20 - Iron I Chronology at Ashkelon: Preliminary results of the Leon Levy expedition

Summary

Abstract

The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, directed by Lawrence E. Stager, has contributed to the history and chronology of periods ranging from the Early Bronze to the Crusader. In each epoch, the port of Ashkelon has been a bellwether for the important military and economic changes which transformed the southern Levant. The thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE were periods of transformation throughout the Mediterranean, and recent excavations have brought to light a complete Iron I sequence with a host of implications for our understanding of the chronology of the Iron Age. While the radiocarbon studies of this sequence are ongoing, a preliminary report on the material culture assemblages, architectural layouts, and stratigraphic sequence can provide important anchors for the understanding of the end of the Late Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age in the southern Levant.

In the early twentieth century Duncan Mackenzie—followed by John Garstang and William Phythian-Adams—first attempted to understand the Late Bronze (LB) and Iron Ages at Ashkelon using sections scraped along the western and northern scarp of the mound (al-Hadra), in the center of Ashkelon. From these sections, Mackenzie and Phythian-Adams argued that the Late Bronze Age city had been destroyed in a massive conflagration and was succeeded by a Philistine city in the early Iron Age (Mackenzie 1913: 21-23, Plate II; Phythian-Adams 1923: 60-63, Fig. 3). It was left to the Leon Levy Expedition to confirm these observations by opening substantial areas adjacent to the sections cut by the teams from the Palestine Exploration Fund.