Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighboring Lands in Memory of Douglas L. Esse
Joint Publication of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (SAOC 59) and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR Books, No. 5). The studies in this impressive volume of over 700 pages are presented in memory of Douglas L. Esse, an archaeologist and assistant professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago until his untimely death at the age of forty-two on October 13, 1992. Esse was one of the foremost authorities on the Early Bronze Age period in the Levant, which is reflected in the publication of his Oriental Institute doctoral dissertation entitled Subsistence, Trade, and Social Change in Early Bronze Age Palestine (SAOC 50, 1991). The majority of the thirty-four chapters in this volume are concerned with the study of the Early Bronze Age, and some chapters deal with periods and issues that pre-date and post-date the Early Bronze Age, as all of the forty-six authors selected to contribute to this volume were either colleagues or students of Esse and some were not primarily Early Bronze Age specialists. Chapter One includes three "Tributes" to Esse by L. E. Stager, A. Ben-Tor, and D. Saltz that assess the impact of Esse's scholarship, excellence in fieldwork, and the friendship he showed to all of those with whom he worked. Many of the chapters are concerned with ceramic studies from various historical periods, while other chapters deal with burial customs, cult, chronology, social organization, cylinder seal impressions, faunal studies, metrology, architecture, radiocarbon determinations, and maritime trade. The Israelite sites that figure prominently in these studies include Tel Maahaz, Tel Dor, Megiddo, Arad, Ai, Tel Yaqush, Nahal Tillah, Beit Yerah, Illin Tahtit, and Ashkelon. The geographical areas that are investigated include the Soreq Basin, the Akko Plain, the Jezreel Valley, the Dead Sea Plain, and the Carmel Coast and Ramat Menashe regions in Israel and Jordan; external studies are concerned with material from Egypt, the site of Alishar Höyük in Turkey, Tell el-Umeiri in Jordan as well as with pottery connections in Arabia. One chapter is concerned with the latest historical periods, which discusses the Persian and Muslim conquests in Palestinian archaeology. This volume should especially appeal to all of those who are interested in the archaeology and history of the Early Bronze Age period in Israel and its neighboring lands, but there is also much to contemplate about the origins of human settlement, the ceramics of fourth millennium Canaan, burial customs of the early second millennium, the Middle Bronze Age at Megiddo, the faunal evidence between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and regional aspects of some Iron Age pottery.
