Bronze Age urban households of the Levant: how do we really know the past?

Bronze Age urban households of the Levant: how do we really know the past? J. DAVID David, in the BibleDavid,d. c.970 B.C., king of ancient Israel (c.1010–970 B.C.), successor of Saul. The Book of First Samuel introduces him as the youngest of eight sons who is anointed king by Samuel to replace Saul, who had been deemed a failure. SCHLOEN. The house of the father as fact and symbol:patrimonialism in Ugarit and the ancient Near East (Studies in theArchaeology and History of the Levant The Levant, is a geographical term that refers to a large area in Southwest Asia, south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Arabian Desert in the south, and Mesopotamia to the east. 2). xv+414 pages, 30 figures, 17tables. 2001. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns; 1-57506-907-5 hardback$57.50. EDWARD F. CAMPBELL & G.R.H. WRIGHT. Shechem III: thestratigraphy stratigraphy,branch of geology specifically concerned with the arrangement of layered rocks (see stratification). Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition, which states that in a normal sequence of rock layers the youngest is on top and the oldest on the & architecture of Shechem/Tell Balatah (2 vols.;American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports No. 6).xxvii+617 pages, 480 figures. 2002. Boston (MA): American Schools ofOriental Research; 0-89757-062-6 (set), 0-89757-058-8 (Vol. 1),0-89757-061-8 (Vol. 2) $175 & 125 [pounds sterling]. The two works under discussion seem to be at two different ends ofthe spectrum. Schloen's is highly theoretical, but it does refer tothe data before jumping to conclusions; on the other hand, the Shechemvolumes (Campbell's text and Wright's illustrations) are veryempirical being mainly descriptive, and yet they do keep theoreticalproblems in sight. The basic difference lies in their literary genre Noun 1. literary genre - a style of expressing yourself in writingwriting style, genredrama - the literary genre of works intended for the theaterprose - ordinary writing as distinguished from verse :one (Schloen's) is a study, whereas the others are a report. Description or interpretation Schloen's book (based on a PhD thesis with the necessary newmaterial added to transform it into the first part of a plannedtwo-volume work) sets out to examine an important symbol in the NearEast during the Bronze Age Bronze Age,period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the , namely that of 'the father'shouse'. Thereby, he purports to undertake a most ambitiousinterdisciplinary approach so as to study long-term socio-historicaldevelopments--something seldom undertaken by students of the ancientNear East. Indeed, Schloen makes use of various sources and methodspertaining to the fields of philosophy, sociology, archaeology, economy,demography, and philology--and all the while he succeeds in remainingfocussed. To his credit, I feel that he has managed to respect thecanons of multiple fields of scholarship without falling into the trapof producing different disconnected sectors. However, his section onphilosophy and social theory is too long, at times not quite crisp, andrather repetitive--the reader must really bravely wade his way throughthis part. Schloen's theoretical stance is 'explicitlyhermeneutical' (p. 29). He is convinced that both the positivist pos��i��tiv��ism?n.1. Philosophya. A doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought.b. (processualist) as well as the anti-positivist (post-processualist)positions lack philosophical sophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. . He falls back on thinkerslike Max Weber Noun 1. Max Weber - United States abstract painter (born in Russia) (1881-1961)Weber2. Max Weber - German sociologist and pioneer of the analytic method in sociology (1864-1920)Weber , Paul Ricoeur Paul Ricœur (February 27, 1913 Valence France – May 20, 2005 Chatenay Malabry France) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. , and Martin Heidegger Noun 1. Martin Heidegger - German philosopher whose views on human existence in a world of objects and on Angst influenced the existential philosophers (1889-1976)Heidegger . When studyingsocieties, the starting point should be the 'subjective meaning ofsocial action' (p. 42) which contrasts sharply with definingculture in terms of 'externally observable patterns ofbehaviour' (p. 42). Thus, when examining an important symbol insociety like that of 'the house of the father', explanatorymodels are possible and legitimate provided that 'an intuitiveunderstanding of motivations ("reasons for acting") mustencompass and integrate every' (p. 18) such model. Such statementscould obviously lead us to ask ourselves how we can get at the'subjective meanings of social action'. To do this we wouldobviously need informants--something which we do not have for antiquity,except by way of textual remains. So, what about the prehistoricperiods? How are we supposed to intuit the motivations of the socialactors in question? it is here that Schloen proposes a distinctionbetween facts and symbols; for him facts mean data, whereas symbolsshould be linked with social 'structure', and this latter taskshould take into account 'linguistically mediated subjectivemeanings' in order to reach its goal (p. 38). For Schloen'facts' relate to prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to , whereas symbols are linked withhistory. In this sense, whether an archaeologist is working in aprehistoric period or not, he would always be a prehistorian as long ashe precludes taking into consideration the motivations of the socialactors concerned. A symbol like that of 'the house of thefather' should be tackled both as a fact via explanation/explanatory models, and as a symbol via understanding. Schloen rightlyinsists that both approaches are to be employed in view of the fact thatMan can also have unconscious 'desires' which motivate him;hence, causes for social action can be explained, whereas the motivesfor this can only be understood. Indeed, following Ricoeur, Schloenclaims that understanding envelops explanation, whilst the latterdevelops understanding (pp. 27-28). I think that all this is fine aslong as one keeps in mind that in reality facts are not identical withthe data; as one philosopher has pointed out, a fact is a conclusion(Lonergan 1958:331, 347, 653). Hence, we do not excavate facts, butdata. Indeed, Schloen's own work (for example, when he shows [p.337] that the small one-holed 'stone anchors' from Ugaritshould be understood as 'pierced weights typically found witholive-oil presses') supports this. The foregoing points lead Schloen to opt for Max Weber's'patrimonial household model' (PHM) in order to account forsuch a symbol as that of 'the house of the father', which wasdominant in ancient Near Eastern society mainly before the firstmillennium BC. One basic structure pervaded such a society: that of thehousehold headed by a patriarch. A particular country was thus viewed asone large household headed by the king with all other households nestedwithin it, with each subject in turn being himself a patriarchal rulerin his own household (p. 67). Hence, just as in modern North African andNear Eastern cities, relationships between members of a household andeven of a quarter in a city were expressed in terms of kinship, therebyshowing that the widely held dichotomy between urban and ruralsettlements is false. A reassessment of the evidence, in the light ofthe PHM, leads Schloen to conclude that Igor Diakonoff's two-sectormodel (and thus also Karl Marx's 'Asiatic Mode ofProduction') is deficient; indeed, the PHM model is also supportedby the fact that at Ugarit, for example, economic texts in'private' archives are similar to those in the'palace' archives. The upshot is that as far as the pre-firstmillennium BC society of the Near East is concerned, we can no longerposit a dichotomy between public and private ownership, city andvillage, and bureaucratic and kinship-based groups. One common threadpervaded everything, namely the patrimonial PATRIMONIAL. A thing, which comes from the father, and by extension, from the mother or other ancestor. regime. That is why thetextual evidence speaks of superiors in terms of fathers/ masters, ofsubordinates in terms of sons/ servants, and of social equals in termsof brothers. Indeed, the word 'house' in ancient Near Easterntexts can indicate 'social groups of widely varying degrees of sizeand complexity' (p. 71). Does the evidence actually confirm this? In general it does;however, there is one aspect which needs to be looked at more closely,namely the question of archaeological research into domesticarchitecture linked with demographic studies. This matter entails theproblem of the application of modern and contemporary results inethnography to antiquity, as well as that of the (often) random andincomplete nature of archaeological evidence (Millard 1991: 21). On thebasis of the wide range of house sizes at Tell Belt Mirsim in Palestine,Schloen concludes 'that both nuclear and joint-family householdsexisted in Iron 11 Israelite cities in the proportions predicted byMediterranean demographic evidence under a system of patrilocal pat��ri��lo��cal?adj. AnthropologyOf or relating to residence with a husband's kin group or clan.pat postmarriage residence' (p. 175). Indeed, this is corroborated bythe evidence from other sites in Palestine such as Tell en-Nasbeh andTell el-Farah (N), where high mortality rates shortened the cycle of thejoint-family transforming it into a nuclear one. However, when oneconsiders the fact that archaeologists of the Levant Levant(ləvănt`)[Ital.,=east], collective name for the countries of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from Egypt to, and including, Turkey. are not agreed asto whether the famous 'four-room houses' had coveredcourtyards or not, then one would need to be more cautious whencalculating the number of persons living in each domestic unit. AlthoughSchloen does take both possibilities into consideration, this leaves usin the dark as to the actual number of persons who could have lived in agiven domestic unit. Spade is spade This is where the Shechem volumes come in. They constitute a reportof the 'Joint Expedition' (Drew McCormick ArchaeologicalExpedition) at Shechem in northern Palestine between 1956 and 1973. Thisis an excellent report, which is not only very accurate in itspresentation of the data but also extremely candid when it comes topresenting some evidence which Campbell himself classifies as elusive(p. 19). With respect to domestic architecture, Campbell simply calls aspade a spade. Thus, for example, no information on domestic space isoffered with regard to the domestic area discussed on p. 37, for thesimple reason that the evidence is too fragmentary to warrant anyconclusion. On the other hand, when discussing the Middle Bronze IIB IIB Institute for Independent BusinessIIB Institute of International BusinessIIB Institute of International BankersIIB International Investment BankIIB Indian Institute of Banking & FinanceIIB Included in BankruptcyIIB Ice, Ice, Baby southern complex of the acropolis acropolis(əkrŏp`əlĭs)[Gr.,=high point of the city], elevated, fortified section of various ancient Greek cities.TheAcropolis of Athens, a hill c.260 ft (80 m) high, with a flat oval top c. , Campbell interprets the remains ofRoom 8 (in Stratum XIXA) as a 'stone-lined pit with a mortar in thebottom (locus 6.14), no doubt used for grinding grain' (p. 61).Hence, we have a firm conclusion based on the evidence that agriculturalactivity did take place in the city. This tallies with Schloen'sobservations that in Ugarit, despite its being a cosmopolitan city, wehave evidence of urban agriculture; indeed, a great percentage of sickleblades were retrieved from only six houses in the city (p. 335), wherethere were olive-oil presses (p. 337), and where 'stone-linedcompost' pits were used for manure from animals kept in the stablesof houses (p. 340). In fact, the results of Campbell's work often agree with thoseof Schloen. The main difference is that methodologically the two workscomplement each other, with Campbell's starting point being arigorous description of the data retrieved in the field. Hence, the'striated black and grey layer 500' of the Late BronzeAge/Early Iron Age Gate Tower in Shechem's Field I is interpretedvery cautiously by Campbell as being either destruction debris or asbeing 'more likely the residue of an agricultural process [only inArea 16 and Area 17 North]' (p. 173). However, Campbell too is verymuch aware of various theoretical explanations which could account forthe data. Thus, on the basis of a combination of textual and generalarchaeological evidence, he proposes the hypothesis of a'disease-control measure' to account for the multiple'burn deposits' and the many pits which were deliberatelyfilled up (infected material would have been put in the pits which werethen sealed with soil being brought from other pits to create newsurfaces) in Strata XII and XI (pp. 232-3). There is one particular instance where Campbell's conclusionis very similar indeed to that of Schloen mentioned above. Stratum IX inField VII provides very good evidence of domestic units. There are,inter alia [Latin, Among other things.] A phrase used in Pleading to designate that a particular statute set out therein is only a part of the statute that is relevant to the facts of the lawsuit and not the entire statute. , four units, namely A, B, C, and D, with the last threeprobably having had two storeys. Acute observation of the stratigraphyand architecture led Campbell to observe that units A and B had twophases, whilst units C and D (North) had at least three, and that in analley area at the west, doorways had been filled up and cross wallserected. This suggested to him 'either different traffic patternsand perhaps changes in the relationships among the occupants' (p.269). He concludes that units A, B, and C were in fact a cluster ofdwellings for one extended family with yard 18 functioning as a commonentrance. However, the area of each unit, combined with the generallyagreed calculation that each person required ten square meters of livingspace, induced Campbell also to say that units A, B, and D 'couldhave housed a nuclear family' (p. 269). Thus, both Schloen andCampbell agree that domestic space in the ancient Near East was adaptedaccording to whether extended families had been transformed into nuclearones. But since Campbell is dealing with particular cases, he isnecessarily more cautious in his specific statements. The works of both are in fact magisterial mag��is��te��ri��al?adj.1. a. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a master or teacher; authoritative: a magisterial account of the history of the English language.b. , with an enormous amountof interesting data and good documentation. To underscore the fewinevitable flaws of each would be petty. However, Schloen's workleaves me with a question as to what precisely is the role of theory inthe study of antiquity, whereas the volumes by Campbell & Wrightremind me that there are no such things as a pure description or rawdata; indeed, Wright himself wrote that 'the published area planswere less and less a tracing from the feature exposed at one time on theground and more and more the result of subsequent analysis andre-analysis--i.e. they were to an increasing degree office constructionsand reconstructions' (p. 10). That leaves us with two options:either to endorse the self-defeating position that we cannot really knowanything, or to opt for an approach which is empirical, but which doesadmit that one's starting point is not an empty head. If we have awell stocked mind (and this is where critical theory really comes in),then through the self-correcting process of understanding we will beable to understand the data better and verify (by referring back tothem) whether we have understood correctly or not (Lonergan 1958: 252,273-4, 286, 300). If so, then we would have established facts. To readSchloen's book in conjunction with the Shechem volumes is preciselyto have learnt at least this lesson. References LONERGAN, B. 1958. Insight: a study of human understanding (2nded.). London: Longmans, Green. MILLARD, A.R. 1991. Texts and archaeology: weighing theevidence--the case for King Solomon, Palestine Exploration Quarterly The Palestine Exploration Quarterly (abbreviated PEQ) is the main publication of London's Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), issued (despite the name) twice each year to individual and institutional subscribers and supporters of the Fund. 123: 19-27. Anthony J. Frendo, Department of Arabic & Near Eastern Studies,University of Malta The university also offers postgraduate Doctorates (PhD), but these are somewhat unpopular, with students usually turning to foreign universities when undertaking doctorate-level studies.The rector of the university is currently Professor Juanito Camilleri. , Msida MSD (MicroSoft Diagnostics) A utility that accompanied Windows 3.1 and DOS 6 that reported on the internal configuration of the PC. A variety of information on disks, video, drivers, IRQs and port addresses was provided. 06 Malta GC. (E-mail:anthony.frendo@um.edu.mt)