them as [locally-made] imitation Mycenaean ware,when the appropriate provenience studies have beencarried out.5 cf. note 14 (below).6 The problem with any ethnic attribution of the ‘four-room’ house aside (cf. London 1989), nowhere else areits origins attributed to the Philistines. It is clearly aproduct of indigenous development: no such buildingsare found at the urban Philistine sites in Philistia proper,and the excavator himself uses as comparanda buldingtechniques at the sites of Hazor, Megiddo, Samaria,Gezer and Ramat Rahel (Oren 1982, 162), none ofwhich are Philistine sites.7 Although our data is undoubtedly lacking due to the

ALEXANDER A. BAUER



intensity of excavation in modern-day Israel, comparedwith its relative scarcity in Lebanon, it is consistentbecause the possibility that there was much Aegeanmaterial imported to the Lebanese coast is balanced bythe equally-great possibility that that area was settled by‘Sea Peoples’ in the early Iron Age. Indeed, the earlyIron Age levels at Ras Ibn Hani on the Syrian coastcontained Mycenaean IIIC: 1 and Philistine Bichromepottery, leading the excavator to suggest that thepopulation was different from that of the Late BronzeAge (Bounni et al. 1979, 257). The line of argumentpursued in this paper for the southern Levantine sitesmay just as easily be applied to Ras Ibn Hani, as well asto the Mycenaean IIIC material from Cilicia, althoughthe latter has already been interpreted in a waycompatible with the present framework (Sherratt andCrouwel 1987).8 Although there seems to be little evidence found sofar that the Philistine cities were harbor sites, there is noindication that they did not serve such a function. First,one of the coastal sites, Gaza, has hardly been explored;second, while today only Ashkelon is located directlyon the coast, the possibility that the coastline haschanged in the past four thousand years should not beforgotten; finally, the two coastal sites that have beenexcavated — Ashkelon and Ashdod — are bothconsidered to have been involved in maritime trade bytheir excavators (Dothan 1993a, 93; Stager 1995t, 342).9 cf. I Samuel 13, 19.10 When excavators find LH IIIA/B and White Slip orBase Ring I/II in Late Bronze Age levels along theLevantine coast, they do not conclude that Mycenaeansor even Cypriots lived there, let alone were a rulingelite. But since they do not consider the possibility thattrade could have continued during the Iron Age I, theyare bound to conclude that new pottery must indicate anew population element.11 In addition, Mazar (1985a, 98 n. 9) noted thatPhilistine pottery comprises only 18% of the Iron Age Iassemblage from Tel Qasile, and although he is right insaying that this statistic should not be used to argue thatPhilistines were not at the site, neither does it indicatethat the site was populated by a single ‘Philistine’ ethnicgroup.12 While it is clear that the Phoenicians represent therevival (or continuation) in the Iron Age of the LateBronze Age ‘Canaanite’ settlement system of theLevant (Mazar 1994; Kantzios 1995), the maritimemercantile focus of the Phoenician cities may havedeveloped as a result of the emergence of decentralizedmaritime trading in the Late Bronze Age. The closeconnection between Phoenicia and Cyprus during the

Iron Age (Bikai 1994) further indicates this, sinceCyprus played a central role in the establishment of thisdecentralized network.13 A comparable process seems to have taken placealong the coast of the Persian Gulf in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries AD when the arrival ofEuropean merchants and their establishment of newmaritime trade routes prompted members of local tribesto ‘flock to the coast to establish trading, fishing, andpearl diving centres’ (Khuri 1980, 18). Decentralizedtrading centres flourished in this region following thecollapse of Portuguese hegemony in the earlyseventeenth century, and until the British subjugatedmuch of the area in the early nineteenth century. Andthroughout these centuries, ‘when no superpower wasdominant, each tribe or segment of tribe assumedindependence’ (Khuri 1980, 23). I would like to thankDr Fredrik T. Hiebert for bringing this book to myattention.14 Holladay (1990) has argued that the chronology ofthis pottery needs to be revised, based on theassumption that archaeological resolution is coarserthan the time it takes for this pottery type to spreadthroughout the region. One cannot ignore, however, thepossibility of regional variations, and it is notimpossible that this pottery does indeed appear in someregions before others. It is clear that the appearance ofred-slipped burnished pottery in strata IX–VIII atBeersheva (eleventh century) must be dated that early,based on the Philistine material found in the samestratified context (Herzog 1984, 43), rather than beingdown-dated over century as Holladay (1990, 52, table 2)suggests. Similarly, Tel Qasile stratum X seems well-dated to the late eleventh century (Mazar 1985b, 83),although the appearance of red-slipped burnishedpottery makes Holladay (1990, 55–7) date it to theend of the tenth. Rather than assuming this type’ssimultaneous appearance throughout the southernLevant, it seems more likely that it appeared earlieralong the coastal plain, and that Finkelstein (1988b,322) is correct in his observation that it is more rare inthe inland, hilly regions.15 Here, Holladay may be unfortunately restricted byhis revised chronology (see note 14 above), which heuses in his (1995) assessment of the Iron II.

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