Community, Polity, and Temple in a Middle Bronze Age Levantine Village

Abstract

The social and economic implications of rural ritual behavior during the development of early urbanized society are inferred from material evidence from households and temple compounds at Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan. Textual sources, primarily from the second millennium BC Syria, show that some temples were dependent upon institutional support (e.g. from palaces), while others were firmly embedded in the domestic economy of their surrounding community. Spatial and temporal patterning of animal bones, plant fragments, ceramics and symbolic objects during Middle Bronze Age IIA and B (ca. 2000-1650 BC) at Tell el-Hayyat reflect some specific ritual prescriptions (e.g. in ovicaprid and fig consumption, and deposition of metal objects). However, a variety of congruences between domestic and temple assemblages (e.g. in sheep:goat management, cattle consumption, cooking pot and storage jar manufacture and use) suggest that Hayyat's temple economy generally reflects immediate community support, rather than the intervention of external institutional authority.