By the beginning of the second millennium B. C., Terminal Timnian/Early Bronze Age iV sites in the Negev were abandoned and the central Negev remained devoid of pastoral tribal presence (or agricultural presence for that matter) until the beginning of the first millennium B. C., this in spite of Middle and Late Bronze Age sites in the southern Negev, southern Jordan, and Sinai (e. g., Avner, Carmi, and Segal 1994; Pratico 1985; Rothenberg 1972a-b). Unfortunately, these have been too little investigated, and their nature has not been adequately explicated. Coinciding with the contraction of the desert pastoral expanse, the agricultural regime also retreated to areas north of the Beersheva Basin, this retreat accompanied by reurbanization after the third-millennium collapse. Exceptions in the Beersheva Basin at fortified sites such as Masos and Malhata seem to reflect military rather than settlement expansion (Beit-Arieh 2003b: 11*).
Thus archaeological evidence in the Negev is limited, but the geographical contraction on both sides of the central Negev indicates a fundamental change in pastoral-agricultural relations. i suggest, as a hypothesis to be explored and not as a proven fact, that this period in the southern Levant sees the rise of enclosed nomadism, the pastoral adaptation described by Rowton (e. g., 1974, 1977), wherein tribal groups lived in the interstices between the urban sites, with seasonal migrations beyond the settled zone. Rowton’s analyses were based primarily on the Mari archives with their large number of references to nomads (e. g., Kupper 1957; Luke 1965; Matthews 1978) and reflect the spatial expanses of the Syrian steppe. As such his portrayal is probably not a perfect fit for the Levant given its complex mosaic of human and
Of collapse, the Early Bronze Age iV, in the southern Levant, a period with no cities, corresponds to significant pastoral tribal presence in the central Negev (although a scarcity of sites in the northern Negev).
STEVEN A. ROSEN
Physical geography (e. g., Marfoe 1979), but still describes a system with a far higher level of integration between the pastoralists and the state (with all its accoutrements, including agriculture) than we have seen in earlier periods in the Negev.
The evidence for enclosed nomadism in the southern Levant is textual. References to groups such as the Apiru (e. g., na’aman 1986; rowton 1977), serving primarily as a social or class designation, and the shasu, either a class designation or an ethnic attribution (e. g., Dever 1997), suggest extra-urban tribal levels of organization (Redford 1992: 269-73). The Shasu are even referred to as tent-dwellers (Redford 1992: 278). Both groups are found within or in proximity to the settled zone. To judge from such texts as the Amarna letters (e. g., Aharoni 1967: 163-64), these tribal groups comprised a significant force to be reckoned with in terms of the internal political balance of the settled zone. Levy and Holl (2002) have recently gone so far as to suggest that such groups were the primary populations of Feinan during the Iron Age, perhaps in fact controlling the copper sources, and at least providing the manpower for their exploitation (also see Levy, this volume). Integration with the settled zone is total in this period and can be compared to the various Mari tribal groups where recent claims have even suggested that some of the Mari kings were tribal in origin (Fleming, this volume). This is a fundamentally different system from the preceding period, as Rowton (1974) himself was aware in his distinction between enclosed and external nomadism.
There are two methodological difficulties with the claim that enclosed nomadism begins in the second millennium B. C. The first is the problem of tracing these groups archaeologically, and the second is the question of whether enclosed nomadism existed earlier.
The absence of archaeology for these groups is difficult. The traditional explanation is one of archaeological visibility, that tents and other light structures of organic materials would not be likely to leave an archaeological signature, or that such a signature might be obscured by vegetation, alluviation, or other processes of destruction or burial. On the other hand, in the desert, sites with stone foundations from the Timnian have been found easily and tent remains have been found dating to classical times (and of course, later). Although one might argue that tents do not leave recoverable archaeological remains in the settled zone, tents in fact seem to be a late phenomenon, used for habitation structures among desert nomads only after the domestication of the camel (Rosen and Saidel in press). Taking a cue from Mari, the enclosed nomads of the second millennium B. C. probably lived in villages, with subgroups engaged in pastoral transhumance. Thus, they may indeed be present in the archaeological record, but as villagers and not as putative tent nomads.
With respect to the existence of enclosed nomadism in the third millennium B. C. (thus earlier than the proposed beginning of the phenomenon in the second millennium B. C.), the difficulty lies in the asymmetry of the evidence. The historical record from the third millennium B. C. is not comparable to that of the second so that it is conceivable that enclosed nomadism is, in fact, an earlier phenomenon which simply does not appear in the scant written records of the period. On the other hand, if we assume that the nomads of the desert and those of the Mediterranean zone were culturally affiliated, then in the settled zone in the third millennium B. C. there are no known sites similar architecturally or in terms of material culture to those of the desert Timnian. In somewhat more detail, the round habitation structures of the Terminal Timnian (Early Bronze IV) are absent from the settled zone, despite the presence of village sites of smaller dimensions than the Terminal Timnian sites of the Negev. Furthermore, the material culture of these regions contrasts, both in the difference in ceramic family groups between north and south (e. g., Amiran 1969; Dever 1973) and in lithic typology and function (Rosen 1997: 103-11; Rosen et al. 2006; Vardi 2005). A similar argument can be made for earlier periods, based on differences in the configuration of ceramic and lithic assemblages.
The question remains open, but the idea of second - and early first-millennium B. C. enclosed nomadism in Palestine has been used in explanations of the origins of the Israelites (e. g., Finkelstein 1988), the nomads in effect sedentarizing into a new ethnos, the israelites (also faust 2006). in this context, the concept may also help explain the nature of the Negev iron age, a period with small hill forts enmeshed in what can perhaps be described as a rural steppe. If a Mediterranean zone state expanded into the desert in the eleventh-tenth centuries B. C.,6 then this expansion may well have incorporated an extra-urban agro-pastoral component, perhaps a co-option of tribal groups. Such a scenario, of pastoral territories enclosed within the settled zone, would also explain the fact that, unlike the preceding Timnian and succeeding classical complex, there was no separate pastoral tribal presence beyond the zone settled in the Negev during the Iron Age.
The collapse of the Iron Age polities in the central Negev is inferred from the abandonment of the region from the eleventh/tenth century B. C. until the Persian period (cf. Cohen 1980). Unlike the Timnian contraction, apparently to the south, the Iron Age populations most likely moved back to the north. The re-emergence of a pastoral system in the central Negev occurs only with the penetration of Nabatean pastoralists, several centuries after the establishment of the spice trade system.
World History
