Tel Mor: A Late Bronze Age Egyptian Outpost in Southern Coastal Canaan

Tristan J. Barako

Tel Mor is a small site located on the coast of Israel just north of the ancient city of Ashdod. For two seasons (1959-60) Moshe Dothan directed excavations at Tel Mor and uncovered twelve strata of settlement - many of which were separated by thick destruction layers - dating from the Middle Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. A series of fortresses dominated the site during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages (_ Strata IX-V). Based on architectural features of the earlier fortresses and on the associated finds - especially Egyptian pottery and scarabs - from throughout the series, the excavators concluded that Tel Mor functioned as an Egyptian outpost along the Via Maris during the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and beginning of the Twentieth Dynasties. Aside from short preliminary reports and encyclopedia entries the Tel Mor excavations have not been published.

Revisiting Dothan's excavations at Tel Mor would contribute to the field of Bronze and Iron Age Syro-Palestinian archaeology in the following ways:

• First, it is an opportunity to examine an almost fully exposed, clearly stratified, small settlement in a region (i.e., the southern coastal plain) dominated by the excavation of large tells.
• Second, it will bring into sharper focus the nature and extent of Egypt's presence in Canaan in the latter half of the second millennium B.C. Clarification of the socio-political status of Tel Mor - whether Egyptian, Canaanite, or Philistine - during the period of the Philistine settlement (_ twelfth century B.C.) will prove especially valuable in that the site figures prominently in discussions of the political geography of Canaan during the early Iron Age.
• Third, the publication of pottery from a sealed Hellenistic period cistern (an assemblage already extensively studied by Howard Kee), which can be confidently dated to 160 B.C. +/- 10 years, will provide an important chronological datum for the region.