Ho - abbastanza dissennatamente, lo ammetto - risposto ad un'ennesima provocazione di un sito non allineato, che introduce Jeff Emanuel come il nuovo profeta dei Shardana.
Il mio commento è stato subito cancellato e poi stigmatizzato come non appropriato ed il suo autore (io) come non bene accetto ed invitato a tornare nelle fogne da cui proviene.
Ogni mia replica è stata cancellata immediatamente da un'isterica buttafuori, che immagino abbia istituito una vigilanza h24 sui miei possibili interventi futuri (che non ci saranno, stia pure tranquilla, signora Aba: per la maggioranza degli osservatori la vera fogna siete voi e mi hanno anche rivolto commenti stupiti per avere avuto il coraggio 'tappandomi il naso' di scrivervi).
Ebbene: Jeff Emanuel NON E' AFFATTO UN SOSTENITORE dell'esistenza dei Sherden, in Sardegna come in Canaan (mentre, naturalmente, li ammette in Egitto, servi 'egittizzati' * egli Egizi) e non sostiene affatto, anzi critica molto e su basi scientifiche le idee di Adam Zertal, come non credibili. Eppure, in quel sito 'non allineato' lo portano a riprova della grandezza internazionale degli Sherden...
Riporto di seguito uno dei suoi articoli, in cui l'unica modifica da me apportata è il grassetto ed il corsivo per evidenziare alcune parti di testo e la correzione di 'Torreens' in 'Torreans'.
Chi legge comprenderà meglio come in certe sedi 'non allineate' si tenda a modificare la realtà (gli scritti di alcuni ricercatori seri) secondo i propri desideri (le proprie tesi politiche ed identitarie preferite).
Poi si offendono, se li definisco cumulativamente: "#armatabracaleoneshardariana"... ma per favore.
Sardinians in Central Israel? The Excavator of El-Ahwat Makes His Final Case
THE
UNPRECEDENTED INTERCONNECTIVITY
in the Late Bronze Age (LBA) Eastern
Mediterranean has been the subject of a great deal of study in recent
years. Colloquia, conferences, articles, and monographs have dealt in
depth with the diplomacy, balance of power, and widespread trade that
marked this period and the migrations and collapses that marked the
transition to the Early Iron Age. However, if one archaeologist’s
interpretation is correct, a small site in northern Israel could not
only fill remaining gaps in our knowledge of Late Bronze–Early Iron
communication and migration in the Mediterranean, but turn some of what
we think we know on its head.
The site in question is el–Ahwat, a 7.5–acre “city” near Nahal ‘Iron
in northern Israel, and the archaeologist is the University of Haifa’s
Adam Zertal. A scholar whose previous accomplishments include the
exhaustive two–volume, 1,400–page Manasseh Hill Country Survey
publication (Brill, 2004, 2007), Zertal’s most recent work has the
paradoxical status of being both long–awaited and almost entirely
unheralded. Since 2001, the author has written in various publications
about his belief that el–Ahwat housed a community of Sherden, a ‘Sea
Peoples’ group known primarily from 13th to 11th century Egyptian
records (as well as from some 14th century Ugaritic texts) which are
believed by some to have originated on the island of Sardinia in the
central Mediterranean.
If correct, this interpretation of el–Ahwat would provide direct
evidence for a number of firsts in LBA Mediterranean scholarship. One
example of many is el–Ahwat’s potential status as the first testament to
direct contact between the central Mediterranean and the Levant during
this period (based on current evidence, the exchange that did take place
between eastern and central Mediterranean was likely facilitated by
Cypriot or Mycenaean seafarers).
Another is el–Ahwat’s potential to
serve as the only confirmed site of non-Philistine ‘Sea Peoples’
settlement in the Levant, while striking a blow against the prevailing
scholarly views that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were largely Aegeo-Anatolian in
culture and origin, and that they settled in coastal areas that allowed
for access to the Mediterranean Sea.
However, Zertal’s theories about
the site’s significance and its inhabitants’ origin have either been
largely ignored, or viewed with a detached skepticism until the full
results of the excavation were published.
With El–Ahwat: A Fortified Site from the Early Iron Age Near Nahal ‘Iron, Israel (Brill,
2011), the full results of the seven–season excavation are now
available, and the site can be independently studied – as can Zertal’s
theories about its inhabitants and its significance. The
methodically-organized, 27-chapter publication contains over 200
figures, and is comprised of four parts: Stratigraphy, Architecture, and
Chronology; The Finds; Economy and Environment; and Conclusions.
Though each of the former three contains a valuable detailed review of
finds and conclusions related to its subject matter, these portions of
the work sometimes feel as though as though they are serving in large
part to lay the defensive groundwork for Part Four, wherein Zertal uses
the fully published site information to defend the conclusions about the
site that he has been writing about for the last decade.
EL–AHWAT IS LOCATED on the flat shoulder of a ridge ¾ mi. south of the Nahal ‘Iron (Egyptian Arunah,
the ancient route between Egypt and the heavily contested Jezreel
Valley in northern Israel), where it overlooks the Sharon plain, the
Carmel range, and the western Samarian hills. Established on virgin
soil, the view to the north, west, and south provided by el–Ahwat’s
location may have provided a strategic benefit that outweighed poor
resources like a lack of water sources and arable soil (pp. 25, 428).
The site has two strata, a late Roman and Byzantine period in which
el–Ahwat was used as a farmstead (p. 41), and a brief (50 to 60 years in
duration [p. 262]) second stratum which the excavator dates from the
late 13th to the early 12th centuries based on pottery, seals and
scarabs (Ch. 14; pp. 233–263, and an beautiful ivory ibex head (Ch. 16;
pp. 288–294). His terminus ante quem for the site’s
inhabitation is a scarab bearing the royal title of the 20th Dynasty
pharaoh Ramesses III (1183–1152 BC [p. 53]); the eight other scarabs
found at the site date to the 19th Egyptian Dynasty (1298–1187 BC). The
chronology of the site will be dealt with in greater detail below.
The site yielded few restorable ceramic finds (Ch. 12), a fact which
for which the excavator credits both the abandonment of el–Ahwat by its
Stratum II inhabitants, and the leveling of that lower stratum for
Roman-Byzantine use (p. 181). However, though lacking in volume, the
site’s ceramic assemblage contained several forms, including bowls
(open, straight-sided, and open carinated), kraters, jugs, cooking bowls
and jugs, jars, beer jugs, collared-rim pithoi (which may have been
used for storing water gathered from the nearest source 1/2 km. away[pp.
424, 428]), as well as chalices, one incense burner and one oil lamp.
All of the pottery at el-Ahwat has parallels in the Levant, though in
Ch. 14, Baruch Brandl notes that el-Ahwat is only the third site in the
Carmel Ridge where collared-rim jars have been found together with New
Kingdom scarabs (p. 263). The bell-shaped bowls (p. 186), a form
associated with Late Helladic pottery and with the intrusive Philistine
culture, were of the locally-made, northern Phoenician variety;
likewise, the pierced loomweights found at the site (p. 200) follow in
the standard Levantine tradition, rather than being of the rolled and
unbaked style associated with the Cypro-Aegean Philistines and other
‘Sea Peoples’.
El–Ahwat is architecturally divided into four Areas, or “quarters,” A
through E (A and B are portions of the same “quarter), with “quarter
walls” running between each section. Area A contained the city’s gate
(a small, thin door mounted on a doorpost [p. 62]), a terrace with an
administrative complex (Complex 100 [p. 79]), and a
unique isosceles triangle-shaped “approach” to the city gate, which
Zertal and chapter co-author Ron Be’eri reconstruct as having a small
opening to the outside at the base of the left leg, then allowing
traffic to widen within the approach before funneling into the gated
entrance at the triangle’s pinnacle (pp. 62-64). Area C contained a 510
sq m residential complex (which chapter author Nivrit Lavie–Alon notes
is “among the largest continuous quarters exposed by Israeli
archaeology” [p. 124]), within which two oil presses were found in
addition to valuable small finds, including several scarabs. A furnace,
possibly for iron forging (p. 383) was found in Area D, along with two
free-standing corbeled-roof “huts” or silos, which chapter author Amit
Romano suggests may indicate its status as “the center for an industrial
craft or some sort of metal processing” (p. 157). Due to a lack of
material finds other than walls, chapter author Lavrie–Alon suggests
that Area E was used as an enclosure for livestock (p. 161).
It is the architectural perimeter of the site that has most
contributed to the excavator’s conclusions about its purpose and its
inhabitants. El–Ahwat is quite irregular in shape, with an “undulating”
(p. 32), somewhat–ovular “city wall” encircling it in wavy fashion.
This wall contains several large rock mounds that the author refers to
as “towers” despite their unclear function (p. 38) and the likelihood
that few actually served as such (save perhaps T1 and T2, which sit
outside the wall to the west, and T53, which is built into the eastern
portion of Area D), and has built into its structure four of what Zertal
identifies as “corridors” (p. 412). In addition to these corridors,
several “igloo-like stone huts” which the author identifies as
“false-domed tholoi” are either free-standing constructions or
are built into the wall itself (such as U409 in Tower 53 [Area D], which
is entered by one of the “corridors” [p. 413]). For Zertal, these
corridors and tholoi combine with the outer wall to give el–Ahwat its greatest uniqueness and significance.
IF PARTS 1–3 of this volume lay the groundwork for Zertal’s defense
of his theories about the site, Part Four does not disappoint, as the
author uses the majority of the final section to argue for Sardinian
influence on, and Sherden inhabitation at, el–Ahwat.
To the author’s
eye, “the plan of el–Ahwat differs from anything known elsewhere in the
Levant. Judging by its design and unique features, the architects of
el–Ahwat seem to have planned the site according to a master plan based
on earlier architectural traditions” (p. 28). It is the location the
author sees as being the origin of these “earlier architectural
traditions,” and the conclusions he draws from it, that make el–Ahwat a
controversial site, and this final report a controversial publication.
Zertal compares the site’s “undulating” wall, corridors, tholoi, inner dividing walls, and free-standing corbeled stone “huts” (U409 and U461), to the proto–nuraghe
of Bronze Age Sardinia and the 13th century BC Toreanic [l'autore scrive 'toreenic'] Culture of
neighboring Corsica (pp. 415–423), and suggests that this architectural
style was brought to the Levant by immigrants from the central
Mediterranean.
Though he has previously stipulated that a
lack of other diagnostic finds, such as Sardinian pottery, means the
journey was likely circuitous and time–consuming enough that it resulted
in acculturation to some degree along the way, this remains an issue
for Zertal’s conclusions, as the material culture of el–Ahwat is
entirely Canaanite in nature (with Egyptian small finds included),
blending hill country and lowland traditions in a site that, save for
the meandering outer wall with its corridors, is largely typical of
northern Canaan in the Iron I.
This stands in marked contrast to the
Philistine material culture footprint (to date, the only known ‘Sea
Peoples’ material culture), which consists not only of site
architecture, but of intrusive ceramic, cultic, and domestic traditions
that prove beyond doubt the presence of an intrusive culture at their
major sites.
The wall itself is another question. While it may be that Zertal is
correct, and the site’s 600 m long, 6 m high, and 5 m thick wall may
have served, along with its “towers,” as massive fortifications, he
acknowledges that it appears to have been “built in ‘patches’ and
‘sections’” (p. 412), a possible indicator that this structure is
neither as cohesive nor as temporally constrained as the author imagines
it to be.
As the remains of the city wall rise above the entirety of
the site’s second (Iron Age) stratum, it is possible that what appears
now to be the remnant of a massive fortification was constructed as a
retaining wall or terrace during the Roman-Byzantine occupation in
Stratum I, and the awkward contouring of rooms to the wall lacks the
appearance of planned construction. This can particularly be seen on
the western edge of Area C1, where a small unnamed and evidently unused
gap appears north of W4313, and where L3328 appears to be a much larger
gap between the area’s architecture and the wall. In the western
portion of Area D, “quarter wall” 3410 appears to intrude on the area’s
architecture (cf. p. 47), and the unique “approach” in Area A2 seems too
awkward – and too likely to have caused logjams between the outer and
inner entrances – to have been a planned feature of the Iron Age city.
Further, Tel Aviv archaeologist Israel Finkelstein has pointed out that
the “corridors” in the wall are comparable to well–known highland field
towers used for storage and for habitation (IEJ 52: 189).
The issue of the Sherden is more theoretical in nature (their
association with Sardinia is itself solely the result of linguistic
resemblance), but Zertal dedicates a portion of Part Four to reviewing
some of the evidence for their presence and activity in the Near East at
this time.
Unfortunately, he provides an incomplete selection and a
selective interpretation of that evidence, choosing to read it in the
way that best supports his theory while ignoring those portions that
detract from his point.
On p. 431 he references the Papyrus Harris I,
which lists the Sherden among the invading ‘Sea Peoples’ defeated by
Ramesses III and supposedly settled in Egyptian fortresses at home or in
Canaan. However, P. Harris I is a much later account of the Year 8
invasion, and the inscription at Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at
Medinet Habu, which was written at least twenty years earlier (and only a
few years after the event itself) contains no mention of the Sherden
among the sea or land invaders.
On pp. 432–433, Zertal references the Onomasticon of Amenope,
an 1100 BC list of peoples and places in the Near East that mentions
three Philistine cities followed by three ‘Sea Peoples’ groups (Sherden,
Sikil, and Philistines), as evidence that Ramesses III had settled the
Sherden to the north of Philistia and of the port city of Dor, which the
contemporary Tale of Wen–Amon refers to as the “Harbor of the Sikil.” However, the Onomasticon
is a cryptic text which is filled with lacunae, and which contains
almost no context regarding the orientation or ordering of its toponyms
and ethnika, thus making any attempt to use it as a map of ‘Sea
Peoples’ settlements a risky endeavor at best. Any effort to securely
place non–Philistine ‘Sea Peoples’ anywhere in Canaan is difficult at
best, as no material culture template is currently available for the
other members of this seafaring coalition.
The Sherden are no
different; the centuries of evidence for their presence in Egypt are
complemented by an almost total lack of evidence for their presence in
Canaan, aside from three possible mentions in letters from the 14th
century.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF the site, as noted above, is also problematic – a fact Zertal et al address
directly. Though the authors of this volume put the ceramic and
glyptic evidence from el–Ahwat firmly in the late 13th and early 12th
centuries, recent radiocarbon analysis of olive pits from the site
returned a date range of 1057–952 BC, suggesting that the dates of
inhabitation should be lowered by two hundred years. Even if the early
date of 1057 is considered as the final year of the site’s inhabitation,
the 50–60 year duration of the site’s inhabitation proposed by
Zertal et al would put el–Ahwat’s founding in the final quarter of the
12th century – at least a half century short of the author’s
proposed terminus ante quem for the site.
In Ch. 3, Zertal argues that the 14C dates should be ignored on the
basis of what he sees as a close correlation between the material finds
and corresponding Egyptian archaeology, as the latter is firmly enough
known to be impervious to radiocarbon results from a small site in
central Israel. In doing so, he rejects the possibility that the
Egyptian objects found at the site, which date to the 14th–12th
centuries, were brought to el–Ahwat at a later date as amulets or
objects of other perceived value (though even if the site was founded in
the late 13th century, some of the Egyptian objects found there would
already have been a century old or more at the time of their arrival).
Instead, he argues – on the basis of continue olive cultivation in the
vicinity after inhabitation had ceased – that the olive pits selected
for testing “could have been introduced there at any time after the site
was abandoned in the 12th century BCE” (p. 53).
El–Ahwat’s potential Sardinian connection brings with it another
chronological problem.
While the construction of hybrid, “Canaanized”
proto–nuraghe could have been carried out by individuals who had
traveled to Sardinia in the Late Bronze II and brought that “template”
back with them to the Levant, Zertal argues that the small number of
sites fitting el–Ahwat’s mold makes this unlikely, writing that
“this…possibility is much less plausible for the simple reason that
their presence is limited to only four or five sites in 13th–12th
century Canaan. Such limited influence is better explained by
‘colonies’ of immigrants, who brought with them some of their old
traditions, rather than by influence derived through trade” (p. 423).
However, proto–nuraghe of the type that Zertal suggests el–Ahwat’s
fortifications were patterned after date to the 18th–16th centuries BC; following this time, in the early–middle Nuragic period, there is little
evidence on Sardinia of foreign contacts.
While communication with the
wider Mediterranean, including the Aegean and Cyprus, grew rapidly in
the LB II, Sardinians traveling abroad at this time who sought to build
settlements similar to the nuraghe of their home island would likely
have constructed the corbel–vaulted nuragic type dwellings which were
being made in Sardinia at that time, rather than the
“false–domed tholoi” Zertal suggests were built at el–Ahwat.
Interestingly absent from this volume is any discussion of Zertal’s theory that el–Ahwat was the biblical Harosheth Haggoyim,
the base of the Canaanite King Jabin’s nine–hundred–strong chariotry
under the command of Sisera in the biblical story of Deborah (Judges
4–5). In a 2010 press release,
Zertal championed the possible identification of a chariot linchpin
fragment from Area A3 as “[proof] that chariots belonging to
high-ranking individuals were found” at el–Ahwat, despite
its remote, rugged location, and as evidence “that this was Sisera’s
city of residence and that it was from there that the chariots set out
on their way to the battle against the Israelite tribes.”
In this site report, by contrast, the only mentions of chariots in
the entire volume (by my count) were made in Ch. 17, which deals with
the possible linchpin fragment. The bronze shard in the shape of a
female head, which at 2 cm high, 1.6 cm wide, and only 3 mm thick is far
thinner, if only slightly smaller in surface area, than the 10 mm thick
chariot linchpins from 11th- and 10th-century Ekron and Ashdod that
chapter author Oren Cohen uses as comparanda. As a result of this
fragment’s relative frailty, Cohen writes, “it is difficult to establish
whether the linchpin…was used for a full-scale chariot or was part of a
smaller, cultic feature” (p. 300). In all, this volume deals with
Zertal’s theories about el–Ahwat’s Sardinian connection in a much more
measured fashion than some of his previous publications have. Cohen’s
sober analysis of the bronze fragment fits well with the tone of a final
excavation report, but it stands in sharp contrast to Zertal’s previous
statements about the site and about this particular artifact.
THE FINAL PUBLICATION of the el–Ahwat excavations is valuable for its
straightforward presentation of the architecture and material culture
of this short-lived site. Though several passages in the volume can be
read as defenses of Zertal’s conclusions about the site’s influences and
chronology, the finds are allowed to speak for themselves to a
sufficient degree that scholars will be able to draw their own
conclusions about el–Ahwat from the material itself, rather than simply
from the excavator’s assertions (as had previously been the case with
this site).
Further, whether the site truly represents an architectural link with
the central Mediterranean and the first material evidence of
non–Philistine ‘Sea Peoples’ settlement in the Levant or not, el–Ahwat
is a unique site in many ways, not least of which are its remote
location (far from water, arable soil, and traveled roads [pp. 413,
435]) and its brief Iron Age duration, which allows it to serve as a
rare single-stratum snapshot of settlement (or, in Zertal’s words, a
“‘time capsule’…of the period” [p. 3]). As such, though its legacy may
be that of an outside-the-mainstream argument for ‘Sea Peoples’
settlement in the Levant, and though its steep price will confine its
circulation almost exclusively to research libraries, this final
publication of el–Ahwat will hold great value for those
studying settlement, architecture, and change in the hill country
culture of Iron Age Canaan.
* C'è un'ameba che si è sentita offesa dall'espressione 'schiavi egittizzati' da me usata per i Sherden viventi in Egitto. A perte il fatto che l'espressione - che io pienamente condivido - non è stata coniata da me, credo che soggetti che si stabiliscono in Egitto, prendono una moglie Egiziana, prendono un nome egizio ed adottano religione usi e costumi egizi,
sono sicuramente egittizzati. Il fatto poi che siano stati
indotti a trasferirsi e stabilirsi in Egitto, in zone di confine, (
per servire da 'cuscinetto' ad eventuali tentativi d'invasione o d'occupazione da parte di immigrati clandestini),
non ne fa certamente dei padroni, bensì dei servitori.
Poche cose m'infastidiscono di più di qualcuno cui s'indica la luna e puntualmente guarda il dito.
°Chi è Jeff Emanuel: Harvard University,
Center
for Hellenic Studies, CHS Fellow (Fellow del Centro di Studi Ellenici) in
Aegean Archaeology and Prehistory
Autore di 23 tra articoli
scientifici, poster e comunicazioni, due libri, e 10 commenti su libri
scientifici di altri.
El–Ahwat: A Fortified Site from the Early Iron Age Near Nahal ‘Iron, Israel, edited by Adam Zertal (ISBN 978–9004176454; 485 pages; $185), is published by Brill.
