ABSTRACT
There is a fundamental disparity between a general approach to the archaeology of death in the southern Levant in the 4th and 3rd millennia bce, and a particular approach to mortuary traditions associated with dolmens in the Early Bronze Age. On the basalt uplands of the Golan plateau lies one of the most vast and complex megalithic landscapes in the Levant. Dolmen typologies in particular have trapped the discipline within long-term time perspectives by subsuming a variety of unrelated megalithic features under the dolmen rubric. An important challenge in dolmen studies today lies in untangling the different taxonomic threads that are interwoven in current dolmen typologies, and in articulating the different time periods and time scales they represent. The issue of associated tumuli is important because it demonstrates a key point of difference between dolmens and other monuments that a typological approach should help articulate.
