The Oxford History of the Biblical World (44 page)

A need for centralized organization grew out of another feature of the technoenvironmental setting of the emerging monarchy, particular to the eastern Mediterranean in the early Iron Age. The very name
Iron Age
points to the issue. Although archaeologists and historians have long dated the inception of the Iron Age in Palestine to around 1200
BCE
, that date does not mark a significant transition from bronze to iron as the dominant metal used for tools and weapons. For reasons that historians of technology do not yet fully understand, the copper and tin needed for the production of bronze implements were disrupted at the end of the Late Bronze Age. International trade, essential to the distribution of the raw materials and finished products of bronze-producing metallurgy, was severely limited during the early centuries of the Iron Age. Iron ore was likewise scarce. New procedures for smelting iron, in which carbon was introduced to produce a metal stronger and more durable than bronze, did emerge with the advent of the Iron Age. Yet these techniques were not widely used for everyday purposes until the tenth century, partly because of a lag in the diffusion of the new technology and partly because trade disruptions precluded the wide availability of ores.

The population expansion in Iron IIA in the Palestinian highlands increased the demand for agricultural implements. Iron by then was preferred, especially for plow tips: its greater durability made it better suited to the rockier soils of the marginal lands settled in the out-migrations and population shifts of the late eleventh and tenth centuries. Although Palestine has iron ore deposits, most are of poor quality and were never mined in antiquity. Only the organizational and distributional potential of centralized government could ensure security to the trade networks through which raw materials flowed and the population centers where the specialists who produced agricultural tools lived.

Population increase, shifting areas of settlement, and new technologies thus became intersecting variables creating the need for international trade and occupational specialization, features widely associated with state systems. Along with integrative and military functions, the emergent Israelite state provided necessary access to technologies and raw materials critical for the growing population in diverse highland environments.

A chief characteristic of a monarchic system is a territorial base that transcends traditional, older, and prior territorial segments or regions. The biblical texts’ recounting of the military exploits and political actions of the first three kings, however stylized or legendary the accounts, reveals the core area in which Saul rose to power. The nucleus of Saul’s territory, whether a chiefdom or an inchoate state, was his own tribe of Benjamin. His son Ishbaal, whose brief reign overlaps with David’s, appoints Benjaminites as his servants (see 2 Sam. 2.15, 25, 31). It is noteworthy that Ishbaal claims to rule not only over Benjamin but also over other areas: Ephraim, Gilead, the Jezreel, and perhaps Asher (2 Sam. 2.9). The biblical assertion that Saul ruled “over all Israel” may be an editorial exaggeration, but Saul’s early military success would have gradually rallied an expanding group of followers and created an area of control beyond Benjamin. Saul is portrayed as a charismatic military leader in the tradition of the preceding judges, and his continued feats on the battlefield were of just the sort to lead to an expanded sphere of control.

David’s political and military achievements apparently created a still larger territorial entity. Clearly his own tribal base in Judah, indicated by the Judean origins of the folk traditions attached to him, figured prominently in David’s rise to power. In the early years of his reign he had sovereignty over Judah alone (see 2 Sam. 5.5). David made his capital for over seven years at Hebron, a well-situated site in the Judean hills. From there he expanded his influence over all of the southern hill country and adjacent Shephelah, the northern Negeb, and the eastern Judean wilderness. (This territory, larger than the tribe of Judah itself, ultimately encompassed the ideal or maximum boundaries of the southern kingdom of Judah after the later dissolution of the United Monarchy.) Expanding to the north and east, David incorporated into his realm the Benjaminite, Ephraimite, and other areas of Saul’s territory, as well as Galilee and parts of Transjordan.

One other expansion of the Judean core of tenth-century Israel is significant. At the southern periphery of Judah and of the kingdom lay the northern Negeb or Beersheba basin, where settlements had existed prior to early Israel and the United Monarchy
and continued afterward. In the early monarchy, however, numerous settlements penetrated into the Negeb highlands to the southwest: most are stone fortresses or towers with domestic structures and animal pens scattered in the vicinity. The pottery at these sites indicates that they were occupied for a limited period, from the end of the eleventh century at the earliest to their destruction or abandonment at about the time of Shishak’s march through the Negeb in 925
BCE
. These sites, in other words, are chronologically congruent with the reigns of David and especially Solomon.

Negeb Settlements of the Tenth Century
BCE

These Negeb settlements have other interesting features. The dwelling types, and even some of the towers themselves, resemble the domestic structures of tenth-century sites in Israelite territory. Similarly, a large percentage of the pottery forms are the same as those found in villages to the north. Finally, the settlements typically
are in areas of limited water sources and without soils suitable for subsistence farming. Taken together, these factors indicate that the western Negeb settlements were outposts of the early kingdom, initiated and supported by the state, and populated by groups sent southward by state authorities to represent state interests. Although agricultural and pastoral activities are evident in the archaeological remains of these sites, their inhabitants could not have survived without external support.

Just what were the interests of the state in populating this barren region? Because about 80 percent of the fortresses and dwellings were built on high ridges commanding panoramic views, they obviously helped protect the southern borders of the monarchy. The Philistines at that time had extended their settlements southward along the farthest western area of the Negeb highlands. Egypt’s gradually increasing interest in regaining control of Palestine, culminating in the Shishak invasion, likewise points to the Israelite need for military protection at the southwestern limits of its territory. In addition, by the Solomonic period, Israel had developed an international trade with an important southern component so that the Negeb outposts also served as way stations along a route to the Red Sea and thence to East Africa and South Arabia. These frontier settlements thus supported several geopolitical and economic interests of the early monarchy.

Aside from archaeological data, researchers usually reconstruct the full extent of the Davidic domain with such sources as the census list of 2 Samuel 24 and the list of Levitical cites in Judges 21. Important as these lists may be, however, they are incomplete and resist exact dating. Nonetheless, the strong tradition of direct Davidic rule over all the tribal groups means that biblical information about tribal boundaries can be used to determine the extent of the Davidic kingdom as well as that of Solomon, the heir to an established and extensive territorial base. Traditional premonarchic tribal regions are generally equated with the territory of the Davidic-Solomonic state.

The supranational boundaries of the early monarchy are less clear. Biblical sources claim conquests of Moab, Edom, and Ammon (including the land of Geshur) across the Jordan; and David is said to have extended Israelite dominion over parts of the Aramean territories as far as Damascus. Parts of Philistia were reportedly captured or reclaimed, and Negeb peoples such as the Amalekites were subdued. Israelite domination over these extra-Israelite lands has often been considered part of the nationalist exaggeration of the biblical sources, which tend to aggrandize David and Solomon. Still, the idea of a quasi-imperial sprawl by the early monarchy cannot easily be rejected. The political weakness of the power centers surrounding Palestine at this time makes such a scenario possible, as do other economic and diplomatic features of the early kingship.

Leaving aside for a moment the matter of imperial control, one can see within the traditional territorial borders of the new state aspects of material culture that reflect political unity. Tenth-century ceramic vessels exhibit considerable homogeneity throughout the land. In contrast to the preceding period, with its distinct local pottery traditions, and also to the succeeding period, in which pottery forms and wares diverge into northern and southern groups, the ceramic assemblages of the early monarchic period show many similar features. Sites of varying sizes—urban centers and more remote villages—seem to share a common ceramic idiom, at least by the
mid-tenth century. The variety of new ceramic forms and features is impressive, particularly in comparison to the previous period. Despite the general difficulty of closely dating Bronze and Iron Age archaeological materials, archaeologists have been able to identify the pottery of the early monarchic era because of the ubiquitous appearance of a characteristic ware—red slip with a rough burnish applied by hand—on a variety of vessels. Careful statistical and stratigraphic analysis of these red burnished sherds has given them unusually precise chronological parameters. Emerging about 950
BCE
, this pottery can justifiably be called “Solomonic ware.” Furthermore, the unburnished red-slip wares that precede them can perhaps be assigned to the Davidic period.

The relative uniformity of the ceramic repertoires of the Iron IIA period can best be explained by increase of intersite contacts effected by a centralized government. To foster exchanges, to shift labor forces, to monitor revenues, and to establish communication with local clients and leaders, a state system needs to maintain roadways and contacts with all parts of its domain. We can see this by carefully examining the distribution of pottery types in a small region of southern Palestine bordering on Philistia. A group of sites with similar ceramic horizons lies along a reconstructible Israelite trading loop; but the nearby site of Ashdod, which remained a Philistine outpost in this period, clearly lay beyond the borders of an emerging distinctively Israelite material culture.

Secure exchange routes within a territorial state are an important determinative factor in the diffusion of common pottery types within its borders. Ethnographic evidence suggests that under such conditions common wares can easily be transported, usually by itinerant traders using pack animals, to markets 250 kilometers (155 miles) or more from the production site. Such a radius corresponds strikingly with the distance between the traditional northern and southern borders of Israel—245 kilometers (152 miles) from Dan in the north to Beer-sheba in the south (see 1 Sam. 3.20; 2 Sam. 3.10; 24.2; etc.). Ceramic similarity clearly requires favorable conditions for interregional travel and trade; it also can be affected by the relocation of village potters. The increases in Iron IIA population already mentioned induced out-migration from existing villages and the establishment of new ones. Village pottery traditions thus migrated to new locations along with the shifting population.

Burial practices reveal another trend toward homogeneity. The preceding Iron I period yields relatively little evidence, partly reflecting low population density and partly because making more permanent burial sites requires expenditures of time and resources perhaps unavailable to the premonarchic highlanders. Those few known examples tend to be the single interment cist graves known from Late Bronze coastal or Canaanite sites, although a few cave tombs also appear. Cave tombs are natural caves, sometimes enlarged or enhanced by hewing out receptacles for bodies. Such tombs tend to be used over long periods of time, the desiccated skeletal remains being heaped in a central repository to make room for fresh burials. The bench tomb, found in the highlands throughout the Iron Age beginning in the tenth century
BCE
, is an artificially constructed version of the cave tomb. A cavity is hewn out of rock outcroppings or cliffs, benches are carved along its sides to receive corpses, and a pit is dug in the center to receive bones from old burials. The grave goods also show a uniformity that mirrors the pattern of ceramics at that time. In contrast to the limited
pottery repertoire of Iron I burials, Iron IIA tombs show a marked increase in the number of pottery forms and also of imported wares. Not surprisingly the latter are Cypro-Phoenician vessels, the major forms of foreign ceramics in habitation sites.

These bench tombs and their cave tomb antecedents were family burial sites, reused over generations by the members of a single family group or of related ones. The tombs contain the remains of males and females of all ages, with no differentiation by gender or age in the treatment of skeletons. The tomb group as a whole, however, represents families that had amassed some wealth. Carving out a bench tomb and depositing grave goods required resources above the subsistence level. In addition, the known tombs, even assuming that many are as yet undiscovered, could not account for the burials of the entire population. Poorer folk were laid to rest in simple pit graves with few or no grave goods, and no traces now survive.