Uri Davidovich E-mail: uridch@gmail.com Ph.D. Dissertation Topic: The Judean Desert during the Chalcolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages (Sixth-First Millennia BC): Desert and Sown Relations in light of Settlement Patterns in a defined Desert Environment. Advisor: Prof. Amihai Mazar

Abstract:

The study focuses on the identification of patterns of settlement and other human activities in the Judean Desert from a "longue dur?e" perspective. The suggested time-span encompasses c. 5000 years, from the beginning of the Chalcolithic period to the end of the Iron Age. During this time-span, the nearby "settled land" of the Southern Highlands, The Beer-Sheba Basin and the Lower Jordan Valley witnessed major socio-economic and political changes, in a general trajectory from rural communities to more developed systems of city-states, reaching a peak in the territorial state of Judah in the Late Iron Age. At the same time, the arid regions of the Southern Levant housed entirely different societies, practicing various levels of nomadism. Their mutual co-existence with societies in the settled lands was investigated with relation to most desert zones (Negev, Sinai, Southern Jordan). The aim of the present study is to review the part played by the Judean Desert in this complex "desert and sown" relations in the Southern Levant, while acknowledging its unique environment and location within the geo-political arena.

The study is based on a comprehensive collection of all archaeological data gathered in past research, and on new data originating in systematic survey conducted in the southern part of the desert (Masada and Har Badar maps). Site distribution will be analyzed through GIS tools in order to decipher relations with various environmental aspects, and material culture remains will be investigated in comparison with the surrounding regions. Both parts will be later combined to identify the societal structures responsible for the observed patterns. Finally, other sources of information, mainly historical and ethnographic, will be used to reconstruct the changing part of the Judean Desert within the Southern Levantine sphere.

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