A Late Bronze Age II Clay Coffin from Tel Shaddud in the Central Jezreel Valley, Israel: Context and Historical Implications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

Abstract

To the memory of Trude Dothan 1922–2016. During trial excavations carried out in 2013 on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a seemingly isolated clay coffin with anthropoid lid, containing a single primary burial, was uncovered within a 6 m × 5 m probe bordering the lower east slope of Tel Shaddud in the Jezreel Valley. It lay at the bottom of a tightly constricted burial pit, about 1.8 m below the present surface. Subsequent salvage excavations in 2014 uncovered, less than 3 m to its south-east, a further three burial pits (none of which contained a coffin), enclosing four additional primary burials, oriented east to west — in conformity with the coffin burial. Together these burials form part of an apparent Late Bronze Age II–Iron Age I burial ground at the eastern margin of Tel Shaddud. The coffin and associated funerary gifts bear a strong resemblance to comparable specimens and associated funerary assemblages known foremost from Deir el-Balah in the Gaza strip and Bet Sheʽan in the Jordan Valley. The shared mortuary aspects of Tel Shaddud and the latter sites indicate a strong link with New Kingdom Egypt. Based on the Tel Shaddud data and its very location, in combination with selective reading of relevant, near-contemporary historic records (i.e. the el-Amarna letters) it is argued here that Tel Shaddud was a way station, or estate, functioning within the framework of the Egyptian New Kingdom colonization of the region during the Late Bronze Age II and succeeding Iron Age I.

Version

The work available here is the abstract of the article. Locate the full-text of the article using the DOI below.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2017.1368204

Publication Title

Levant: The Journal of the Council for British Research in the Levant

Volume Number

49

Issue Number

2

First Page

105

Last Page

135

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