ABSTRACT
This contribution to post-processual historical interpretation explores the political structures of patronage in ancient Palestine, involving a dynamic of political protection and subordination between two individuals, a structure, which can develop into a larger, pyramid of patron-client bonds. Patronage is well documented in the Levant from Roman to Ottoman times. However, in pre-Roman Palestine, political structures of patronage are usually ignored or downplayed in biblical and historical scholarship and overshadowed by more current notions of “tribalism”, “ethnicity” and “nationalism”, with a political form of monarchic kingdoms. The political anthropology of ancient Palestine is reflected in the epigraphic and archaeological record, insofar as they are related to long-term social structures in the region. Part A addresses the heuristic value of patronage for understanding the political arrangement of the hierarchical society of Palestine from the late fourth to the first millennium BCE, including the dynamics of kinship structures and links to local villages and towns, small-regional powers, states and empires. Part B sketches such patronage structures as reflected in the toponomy (esp., The Execration Texts, Amarna letters and the Egyptian campaigns of Thutmosis III and Sheshonq I) in the light of Bronze and Iron Age settlement patterns.
