A research program administered by Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na'aman

Ancient Israel in the First Millennium BCE is one of four programs funded by the New Horizons program at Tel Aviv University. The project was launched in 2007.

         The period that commenced with the rise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and ended with the Roman conquest of Palestine determined the emergence and development of Judaism, influenced early Christianity and through them shaped the foundations of Western Civilization. Indeed, the study of the history, religion and material culture of Ancient Israel plays a major role in the curricula of leading universities around the globe.

         The Ancient Israel program deals with text, material culture and the contribution of the life and exact sciences to the historical interpretation. It comprises topics such as history and historiography, economy and society, religion and cult, literary activity and material culture in their broadest sense. The written sources include the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern texts bearing on the world of the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and other Persian-Hellenistic-period texts linked to the history of Ancient Israel (such as the Elephantine papyri and the writings of Philo of Alexandria). From the perspective of archaeology, the program deals with all aspects of the human experience in antiquity: historical processes, material culture, settlement patterns, literary activity, the cognitive world, adaptation to the environment, demographic transformations, economic activity and social transformations.
         The chronological framework of the program includes the late second millennium and most of the first millennium BCE. It begins in the late 12th century, with the withdrawal of the Egyptian empire from Canaan and the collapse of the world of the Bronze Age. These events instigated processes that led to the rise of Early Israel, and somewhat later to the establishment of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And these processes, in turn, brought about the creation of the civilization of Ancient Israel that found its expression in the Hebrew Bible. The period discussed here concludes with the end of the Hellenistic period and the Roman conquest of Palestine in the first century BCE. The latter datum signals the beginning of new historical and cultural processes, first and foremost the destruction of the Second Temple and the rise of Christianity.
         Geographically this program comprises the Land of Israel and its neighbors. The history, material culture, literary activity and cognitive world of Ancient Israel were strongly connected to and influenced by empires that ruled the Levant (first and foremost Assyria and Persia, but also Egypt, Babylonia and the Seleucid state) as well as by neighboring lands in the immediate vicinity (Aram, Ammon, Moab, Edom, the neo-Hittite kingdoms, the Phoenician and Philistine city-states) and further away (Cyprus and the Aegean basin). Texts and artifacts which directly or indirectly bear on the study of Ancient Israel were found in all these countries and territories.

All stipends and grants are Tel Aviv University-related. In the case of research grants, at least one scholar in the team must be a Tel Aviv University faculty member.

Research Grants, 2009: Life and Exact Sciences and Archaeology

Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Naomi Porat (Geological Survey of Israel)
Archaeological Study and Luminescence Dating of Agricultural Terrace Walls and Soil at Ramat Rahel
$ 8,500

Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman
Further Exploration of the Early Iron Age II Iron Workshop at Tel Beth-Shemesh
$ 6,500

Ran Zadok and Yoram Cohen
Israelites, Judeans and Related Population Groups in Ancient Israel and the Diaspora (Mesopotamia and Western Iran) during the Late-Assyrian, Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods (744-330 BCE): A Novel Computerized Statistical Study
$ 5,800

Yuval Goren, Amotz Agnon and Hagai Ron (The Hebrew University)
The Development of Full-Vector Archaeomagnetic Dating Methods Using Glasses from Ceramic Workshop Wasters
$ 5,000

Eran Arie, Keren Kubalo-Paran and Anastasia Shapiro (Israel Antiquities Authority)
The Rural Hinterland in the Jezreel Valley in the Late Bronze III and Iron I: A Petrographic Perspective
$ 2,000

Alexander Fantalkin, Mark Iserlis and Oren Tal
Petrographic Analysis of the Iron Age IIB Pottery from Tell Qudadi
$ 2,000

Mark Iserlis
Pottery Wheels in the Late Bronze and Iron I-II
$ 1,000

Research Grants, 2008: Life and Exact Sciences and Archaeology

Israel Finkelstein and Ruth Shahak-Gross (Bar-Ilan University and the Weizmann Institute)
Inferring Subsistence Practices of Iron Age Sites in the Negev Highlands via Geoarchaeological Methods
$ 7,000

Yuval Goren
The Administration of Iron II Judah: The Mineralogy and Provenance of Clay Bullae from the City of David
$ 5,000

Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, Omer Sergey and Avshalom Karasik (The Hebrew University)
Typology and Classification of lmlk Jars, Based on 3D Scanning Technology
$ 4,500

Oren Tal, Haim Gitler (Israel Museum) and Mathew Ponting (University of Liverpool)
The Archaeometallurgy of Athenian Tetradrachms from Palestine: Authentic Athenian or Athenian-Style Coins?
$ 2,500

Research Grants, 2007: Life and Exact Sciences and Archaeology

Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, Elisabetta Boaretto and Lior Regev
Development of a New Method of 14C Dating of Plaster and its Implication for Dating Architectural Elements at Ramat Rahel
$ 2,000

Lidar Sapir
Livestock Management in Biblical Times: The Study of Animal Bone Pathology Using Histological Techniques
$ 2,000

Yifat Thareani-Sussely
Assyrian Palace Ware in the Southern Levant? A Typolotical and Petrographic Study
$ 1,500

Oren Tal, Haim Gitler and Matthew Ponting
Athenian-styled Silver Coins from Southern Palestine: A New Edomite Mint?
$ 2,000

Ph.D. Stipends, 2009

Eran Arie
Ph.D. thesis title: "In the Land of the Valley": Settlement, Social and Cultural Processes in the Jesreel Valley from the End of the Late Bronze Age to the Formation of the Monarchy
Supervisor: Israel Finkelstein
$ 8,500

Lidar Sapir
Ph.D. thesis title: Faunal Remains from a Complex Tell Site: Paleoecology, Paleoeconomy and Site Formation Processes - Tel Dor as a Case Study
Supervisor: Tamar Dayan
$ 2,000

Ph.D. Stipends, 2008

Omer Sergey
Ph.D. thesis title: The Formation of the Kingdom of Judah in the 9th Century BCE and its Reflection in Biblical Historiography
Supervisor: Oded Lipschits
$ 12,000

Arie Shaus
Ph.D. thesis title: Analyzing Hebrew Inscriptions of the First Temple Period via Clustering and Handwrite Recognition Algorithms
Supervisors: Nir Sochen and Nathan Intrator (School of Mathematics); Israel Finkelstein and Benjamin Sass
$ 5,250

Lidar Sapir
Ph.D. thesis title: Faunal Remains from a Complex Tell Site: Paleoecology, Paleoeconomy and Site Formation Processes - Tel Dor as a Case Study
Supervisor: Tamar Dayan
$ 1,750

Ph.D. Stipends, 2007

Eran Arie
Ph.D. thesis title: "In the Land of the Valley": Settlement, Social and Cultural Processes in the Jesreel Valley from the End of the Late Bronze Age to the Formation of the Monarchy
Supervisor: Israel Finkelstein
$ 7,000

Yifat Thareani-Sussely
Ph.D. thesis title: Towns in the Desert: Geographical, Economic and Sociopolitical Perspectives
Supervisors: Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na'aman
$ 7,000

Amir Golani
Ph.D. thesis theme: The Development, Significant and Function of Jewelry and the Evolution of the Jeweler's Craft in the Land of Israel during the Iron Age II Period
Supervisor: Shlomo Bunimovitz and Tallay Ornan
$ 1,000



The research grants and Ph.D. stipends committee:
Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Naaman and Yuval Goren (Institute of Archaeology); Irad Malkin (Department of History); Eliezer Piasetzky (the School of Physics). The committee is assisted by Sarah Lev, the administrative manager of the Institute of Archaeology.


Other Grants, 2007:

Equipment for the petrographic laboratory of the Institute of archaeology: $ 15,000

Acquisition of books for the library of the Institute of Archaeology: $ 5,000


Publications supported by the Ancient Israel program:

Tal, O. 2007. Coin Denominations and Weight Standards in Fourth-Century BCE Palestine. Israel Numismatic Research 2: 17–28.

Gitler, H., Tal, O. and van Alfen, P. 2007. Silver Dome-shaped Coins from Persian-period Southern Palestine. Israel Numismatic Research 2: 47–62.

Gitler, H., Ponting, M. and Tal, O. 2008. Metallurgical Analysis of Southern Palestinian Coins of the Persian Period. Israel Numismatic Research 3: 13–27.

Gitler, H., Ponting, M. and Tal, O. 2009. Athenian Tetradrachms from Tel Mikhal (Israel): A Metallurgical Perspective. American Journal of Numismatics, Second Series 21: 29-49.