Acclaimed archaeologist Thomas Levy’s new autobiographical graphic memoir, The Boomer Archaeologist, follows Levy from his childhood to recent retirement, tracing his path from globe-trotting archaeologist to tenured professor at the University of California, San Diego. The memoir—told through quirky, comic book-like illustrations—recounts Levy’s life and career during a series of imagined phone conversations between Levy and the book’s illustrator, Levy’s niece and U.K.-based artist, Lily Almeida.

As the book’s title makes clear, Levy is part of the “boomer” generation that came of age when the “American Dream” promised citizens they could rise to the pinnacle of their chosen professions and pursuits. His Jewish identity also weaves its way through the memoir: his values learned from his family, which left Russia because of anti-Jewish pogroms, his service in the Israel Defense Forces, and his marriage to a woman of South Asian descent who converted to Judaism. (The book’s postscript also takes on recent anti-Semitism in the U.S., which Levy sees as an unfortunate harbinger of societal collapse.)

This study presents a new and updated edition of the Great Hymn to Šamaš, a two-hundred-line Akkadian hymn that stands out for its remarkable poetic sophistication and the wisdom section embedded in its center. The edition, originally prepared by the author for the Electronic Babylonian Literature (eBL) project led by E. Jiménez at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, incorporates all the manuscripts of the Great Hymn to Šamaš discovered so far. The recent identification of numerous fragments, which were unknown at the time of the text’s first edition (in W. G. Lambert’s Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 1960), has allowed for an almost complete reconstruction of the hymn that corrects previous readings and erroneous restorations. The present study also includes an in-depth introduction to the text, covering both formal aspects (e.g., the hymn’s structure and poetic devices) and content-related aspects (e.g., the wisdom section). It provides the reconstructed cuneiform text, a transliteration, and a translation by B. Foster. Additionally, the edition is accompanied by a commentary that discusses relevant philological features, along with a glossary and sign list.

Thanks largely to the introduction of new methods of recovery and analysis, archaeology is increasingly treated as a science. Yet, it should continue to ask questions that are founded in the humanities. This is especially true of social archaeology, which forms the core of this volume. Being based on the notion that ‘the social’ permeates all areas of life, the chapters gathered here give priority to archaeological data and contexts, which in turn form the prerequisite for analyzing how, at particular times and places, people negotiated or reaffirmed the society around them. Case studies from the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean sit alongside selected comparative cases from other parts of the world and assess issues such as the development of cultural characteristics of societies, societal continuity and collapse, religious beliefs and rituals, and the role of social memory, as well as interactions within and between societies. The volume is dedicated to the memory of our colleague and friend, Dr Sharon Zuckerman, who embraced the quest for ‘the social’ throughout her career.

Architecture, and the layout of settlements, are key elements of archaeological research that enable an understanding of past societies. In studying the built environment and the articulation of social spaces, it is possible to shed light on the social relations of communities, and on the ideology, economy, and cultural and social practices that underpinned how people lived. Taking a study of the built environment as its starting point, this volume draws together contributions focusing on the Neolithic transition in south-western Asia. Covering a period that extends from the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic through to the Late Neolithic (c. 10,000–5500 BCE), the chapters gathered here explore the built environment from different regions, perspectives, and methodologies, and draw on new theoretical and analytical approaches in order to expand our knowledge of the emergence of the Neolithic through the lens of architectural and settlement analysis.

The Early Bronze Age site of Jebel al-Mutawwaq, located on a hill overlooking the Zarqa River in Jordan, was a thriving centre of population from the second half of the fourth millennium into the third millennium BCE. During this time, the settlement developed both in population and social complexity, undergoing the beginnings of an urbanization process that fundamentally changed the relationship between this community of the Transjordanian Highlands with the surrounding landscape, until it was completely abandoned around 2900 BCE. This volume offers a new assessment of the site by combining data from the first surveys of the site, under a Spanish team led by J. A. Fernandez-Tresguerres, with the new results from six seasons of excavations led by teams from Perugia in Italy, and San Esteban in Spain. In doing so, this work sheds new light on this walled settlement and its huge megalithic necropolises, and offers a fresh understanding of the site.

עלילות גילגמש – האפוס הקדום בעולם – מספר את סיפורו של גילגמש, מלך צעיר וחסר מנוח היוצא למסע שאין דומה לו בחיפוש אחר תהילה ושם עולם. יחד עם חברו אנכידו, יוצאים השניים ליער הארזים בלבנון להילחם בשומר היערות – המפלצת חומבבה. לאחר מותו של אנכידו, יוצא גילגמש מוכה היגון לחפש את אתרחסיס, הלא הוא "נח הבבלי", כדי ללמוד ממנו כיצד לזכות בחיי הנצח של האלים. בתום מסע מייגע הוא שב לעירו כבן תמותה, אבל בעל ידע נשגב.האפוס אשר נכתב בלשון האכדית על פני לוחות טין לפני כמעט ארבעת אלפים שנה, חוצה תרבויות, לשונות ודתות, ומדבר בלשון נצחית על חברות, על פחד, על גבולות הכוח ועל השאלה העתיקה מכולן – כיצד ראוי לחיות את חיינו אל מול המוות הבלתי נמנע. תרגום חדש זה מן האכדית מביא את עלילות גילגמש לעברית נאמנה למקור אך חיה ונושמת, ומחזיר לקורא את רוחו של הסיפור הקדמון על התמודדות היחיד עם שאלות היסוד של משמעות החיים על מול המוות.

The Mediterranean has, for millennia, formed the heart of an intensive trading network of ideas, goods, and people. For the ancient populations of the Levant, Cyprus, and Southern Anatolia, interactions with the sea — from fishing to seafaring, and from trade to dye production — were a constant presence in their life. But how did the coastal peoples of the Bronze Age understand the sea? How did living on the shore influence their lives, from daily practices to mythological beliefs? And what was the impact on their conceptual world? This volume seeks to engage with these questions by addressing the relationship between environment, diet, material production, perception, and thought formation through a combination of archaeological analysis and engagement with primary sources, and in doing so, it offers unique insights into the conceptual world of the ancient Mediterranean maritime cultures of the 2nd millennium BCE.

In the first book to examine Jerusalem’s archaeological remains in detail since Kathleen M. Kenyon’s Digging Up Jerusalem (1974), Yuval Gadot reexamines the results of more than one hundred years of excavations and incorporates findings from recent research based on the most up-to-date scientific methods. The book covers six pivotal periods of Jerusalem’s development and correlates those with historical texts, including those from the Hebrew Bible, for the purpose of portraying a nuanced and detailed reconstruction of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. More than one hundred color illustrations and maps supplement Gadot’s analysis of the archaeological data and reconstruction of Jerusalem’s history. This volume presents the most complete picture of Jerusalem’s history for scholars and students interested in the city’s role as a royal seat and a religious center.

From 2013 to 2016, the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon excavated an Iron Age cemetery located immediately outside the rampart of the ancient city. This cemetery dates from the period when Ashkelon was a Philistine city, and it is the first one excavated at any of the core Philistines cities. The Philistines are known today mainly as they are portrayed in sources written by others, such as the Hebrew Bible, in stories told by their enemies. In Ashkelon 10, the Philistine story is retold using archaeological evidence. As such, the Philistine cemetery is not only an important reference for the history of the Philistines but a critical piece for understanding the broader puzzle of death and burial in the southern Levant in the first millennium b.c.

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. The Morphological Typology of Iron Age II Cooking Pots in Judah 2 -- Appendix 2.1. Seriation of Iron Age II Cooking Pots -- Chapter 3. Sites and Contexts of the Cooking Pots Analyzed in the Study -- Chapter 4. The Geographic and Geological Framework of the Study Region -- Chapter 5. Petrographic Analysis -- Appendix 5.1. Quantification of Inclusions/Temper in 713 Iron Age II Cooking Pots from Judah -- Chapter 6. Chemical Analysis: Neutron Activation Analysis / Johannes H. Sterba, Hans Mommsen, Liora Bouzaglou and David Ben-Shlomo -- Appendix 6.1. Raw Elemental Results of This Study and Ben-Shlomo 2019b: Cooking Pots from Jerusalem/Moza / Johannes H. Sterba, Hans Mommsen, Liora Bouzaglou and David Ben-Shlomo -- Appendix 6.2. Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis / David Ben-Shlomo -- Chapter 7. Manufacturing Technologies for Judean Cooking Pots: A Chaîne Opératoire Perspective -- Appendix 7.1. List of Samples with Technological Results -- Chapter 8. Ethnographic Evidence and Experimental Archaeology / David Ben Shlomo and Leah Tramer -- Chapter 9. Cooking Pot Production in the Shephelah during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages / Sabine Kleiman -- Chapter 10. The Development of Cooking Pot Shapes and Wares in the 8th-6th Centuries BCE in Judah / Liora Freud -- Chapter 11. The Archaeology of Cooking and Cooking Pots: A Brief Review -- Chapter 12. Summary, Synthesis and Discussion: Cooking Pots, the Economy, Trade, and Societ

The date of the de­struc­tion of the palace at Knos­sos on Crete has been one of the key prob­lems of Aegean pre­his­tory since the palace was ex­ca­vated at the be­gin­ning of the 20th cen­tury. The ex­ca­va­tor Arthur Evans ar­gued for an LM II date as he pre­sumed that the in­scribed tablets found in the palace de­struc­tion lay­ers must have been writ­ten by the peo­ple who had pro­duced the large and richly adorned Palace Style jars which he dated to the LM II pe­riod. Af­ter his death Evans’ date has been ques­tioned, keenly de­bated and fi­nally low­ered to early LM IIIA:2. No­body, how­ever, has stud­ied the amount and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the lat­est pot­tery of LM IIIB date found in the palace, its con­nec­tion to the in­scribed tablets and its pres­ence in the sur­round­ing houses, town and ceme­ter­ies. The LM IIIB pot­tery in Knos­sos is here scru­ti­nized through the Day and Note Books of the ex­ca­va­tion, the orig­i­nal ex­ca­va­tion re­ports in the An­nual of the British School at Athens and the pub­lished sherds and com­plete vases. Fi­nally the close con­nec­tions be­tween the two largest LM IIIB towns, Knos­sos and Ky­do­nia—cur­rently the only ones in Crete with Lin­ear B tablets—are high­lighted.

This volume provides an archaeological study of 152 subterranean complexes at ancient Maresha, including an overview of the site, geological background, typological analysis of chamber types, and documentation of all surveyed installations. Two brief excavation reports offer insights into material culture and daily life during the Hellenistic period. Carved decorative elements—such as niches, altars, reliefs, and betyls—highlight religious diversity and cultural syncretism among Maresha’s residents. Twenty-one inscriptions, mostly Greek with three Semitic, provide rare direct evidence of the activities, identities, and experiences of individuals who used these underground spaces, adding a human dimension to the material findings. Special attention is given to the decline and decommissioning of certain complexes, shedding light on the evolving needs and priorities of the Maresha population. The synthesis examines changes in construction, abandonment, and reuse patterns over time within larger political and economic contexts, ending with a brief overview of Maresha after its conquest by John Hyrcanus I in 112 BCE.