ABSTRACT
Cultic installations in the villages are, of course, modest compared with the contemporary temples of ‘Canaanite’ cities (such as Temple 1 in Shechem), and quite rare. The complex on the slopes of Mt Ebal near Shechem has been interpreted as an open-air cultic area, but this interpretation is influenced by biblical data on the temple of El-Berith and is debatable; a similar case is the so-called ‘bull site’ near Dothan (an open enclosure, with a shrine, mas9s9ēbôt and bull statue). Only one shrine (no more than a 4 m × 5 m room) lies in a village area, in Hazor stratum XI. Bearing in mind the abandonment of the extra-urban pastoral sanctuaries in Deir ‘Alla and ‘Amman, which flourished at the end of the thirteenth century, the social ferment at the base of the ‘new society’ does not seem to exhibit the religious flavour that later historiography attributes to it and which is already foreshadowed in the phase of armed opposition to Canaanite cities – unless it was a religious movement opposed to any large-scale cultic structure.
