ABSTRACT
The Bronze Age represents a watershed in the development of complex society in the Southern Levant. Archaeological investigations over the last several decades have inferred a roughly two millennium trajectory of highly fluid, and sometimes dramatic social changes that lead from the emergence of towns in the Early Bronze Age through the growth and collapse of incipient urbanized society, to the establishment of localized polities by the Late Bronze Age. A particularly turbulent stretch of Levantine social history featured the wholesale abandonment of towns during Early Bronze IV (ca. 2300–2000 bc) and their equally dramatic rejuvenation in the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1500 bc). Many of the most influential studies of Bronze Age society emphasize the formative social, religious, and political influences of urban communities and institutions. A growing archaeological literature, however, now highlights the crucial roles that rural villages provided for the economic foundation of the rise of Levantine urbanized society (e.g. Falconer 1995; Fall, Lines, and Falconer 1998). Building on the results of excavations at the Middle Bronze Age hamlet of Tall al-Hayyat, the Jordan Valley Village Project has investigated rural village life at Tall Abu an-Ni‘aj and Dhahrat Umm al-Marar, in the Jordan Valley, Jordan during the region-wide collapse of Levantine urbanism in Early Bronze IV.
