Exploring the Societal Shifts and Cultural Development in the Southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age

[This is a lecture written for the course 'HIST 262: History of the Ancient Near East,' taught Fall 2023 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]

The history of the Southern Levant is that of growth, collapse, and growth—ups and downs and ups again. The Early Bronze Age is a perfect example of the ‘up’ aspect, followed by a ‘down’ aspect at the end. This rise of social complexity in the Southern Levant is seen at the very beginning of the Early Bronze Age — change from one culture to another (Schoville 2004: 162). This is an aspect to be expected in a land between two worlds (de Miroschedji 2009: 101), being squeezed between Egypt and Mesopotamia. 

Early Bronze Age I: Open Air Villages

The beginning of the Bronze Age in the Levant is notable primarily because there is a sharp cultural shift in materials (de Miroschedji 2014: 311), suggesting the introduction of a new people group (Hoerth, et. al. 2004: xvii). Prior trade between Egypt in the south and Byblos in the north may had been one reason for the immigration of a different people group into Canaan (Schoville 2004: 162-63), introducing Semites into the land. Additionally, cultural affinities between the Southern Levant and the Kura-Araxes tradition suggest a Caucasian presence in the land (Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020: 1150), these people being contemporaneous with the Early Dynastic I period in Mesopotamia (Batiuk et al. 2022: 238) and spreading across northern Mesopotamia, into the Zagros Mountains, and as noted, into the Levant. 

Along with the material culture differences, settlement patterns themselves change, the Late Chalcolithic settlements becoming largely abandoned and EB I settlements becoming more abundant (de Miroschedji 2009: 103). Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze I transitional phases are difficult to identify, but some sites do retain a small degree of continuity (Braun and Roux 2013: 19).

As in the Northern Levant, the Southern Levant in EB IA tended toward mobility, and craft specialization and long-distance trade were minimal (Greenberg 2013: 270). Unlike the north, the Southern Levant at this time contained an Egyptian presence (Bietak 2007: 417) and was remarkably impacted by that region (Greenberg 2013: 271). 

By EB IB, another noticeable shift in settlement patterns occurred as the Levant moved toward sedentism (de Miroschedji 2009: 103) and ultimately urbanism (Regev et al. 2012: 526), which is to say a rise in small, unwalled villages, primarily located in the alluvial plains along the coast (Rosen 1995: 28).

Indeed, there is a sizable increase in the number of sites, suggesting not only a sedentary move but a demographic rise (de Miroschedji 2014: 308). In fact, the Egyptian presence in the south of the Levant steadily grew becoming Egyptian colonies, though the interactions between the Southern Levant and Egypt were more or less peaceful (Mączyńska 2013: 36). 

The very end of EB I, which is intertwined with historical events in Late Predynastic Egypt (Regev et al. 2012: 526), saw a four-tiered settlement ranking including transitory settlements, small villages, some large villages, and now, for the first time, fortified villages with public buildings (de Miroschedji 2009: 105). 

Early Bronze Age II-III: The Fortification Process

During EB II, more than fifty fortified towns were built in the Southern Levant cisjordan alone (de Miroschedji 2014: 314); a true urban atmosphere arrived. This urbanization process, much like as is seen in Mesopotamia, involved the abandonment of a significant number of EB IB sites (Finkelstein 1995: 50) for the safety and security of walled towns and cities, thus creating city-oriented territories with peripheral agricultural areas (de Miroschedji 2009: 106). 

This reform by necessity means that a deep social change occurred in the land at this time (de Miroschedji 2014: 313), including a ranked social structure as seen through access to differing resources, the deployment of individuals for public building projects, craft specialization, and bureaucratic mechanics (Gidding 2016: 1). An increase in craft specialities is typical of urban spheres as individuals are no longer tasked with the production of every family necessity. Instead, for example, one family may be tasked with an agricultural occupation, while another is tasked with ceramic production, leaving each the time to perfect his craft. Because of this move toward specialties, specific ceramic types, such as the North Canaanite Metallic Ware of EB II, are created in specialized workshops (Regev et al. 2012: 526-27) at a single site and then distributed throughout the region (Gidding 2016: 165). 

Egyptian demand for Southern Levantine products, such as copper from the Sinai and bitumen from the Dead Sea, created something of a desert polity in the south, stimulating the urban rise in that region (Finkelstein 1995: 52-53), but from the Second Dynasty forward, trade with Egypt had ceased (Regev et al. 2012: 527), choosing instead a seaward trade route to  Byblos in the north (Finkelstein 1995: 53). The collapse of the desert polity by the end of EB II allowed for Southern Levantine cities in the north to overtake the southern region, ushering in EB III (Finkelstein 1995: 55).

During the EB III phase, urbanization intensifies, growing larger and containing elaborate structures (Regev et al. 2012: 527). Palaces begin to be built, for example at Megiddo, which contained a palace made up of around twenty rooms, corridors, and courtyards (de Miroschedji 2014: 317), the building being located nearby a monumental temple. Around twelve sites in the Southern Levant show long stratigraphic sequences and are highly fortified, exhibiting wealth disparities among the people which suggests a highly developed social classification (Greenberg 2013: 273). Additionally, the appearance of the horticultural production of grapes and olives at this time suggests centralized organization of at least these crops, as the amount of time it takes to grow them, along with the major risks, are not consistent with low-level subsistence farming (Rosen 1995: 37-38).

Thus, EB III stood as a time of richness. At this point in the history of the Bronze Age, the Southern Levant is bubbling over with life. Ceramics are now rather standardized with Khirbat Kerak Ware being crafting and distributed over a large geographical area (Gidding 2016: 165), including ceramic evidences of feasting rituals such as oversized platters (Regev et al. 2012: 527). 

Late EB III reveals only a few highly fortified cities, along with rather large pastoral components dispersed throughout the cities’ peripheries (Greenberg 2013: 273). Unfortunately, the drying phase that brought drought and hardship to the Akkadian Empire (Ur 2015: 75) and to Egypt (Bárta 2013: 29) brought the same to much of the northern hemisphere (Rieh 2017: 245), including the Southern Levant (Höflmayer 2017: 3). Though rainfall throughout the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age increased (Rosen 1995: 33), rain-fed agriculture is notoriously inconsistent, and the low level of agricultural technology within the Southern Levant did not allow for the long-term climatic changes occurring toward the end of the Bronze Age (Rosen 1995: 40), surely causing more panic within the cities. 

The growth of these key cities gave rise to what can be termed peer-polity systems, types of proto-city-states where cities held sway over their peripheral territories; this lead to competition, and it lead to attempts to expand territorial influences (Finkelstein 1995: 48) during a time in which resources simply were not stable. The social power of Early Bronze Age cities was dependent upon the centralized government’s ability to control labor and amass resources, but with the changing climate, by the end of EB III, most of these once brilliant cities were no longer able to distribute goods to the populace (Greenberg 2013: 275), and upon their destruction, many were never rebuilt (de Miroschedji 2014: 322).

The collapse of the Southern Levant at the end of the Early Bronze Age has been attributed to climate change, military campaigns from Egypt, and even invading Amorite immigrants. None of these can be confirmed as the main culprit (Höflmayer 2017: 13), though a changing climate and an already tense political situation surely did helped the process of the collapse.

Early Bronze Age IV: A Deflated Southern Levant

EB IV in the Southern Levant was a deflated region. The large, walled cities are no longer in use; in their place, many small, unwalled villages appear, much like the EB I phase. The region was sparsely populated (Mazar 1990: 151), though some walled cities did remain, such as Khirbet el-Meiyiteh, but walled cities were primarily found only in the north (Bar, Cohen, and Zertal 2013: 172). Rather than urban centers, the Southern Levantine populace mainly consisted of mobile pastoralists and village dwellers (Mazar 1990: 151) living in either small, undefended villages or transitory encampments.

The rise in the Northern Levantine Eblaite kingdom with their wool economy (Höflmayer 2017: 13) no doubt aided the south through trade of pastoralist produce, possibly even having a decisive impact on the south’s shift (Greenberg 2017: 47), but the southern culture was never truly integrated into northern society (Höflmayer 2017: 13). Instead, it continued as a semi-pastoral society. This was a shift in both the social order and the subsistence economy of the land (Mazar 1990: 170) that might be called a ‘dark age’ (de Miroschedji 2014: 322). Except for only a few sites, most EB IV settlements are established at new locations, though the Transjordan region shows more continuity (Regev et al. 2012: 527). 

Pastoralism has always been an important aspect of ancient culture, and a symbiotic relationship between pastoralists and urban centers (Finkelstein 1995: 48) continued throughout EB III. The centralized governments of major cities made life easier for the people, and city life could become quite lucrative to both city dwellers and the agro-pastoralists who supplied goods to the cities. It is suggested that the farmers and shepherds of EB II-III societies in the Southern Levant simply represented alternate modes of living within the same societies (Greenberg 2017: 46), or rather a specialization within agricultural societies (Gidding 2016: 27), and as such, a move backward toward a semi-pastoral lifestyle was simply a change in economics. With Northern Levantine cities such as Ebla rewarding southern pastoralists who supplied the growing northern economies with resources (Greenberg 2017: 47), the move to a semi-pastoral society was a productive decision. 

Nomadic pastoralists also had a place in this EB IV world, though very often these subcultures within the broader society have as an economic aim simply subsistence (Gidding 2016: 26). These groups traverse the periphery outside of established villages, following natural grazing opportunities that sometimes lead from village to village. These nomads interact with village dwellers, trading both resources and information, and sometimes become involved in conflict with agro-pastoral groups. They are also sometimes evident in arid regions, such as the central Negev and Sinai (Mazar 1990: 154), thus even interacting with groups outside of the Southern Levant such as Egypt. These nomads would include the biblical Patriarch, Abraham.

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