14 - Migration, Hybridization, and Resistance: Identity Dynamics in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant

Summary

In the southern Levant, the early Iron Age witnessed the end of Egyptian imperial control and the breakdown of the Canaanite city-state system that characterized the region in the Later Bronze Age. New social and cultural groups, Philistines and Israelites, appeared on the historical stage. Since both groups are known from the Bible, their emergence in Canaan has long been the focus of research by biblical archaeology. When critically examined, it becomes clear that Philistine and Israelite identities are dialectically related. A variety of processes visible in the archaeological record, including migration, interaction, border encounters, and separation, led to ethnic negotiation and demarcation. In particular, this chapter talks about, Aegean Migration, interaction and ethnic demarcation of Egyptians and Philistines, interaction of Philistine and Canaanites, Canaanite cultural resistance and Israelite ethnogenesis. The Canaanite population, the substratum upon which the new group identities were built, played a neglected yet highly important role in the processes of ethnogenesis.