Cultural Transition in the Northern Levant During the Early Iron Age As Reflected in the Aegean-Style Pottery at Tell Tayinat
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Cultural Transition in the Northern Levant during the Early Iron Age as Reflected in the Aegean-Style Pottery at Tell Tayinat by Brian Janeway A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto © Copyright by Brian Janeway 2013 Abstract Cultural Transition in the Northern Levant during the Early Iron Age as Reflected in the Aegean-Style Pottery at Tell Tayinat Brian Janeway Doctor of Philosophy Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto 2013 Did an invasion of the Sea Peoples cause the collapse of the Late Bronze Age palace-based economies of the Levant, as well as of the Hittite Empire? Renewed excavations at Tell Tayinat in southeast Turkey promise to shed new light on the critical transitional phase of the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age (c. 1200-1000 B.C.), a period which in the Northern Levant has until recently been considered a Dark Age, due in large part to the few extant textual sources relating to its history (Hawkins 2002: 143). Specifically, this thesis is based upon a stylistic analysis of a distinctive painted pottery known as Late Helladic IIIC (LH IIIC) excavated at the site. Its core is comprised of a diachronic study of the Tayinat ceramics tied into a synchronic comparison with sites across the region— the Amuq Valley, the Levantine coast, Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Aegean Sea basin. Two key objectives of the pottery analysis are to discern Aegean stylistic characteristics from those that are local, and to chronologically situate the assemblage on the basis of regional parallels. What precisely was the nature of Iron I occupation at the site? Renewed excavations suggest that a rudimentary village settlement may have been constructed. Were the inhabitants that founded the Iron Age settlement immigrants that originated in areas to the west—Cyprus, Western Asia Minor, or the Greek Mainland—who were in ii search of more hospitable environs to settle? Or were they elements of the indigenous population forced to start anew after the socio-economic disruptions at the end of the Late Bronze Age? Perhaps they comprised a mixed population of both groups? Stylistic analysis of the painted ware would seem to support the third alternative, resulting in a hybrid style that fused Aegean shapes and motifs with local traditions. Did they simply relocate from the ruins of neighboring Tell Atchana (ancient Alalakh) or from other settlements in the Amuq Valley? Perhaps the movements were not en masse, but rather consisted of small elite groups or tradesmen that assimilated into the local economy, the result of a prolonged process of acculturation. The nature and relative amount of LH IIIC pottery in the Tayinat assemblage favors a traditional migration model. This research begins to fill a longstanding lacuna in the Amuq Valley and attempts to correlate with major historical and cultural trends in the Northern Levant and beyond. iii Acknowledgments The list of individuals to whom I owe a debt of gratitude is long, and I wish to acknowledge their contribution to my doctoral research project—they deserve to be recognized in print. I wish to begin this list with a great thanks to my advisor Dr. Tim Harrison, one of the most fair and honorable men I know, who has generously given his time and genius to my academic development, which has also required from him a strong measure of patience and charity during my extended phase of research and writing. Thanks also to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) for their funding of the Tayinat Excavation Project (TAP), without which this research would be impossible. I am indebted to Professors John Holladay, Mary-Ann Wegner, and Clemens Reichel for participating in my final oral dissertation defense, and for offering helpful comments on the text. My belated thanks also extend to Dr. Brian Peckham, with whom I had the distinct pleasure of studying and who also sat on my examination committee before his unfortunate passing. As the defense committee’s external reviewer, Dr. Jeremy Rutter deserves special mention. His many years in the field and expertise brought a particularly valuable Aegeanist perspective to bear on this work. Thanks beyond counting go to Anna Sousa for her tireless efforts on behalf of me and all the graduate students in NMC, for meeting funding deadlines and facilitating the myriad of other requirements and demands of the department, the School of Graduate Studies, and the university. She has become much more to me than a mere administrative coordinator! There are several other individuals in the NMC and the Tayinat project who have played an important role in this research. Dr. Lynn Welton as the Field 1 supervisor has worked many hours in the field and at home on the stratigraphy of Tell Tayinat, without which my ceramic analysis would have been impossible. I thank Dr. Steve Batiuk for his indefatigable work and problem solving for the Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP). The excavations could not have run without him! iv Stanley Klassen helped to refine my digital images for my initial publication of the Tayinat pottery, and his adept management of the rapidly growing Tayinat artifactual archive has been a great asset to the TAP and my research. I also benefitted from the efforts of David Lumb, who, in his capacity as square supervisor at Tell Tayinat, recovered valuable additional Iron I material from Field 1 after I was forced to leave the field to write. Natalie Dytiniak as a student assistant aided in some of the initial digitization of my pottery drawings. Amanda Wagner at the Digital Sudio at Robarts Library (Unversity of Toronto) provided indispensable technical support when it came time to format and paginate my completed manuscript. I also wish to recognize the many Turkish and Arab workers who undertook the labor to unearth six seasons worth of pottery, particularly Adnan and Mustafa, two of my best excavators! I have had the distinct pleasure of meaningful interaction with a number of fine scholars over the years, and my analysis has been enriched by their expertise: Dr. Elizabeth French (Mycenae); Dr. Marie Henriette-Gates (Kinet Höyük); Ayelet Gilboa (Tel Dor); Drs. Ann Killebrew and Gunnar Lehmann (Mopsos Project), Drs. Robert Koehl and Robert Mullins (Tell Atchana), Dr. Aren Maeir (Tell es-Safi), Dr. Dan Master (Ashkelon), Dr. Marina Pucci (Chatal Höyük), Dr. Itamar Singer (Tel Aviv University), Dr. Lynn Swartz-Dodd (Tell Judaidah), Dr. Fabrizio Venturi (Tell Afis), Dr. Assaf Yasur-Landau (Tell Kabri), and Dr. Alex Zukerman (Tell Miqne). I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Dr. Penelope Mountjoy, who generously shared with me her extensive experience and sharp eye for detail that distinguishes her long list of published work in Aegean ceramics. Thanks also to Dr. Vassos Karageorghis, who facilitated my participation in an Aegean symposium in Cyprus, and unwittingly provided a jumpstart to my writing by giving me a hard deadline! I am grateful to Dr. Aslıhan Yener, director of the Tell Atchana project, for allowing me to stay and eat at the Atchana/Tayinat compound for several weeks in 2006 while I drew pottery, and for permitting me to peruse the pottery from the Amuq Valley Regional Project (AVRP) in storage there. Helen McDonald, as archivist at the Oriental Institute, was generous in making available the Syrian-Hittite Expedition’s material on several occasions. v I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Dr. Bryant Wood and Rev. Gary Byers of the Associates for Biblical Research for sparking my interest in “biblical archaeology,” giving me my first taste of dirt archaeology, and providing both inspiration and support throughout my educational journey. They and ABR fulfill a much needed intermediary between research in the field and the interested public—one which institutions and scholars are too often either reluctant or unable to offer. Along similar lines, I will always be thankful to Wheaton College for “grounding” me in the world of biblical archaeology, particularly Dr. John Monson and Dr. Hassell Bullock for their tutelage and continued friendship. I have also been blessed by Rita Gjeldum for her gracious friendship and support as the Graduate Registrar, and more importantly as a trusted confidant who can always be relied upon to give frank advice! I extend a very special thanks to Dr. Tom Petter and Dr. Donna Peter at Gordon- Conwell Seminary for their advice and encouragement during the lengthy process of dissertating, not to mention the Christian fellowship they have so graciously shared in a field largely bereft of it. When I needed a not so gentle prodding to push this project toward completion, they were there for me with tough love. Two lengthy leaves-of-absence were granted me by my employer American Airlines, without which my education and research would have been impossible. I thank Captain Cecil Ewell, former Vice President Flight, for his grace. Without a divine appointment one morning in a 757 cockpit 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean I would never have gotten off the ground! And circumstances made possible by the dastardly attacks of September 11th against my fellow employees and countrymen enabled me to further pursue my graduate studies at the University of Toronto. I honor my father Edward Janeway, perhaps the finest man I have ever known, for his lifelong inspiration to me, even many years after his premature passing in 1997. He remains my first and foremost role model, in addition to my mother Carol Janeway. My two loving sisters, Julie Day and Pam Cox, have been very supportive every step of the way.