The Early Iron Age period of the southern coastal plain of the Levant (ca. 1200-900 BCE) displays certain new features that suggest the appearance of the Philistines or other Sea Peoples. The early stages of this period represent a departure from Late Bronze Age traditions and evidence of cross-cultural influences within the eastern Mediterranean. This volume contributes to the discussion of the origin of the Sea Peoples by examining the role of adornment in the portrayal of cultural identity. Metal jewellery is assessed from 29 sites in the southern Levant, the Aegean, and Cyprus, resulting in the creation of the first multi-regional typology of metal jewellery for the Iron Age I-IIA eastern Mediterranean. By examining various categories of metal jewellery from the southern Levant and its western neighbours, this study contributes to the debate about the relations and exchanges that affected the region during this pivotal period in history. The formation, maintenance, and communication of group identification through physical appearance is assessed through a phenomenological view of cultural material to explain what is termed cultural intention.

Biblical Zoara is located in the Ghor as-Safi, precisely at the lowest place on earth. Its environmental and cultural history is therefore unique. During two decades, an archaeological project was conducted which discovered many significant finds of human occupations spanning some 12,000 years. These have been meticulously studied and the results are now presented here in Volume I. Volume II will follow and will complete and complement Volume I.

This Handbook is a state-of-the-field volume containing diverse approaches to sensory experience, bringing to life in an innovative, remarkably vivid, and visceral way the lives of past humans through contributions that cover the chronological and geographical expanse of the ancient Near East. It comprises thirty-two chapters written by leading international contributors that look at the ways in which humans, through their senses, experienced their lives and the world around them in the ancient Near East, with coverage of Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia, from the Neolithic through the Roman period. It is organised into six parts related to sensory contexts: Practice, production, and taskscape; Dress and the body; Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces; Death and burial; Science, medicine, and aesthetics; and Languages and semantic fields. In addition to exploring what makes each sensory context unique, this organisation facilitates cross-cultural and cross-chronological, as well as cross-sensory and multisensory comparisons and discussions of sensory experiences in the ancient world. In so doing, the volume also enables considerations of senses beyond the five-sense model of Western philosophy (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), including proprioception and interoception, and the phenomena of synaesthesia and kinaesthesia. The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East provides scholars and students within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies new perspectives on and conceptions of familiar spaces, places, and practices, as well as material culture and texts. It also allows scholars and students from adjacent fields such as Classics and Biblical Studies to engage with this material, and is a must-read for any scholar or student interested in or already engaged with the field of sensory studies in any period.

Antonios Finitsis and contributors continue their examination of dress and clothing in the Hebrew Bible in this collection of illuminating essays. Straddling the divide between the material and the ideological, this book lends shape and texture to topics including social standing, agency, and the motif of cloth and clothing in Esther. Essays also explore the function of dress metaphors in imprecatory Psalms, the symbolic function of headdresses, and the divine clothing of Adam and Eve and the hermeneutics of trauma recovery. Together, the contributors continue to shape scholarly discourse on a growing body of scholarship on dress in the Bible. By turning their analytical gaze to this primary evidence, the contributors are able to reveal the social, psychological, aesthetic, ideological and symbolic meanings of dress in the Hebrew Bible, thereby producing insights into the literature and cultural world of the ancient Near East.

Jewelry has always had an irresistible allure yet in the past also had a significance and function within society that went far beyond ornamentation. Jewelry is an important, if often forgotten facet of material culture. Its study is inter-disciplinary, involving archaeology, anthropology, art history, historical/textual studies, and research of materials and manufacturing techniques. While the renowned jewelry from regions such as Egypt and Mesopotamia has been studied, that of the southern Levant has received only limited attention, yet research of its archaeological/contextual, technological and socio-cultural perspectives is illuminating. The book is a final publication of the author's doctoral dissertation made available to the archaeological and academic community at large. The book is geared to be a working tool for archaeologists dealing in this period and region and to scholars who study its arts and crafts. It provides a handy typological structure for jewelry classification as well as a comprehensive and useful catalogue for research in this and related fields. In addition, the book illustrates the significance, meaning and functions of jewelry and the development of the jeweler's craft in the southern Levant during the first and second millennia BCE.

This Handbook aims to serve as a research guide to the archaeology of the Levant, an area situated at the crossroads of the ancient world that linked the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. The Levant as used here is a historical geographical term referring to a large area which today comprises the modern states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, western Syria, and Cyprus, as well as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. Unique in its treatment of the entire region, it offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the current state of the archaeology of the Levant within its larger cultural, historical, and socio-economic contexts. The Handbook also attempts to bridge the modern scholarly and political divide between archaeologists working in this highly contested region. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it focuses chronologically on the Neolithic through Persian periods - a time span during which the Levant was often in close contact with the imperial powers of Egypt, Anatolia, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. This volume will serve as an invaluable reference work for those interested in a contextualised archaeological account of this region, beginning with the 'agricultural revolution' until the conquest of Alexander the Great that marked the end of the Persian period.