Fouilles de Tel Yarmouth (1980-2009). Rapport final. Volume 1: Les fouilles sur l'acropole

Tel Yarmuth is a major archaeological site of the southern Levant,

located 25 km south-west of Jerusalem. In the Early Bronze Age, it was

the largest fortified city-state of this region. Long after its

abandonment around 2400 BCE, it was reoccupied on the acropolis only,

which remained settled more or less continuously from the Middle Bronze

Age II (17th-16th cent. BCE) to the Early Byzantine Period (4th cent.

CE). The site is identified with the biblical settlement of Yarmuth and

the Byzantine village of Iermochos. This volume is the first monograph

of the final publication of the excavations conducted between 1980 and

1. It is devoted to the excavations on the acropolis where the entire

settlement history of Yarmuth was established. It provides an account of

those excavations, a detailed presentation of the stratigraphy,

extensive descriptions of the pottery and the various archaeological

artefacts and ecofacts, and a discussion of the archaeological and

biblical contexts of the site’s history. The continuous archaeological

sequence from the Late Bronze II to the end of the Iron Age I (c.

1200-950 BCE) is especially noteworthy. It illustrates the fate of a

Canaanite village in the shadow of larger regional centers during the

momentous centuries that witnessed the decline of the Canaanite

polities, the rise of the Philistine city-states and the emergence of

the kingdom of Judah.