Tell el-Wawiyat 2003 Overview

Tell el-Wawiyat Excavation Project
Beth Nakhai and J.P. Dessel

This grant is for the final publication report of Tell el-Wawiyat, excavated by Beth Alpert Nakhai, J.P. Dessel and Bonnie L. Wisthoff in 1986 and 1987. Tell el-Wawiyat is a 0.4hectare mound located in the Bet Netofah Valley in Israel's Lower Galilee. It was selected for excavation in order to explore Bronze and Iron Age village society, and to redress the urban bias of archaeology in the southern Levant. Wawiyat was occupied over a long period of time, making it one of a special kind of village, which has been neglected by most archaeologists and is poorly understood.

During the course of excavation, five major occupational strata were uncovered. Occupation of the site commenced in the Middle Bronze IIB/C and continued into the Late Bronze IA. After this, there was a gap in occupation. The site was resettled in the Late Bronze IIB, and an unusually rich assemblage of imported Cypriote and Mycenaean wares can be attributed to this period. The LBIIB settlement was replaced by a new Iron Age settlement, which had two phases of occupation. Once abandoned late in the Iron I, the site was never resettled.

The transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age has been understood primarily from an urban perspective, based upon the excavation of urban sites and the interpretation of textual references. Tell el-Wawiyat provides a unique vantage point from which to explore this critical junction in the history of the southern Levant from a rural perspective. In the first phase of the Iron I, we found two large and unusual buildings, which display both domestic and public characteristics and which have few parallels at other Iron I sites in the Levant. The excavation of this unique architecture dating to a period of important cultural transition suggests that Bronze and Iron Age villages are more complex and diverse than previously imagined. It is only through the publication of sites such as Tell el-Wawiyat that a better understanding of the rural underpinnings of Late Bronze and Iron Age Canaan and Israel can be fully explored. Ultimately, this research will allow scholars to think more comprehensively, and in more nuanced ways about the nature of culture change and of ethnicity, and of the role of villages in transmitting sociocultural traditions.