The Judean Desert as a Chalcolithic Necropolis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v28i2.29530Keywords:
caves, Chalcolithic, ‘Ein Gedi, Judean Desert, mortuary practices, Nahal Mishmar, ritual landscapeAbstract
Cave deposits represent a special category of archaeological context that invokes its own set of research questions. The interpretation of these deposits, however, is often based on unfounded assumptions. The idea of ‘cave men’ utilizing caves as domestic space persists to this day, both in the public imagination and in archaeological interpretation. But a cave is not generally a good place to live; the adoption of caves as living space occurs in times of emergency and is short-lived. Yet caves were commonly used for human burial and as the locus of ritual activity. This is strikingly true for the Chalcolithic period (ca. 4500–3600 BC) in the southern Levant. But the idea that people frequently lived in caves in the Chalcolithic persists, bolstered by the presence of quotidian objects excavated in cave contexts. In this study, we focus on Chalcolithic deposits in the caves of the Judean Desert, and suggest that many of them were the loci of mortuary interment and its associated ritual practice. We suggest further that the ‘Ein Gedi sanctuary and the Nahal Mishmar hoard are both associated with the mortuary complex of the Judean Desert.References
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----- 2003 A life less ordinary: the ritualization of the domestic sphere in later prehistoric Europe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13: 5-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959774303000015
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----- 1995 On mortuary analysis—with special reference to the Saxe–Binford research program. In L.A. Beck (ed.), Regional Approaches to Mortuary Analysis, 3-26. New York: Plenum.
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----- 2007 Remembering and forgetting in Early Bronze Age mortuary practices on the southeastern Dead Sea plain, Jordan. In N. Laneri (ed.), Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Oriental Institute Seminars 3: 109-39. Chicago: Oriental Institute.
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----- 2012 The Early Bronze IB in the Judean Desert caves. Tel Aviv 39: 3-19.
Davidovich, U., Y. Goldsmith, R. Porat and N. Porat 2014 Dating and interpreting desert structures: the enclosures of the Judean Desert, southern Levant, re-evaluated. Archaeometry 56: 878-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12056
Davidovich, U., R. Porat, E. Boaretto, N. Liphschitz, A. Mazar and A. Frumkin. 2013 Nahal Asa’el Cave: a unique 6,000 year old wooden installation and the late Chalcolithic presence in hardly accessible caves in the Judean Desert, Israel. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Speleology 1: 123-28. Prague: Czech Speleological Society.
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Donham, D.L. 1999 Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Drabsch, B.S., and S.J. Bourke 2014 Ritual, art and society in the Levantine Chalcolithic: the ‘Processional’ wall painting from Teleilat Ghassul in Jordan. Antiquity 88: 1081-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00115339
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Published
2016-01-21
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Articles
How to Cite
Ilan, D., & Rowan, Y. (2016). The Judean Desert as a Chalcolithic Necropolis. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 28(2), 171-194. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v28i2.29530
