Avraham Faust
Professor of archaeology at the Department of General History, Bar-Ilan University and a research fellow at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa.
I received my degrees from Bar-Ilan University (PhD, 2000), and studied also at the University of Oxford (visiting graduate student, 1997/8) and Harvard University (post-doc, 2002). In 2008 I was Kennedy Leigh fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, in 2012/2013 I taught at the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University as a Visiting Professor, and in 2020 I served as the Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies in the University of Chicago.
My research interests include the archaeology of the Land of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages (biblical archaeology), especially from social and anthropological perspectives, as well as aspects of settlement archaeology, urban-rural interaction, socio-economic stratification, ethnicity, processes of social complexity, and excavations and survey methods and methodology.
I participated in a number of excavations and surveys in Israel and abroad. In the years 1997-2003 I directed (with Adi Erlich) the excavations at the small rural site of Kh. er-Rasm in the Shephelah (Israel), and from 2006 I am directing the excavations at Tel 'Eton (Israel) and the survey in its surrounding, and from 2024 also a survey in the Negev Highlands.
I authored many books and articles covering various aspects of Israel's archaeology from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, with a special focus on Iron Age society.
Among the books I authored are the following:
• Israelite Society in the Period of the Monarchy: An Archaeological Perspective (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2005 [in Hebrew]);
• Israel's Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006; the book won three book prizes: the Irene Levi Sala Prize for books on the Archaeology of Israel, the ASOR's G.E. Wright Book Award and the Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award);
• The Excavations at Kh. er-Rasm: The Changing Faces of the Countryside (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011) (with Adi Erlich);
• The Archaeology of the Israelite Society in the Iron Age II (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012);
• Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature; 2012);
• The Settlement History of Ancient Israel: A Quantitative Analysis (Ramat Gan: Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, 2015 [in Hebrew]) (with Zeev Safrai);
- The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
- The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press) (with Zev Farber)
Address: The Department of General History
Bar-Ilan University
Ramat-Gan 52900
Israel
email: [email protected]
I received my degrees from Bar-Ilan University (PhD, 2000), and studied also at the University of Oxford (visiting graduate student, 1997/8) and Harvard University (post-doc, 2002). In 2008 I was Kennedy Leigh fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, in 2012/2013 I taught at the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University as a Visiting Professor, and in 2020 I served as the Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies in the University of Chicago.
My research interests include the archaeology of the Land of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages (biblical archaeology), especially from social and anthropological perspectives, as well as aspects of settlement archaeology, urban-rural interaction, socio-economic stratification, ethnicity, processes of social complexity, and excavations and survey methods and methodology.
I participated in a number of excavations and surveys in Israel and abroad. In the years 1997-2003 I directed (with Adi Erlich) the excavations at the small rural site of Kh. er-Rasm in the Shephelah (Israel), and from 2006 I am directing the excavations at Tel 'Eton (Israel) and the survey in its surrounding, and from 2024 also a survey in the Negev Highlands.
I authored many books and articles covering various aspects of Israel's archaeology from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, with a special focus on Iron Age society.
Among the books I authored are the following:
• Israelite Society in the Period of the Monarchy: An Archaeological Perspective (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2005 [in Hebrew]);
• Israel's Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006; the book won three book prizes: the Irene Levi Sala Prize for books on the Archaeology of Israel, the ASOR's G.E. Wright Book Award and the Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award);
• The Excavations at Kh. er-Rasm: The Changing Faces of the Countryside (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011) (with Adi Erlich);
• The Archaeology of the Israelite Society in the Iron Age II (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012);
• Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature; 2012);
• The Settlement History of Ancient Israel: A Quantitative Analysis (Ramat Gan: Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, 2015 [in Hebrew]) (with Zeev Safrai);
- The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
- The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press) (with Zev Farber)
Address: The Department of General History
Bar-Ilan University
Ramat-Gan 52900
Israel
email: [email protected]
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Books by Avraham Faust
The analysis is based on two datasets. The first is taken from salvage excavations, and is strongly biased toward small, rural sites, which are greatly underrepresented in traditional "histories" The second is of published large-scale excavations, and is biased toward large, urban sites. Taken together, the two datasets represent both the rural and urban sectors, and their analysis allows us to understand settlement processes, and to identify differences between regions, trends in urban and rural settlement across time, patterns of continuity and discontinuity, and much more.
Large parts of the book are devoted to methodological discussions, but most of it comprises an attempt to reconstruct the settlement history of ancient Israel and its various sub-regions.
Generally speaking, however, the archaeology of ancient Israel is wedged in a paradoxical situation. Despite the large existing database of archaeological finds (from thousands of excavations conducted over an extremely limited area) scholars in this (sub)discipline typically do not engage in “theoretical” (anthropological) discussions, thus exposing a large gap between it and other branches of archaeology, in this respect. Numerous ‘archaeologically oriented’ studies of Israelite ethnicity are still conducted largely in the spirit of the ‘culture history school’, and are absent of thorough reference to the work of more recent critics, which, at best, make a selected appearance in these analyses.
Israel’s Ethnogenesis provides an “anthropologically-oriented” perspective to the discussion of Israel’s ethnogenesis. The book traces Israel's emergence in Canaan, and the complex processes of ethnic negotiations and re-negotiations that accompanied it. This monograph incorporates detailed archaeological data and relevant textual sources, within an anthropological framework. Moreover, it contributes to the ‘archaeology of ethnicity’, a field which currently attracts significant attention of archaeologists and anthropologists all over the world. Making use of an unparalleled archaeological database from ancient Israel, this volume has much to offer to the ongoing debate over the nature of ethnicity in general, and to the understudied question of how ethnic groups evolve (ethnogenesis), in particular.
Kh. er-Rasm was first settled during the Chalcolithic period, but remains from this period are meagre. The site was then resettled during the late Iron Age I and/or early Iron Age II, but these remains are also very poor, and do not include any architecture (perhaps one wall). More significant remains were dated to the late Iron Age II, and some finds are attributed to the Persian period, but the main period of occupation at the site dates from the early Hellenistic period up to the late second century BCE. The vast majority of the finds at Kh. er-Rasm are dated to the late second century BCE, as this is the time when the site was destroyed, and this is the period for which we have the most data. It appears that the Hellenistic period site served, initially, as a center as of an estate, and was apparently later transformed into an inn. This was apparently an Idumaean site, which was destroyed by the Hasmoneans during the conquest of Idumaea. Some reoccupation took place in the Early Roman period, and from then on the site was abandoned and was used by farmers and herders. During the early years of the State of Israel the site was used as a firing zone, and later on was turned into part of the British Park, where the site is located today.
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This was not always the case.
Jerusalem's began as a tiny and remote village on a low hill near the Gihon spring. From there history took over in a unique fashion, changing and molding the city, each time bringing a little closer to the unique status it eventually possessed. It was a small town in the Bronze Age, became a regional capital in the time of David, grew with the construction of Temple, originally local and regional, and survived the military challenges of the campaign of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, which greatly boosted its religious glory. It was devastated by the Neo-Babylonian army, but by this time its status as a holy city was well-established and from its ashes, the city was restored during the Return to Zion. The Temple was built anew and expanded during Second Temple Period times. It was the city of Jesus, and early Christianity, becoming holy to both Jew and Christian. It became Muslim and was at the heart of fierce battles between Muslim and Christians at the time of the Crusades, which greatly increased its importance. Finally, its establishment as the capital of the modern State of Israel and the on-going developments ever since brought it again to the center of world attention.
As a city that is sacred to all three monotheistic religions, Jerusalem had received much scholarly attention. Still, a growing rate of research and the hundreds of excavations that were carried out in its over the last two decades have significantly changed our understanding of its history in some periods. As a result of the new discoveries, most of the older books are obsolete, and there is no up-to-date book that tells the history of the city.
We seek to fix this. We bring to the readers an updated summary of the history of the city, incorporating the most recent discoveries and scholarly debates, and we do so in a popular and readable manner. Jerusalem: From its Beginning to the Ottoman Conquest presents the history of the city from its beginning to the end of the Mamluk period, while referring to the most recent findings and through the use of many maps and illustrations.
Large parts of the book are devoted to methodological discussions, relating both to the advantages and limitations of the datasets, and the ways in which they can be used (and how they cannot be used!), as well as what methodological lessons can be learnt from the research, for example about the reliability of different types of data such as surveys, when their results are compared with those of salvage excavations. The majority of the book comprises an attempt to reconstruct the settlement history of ancient Israel and its various sub-regions. Many of the discussions in the book are preliminary in nature, and present the initial results of the research and a brief analysis of the patterns observed. It is hoped that the book will encourage more research in general, as well as influence it, leading to more in depth research on the history of settlement in ancient Israel and to the furthering of a more quantitative study of the archaeological evidence and to a more systematic utilization of the vast amount of archaeological information at our disposal, which is unparalleled in any other region of the world.