This volume is the first in a planned series of reports on the investigations of the Lahav Research Project (LRP) at Tell Halif, located near Kibbutz Lahav in southern Israel. The LRP has focused widely on stratigraphic, environmental, and ethnographic problems related to the history of settlement at Tell Halif and in its immediate surroundings, from prehistoric through modern times. It is fitting that this LRP series begins by focusing on remains from Site 101, which was the first location excavated by the team in 1973. This initial effort involved investigation of a warren of shallow caves that had been exposed by efforts to widen the road into the kibbutz. In this volume, J. P. Dessel reports on the excavation undertaken at Site 101 during Phase II and is also supplemented by his later research. The excavation itself was guided throughout by Dessel’s determination to require the total retrieval of all ceramic remains. It was his rigorous follow-through on all details involved in the analysis of materials that produced the pioneering results herein presented. Readers will find the book important for the archaeology and history of the southern Levant in the 4th millennium B.C.E. as well as for connections between the Levant and surrounding regions in that era.

This volume is the first in a planned series of reports on the investigations of the Lahav Research Project (LRP) at Tell Halif, located near Kibbutz Lahav in southern Israel. The LRP has focused widely on stratigraphic, environmental, and ethnographic problems related to the history of settlement at Tell Halif and in its immediate surroundings, from prehistoric through modern times. It is fitting that this LRP series begins by focusing on remains from Site 101, which was the first location excavated by the team in 1973. This initial effort involved investigation of a warren of shallow caves that had been exposed by efforts to widen the road into the kibbutz. In this volume, J. P. Dessel reports on the excavation undertaken at Site 101 during Phase II and is also supplemented by his later research. The excavation itself was guided throughout by Dessel's determination to require the total retrieval of all ceramic remains. It was his rigorous follow-through on all details involved in the analysis of materials that produced the pioneering results herein presented. Readers will find the book important for the archaeology and history of the southern Levant in the 4th millennium B.C.E. as well as for connections between the Levant and surrounding regions in that era.

This seventh volume of final reports of the Lahav Research Project’s efforts at Tell Halif in Southern Israel focuses on the team’s excavations and related regional ethnographic research at adjacent Khirbet Khuweilifeh, an early twentieth-century settlement of Bedouin and Arab fellahin clients. These efforts illustrate the symbiosis between the itinerant Bedouin and their seasonal sharecropper neighbors along the northern flanks of the Negev desert during and following the First World War in southern Palestine. The stratigraphic excavation and recovery of material culture from Cave Complex A revealed a pattern of occupation dating from the late nineteenth century C.E. up to the mid-1940s and produced hundreds of artifacts and samples, giving testimony to the lifeways of the fellahin who had inhabited the complex. The associated ethnographic research with Bedouin sheikhs and Hebron-area merchant informants established that the Complex’s most recent occupants were the family of a plow maker named Khalil al-Kaayke. The studies elucidated in this volume articulate in more detail the family’s patterns of subsistence, showing the interdependence of the Bedouin and fellahin partners. Examination of the pottery remains provides a profile of the site’s Stratum I, early twentieth-century ceramic forms and also reveals earlier Islamic-period and pre-Islamic traces. Over the past century the lifeways of these early twentieth-century Bedouin and their fellahin village neighbors in southern Palestine have been rapidly disappearing. This volume serves to chronicle and preserve data on their waning history and culture.

Despite many years work on the technology of pottery production it is perhaps surprising that the origins of the potter's wheel in Egypt have yet to be determined. This volume seeks to rectify this situation by determining when the potter's wheel was introduced into Egypt.

This volume presents a range of petrographic case studies as applied to archaeological problems, primarily in the field of pottery analysis, i.e. ceramic petrography.

The area of the Judean Foothills – the biblical Shephelah – has in recent years become one of the most intensively excavated regions in the world. Numerous projects, at sites of different types and utilizing various methodological approaches, are actively excavating in this region. Of particular importance are the discoveries dating to the Iron Age, a period when this region was a transition zone between various cultures—Philistine, Canaanite, Judahite, and Israelite. The current volume includes reports from eight of the excavations currently being conducted in the region (Azekah, Beth Shemesh, Gezer, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tel Burna, Tel Halif, Tell es-Safi/Gath, and Tel Zayit), as well as a general study of the region by Ido Koch. The importance of this volume lies not only in the fact that it collects up-to-date reports on most of the current excavations in the region but also demonstrates the lively, at times even boisterous, scholarly discussions taking place on various issues relating to the archaeology and history of the Iron Age Shephelah and its immediate environs. This volume serves as an excellent introduction to current research on the Iron Age in this crucial zone and also serves as a reflection of current trends, methodologies, and approaches in the archaeology of the Southern Levant.