ABSTRACT
The highland 'archaeological culture', in the spirit of the Culture History School, was simply viewed as Israelite. This culture was differentiated from the Philistine of the southern coastal plain and the Canaanite of the northern valleys. The first trigger behind the questioning of the Israelite label on the settlers of the highland Iron I sites was our awareness of other groups, such as the Hivites, Kenites who were active at the time but not identified archaeologically. Gradually scholars became uncomfortable with the label 'Israelite' for the 'material culture' of the highlands, as they felt it encompassed other groups as well. Scholars such as Ahlstrom, Thompson, and Lemche would be better off questioning the written traditions on peoples such as the Hivites, and sticking to the assumption that, since reliable contemporary sources reveal only the existence of the Israelites, people should treat them only as the Iron I highland population.
