Middle Bronze Age Settlement Patterns in the Western Galilee, Israel

Aharon Kempinski and Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier excavated Tel Kabri, in the western Galilee region of Israel (fig. 1), in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Kempinski, Scheftelowitz, and Oren 2002). They found that during the Middle Bronze Age (MB) II period (ca. 1750–1600 b.c.) the site had been the center of a strong coastal polity. In size and importance, it may have been second only to Hazor in the Galilee (Maeir 2000: 43; Ilan 1995: 307) and, with Ashkelon on the southern coast (Stager 2002), was arguably one of the two strongest coastal powers in MB II Canaan. Beginning in 2005, excavations resumed at Tel Kabri as part of a new regional study of Middle Bronze Age settlement patterns in the western Galilee. The Kabri Archaeological Project (KAP) has so far conducted one preliminary season of excavation at Kabri itself (Cline and Yasur-Landau 2007) and two seasons of regional studies in the territory of the polity of Kabri, which runs from the Mediterranean coast on the west to the foothills of the Har Meiron massif in the east and from the Rosh Ha Niqra (Rekhes Ha-Sulam) ridge in the north to the boundary of Acco in the south (see below). Our aim here is to present a picture of the polity of Kabri and its hinterland in terms of diachronic changes in settlement patterns, agricultural exploitation, and patterns of trade. The KAP conducted multiple lines of research, including excavation, intensive site survey, study of existing pottery collections, examination of available textual evidence, population estimates, and studies of land use and economy. By studying the trajectory of a specific polity, we hope to address an important gap in the exploration of the Middle Bronze Age in the southern Levant, for there can be a sharp dichotomy between the larger regional narrative and the trajectory of a single polity. Recent criticism of universal models of state trajectories (Yoffee 2005) and of traditional nomenclature for “primary” and “secondary” 1