The economic organization of southern Canaan in the Late Bronze Age: A synthesis of the textual and archaeological data

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to consider a decentralized model, as opposed to the traditional centralized model, to explain the economic organization of the Late Bronze Age. The goals of this study are threefold: (1) to examine the internal economic organization of southern Canaan during the Late Bronze Age through a comparison of the textual and archaeological data and by comparison to neighboring cultures, (2) to examine and test the applicability of the "city-state" and the "dendritic-trade" model to Late Bronze Age southern Canaan, and (3) to suggest that a system of wealth finance, based on the distribution of imported pottery, was used to encourage villagers to participate in the trade networks. Chapter Two reviews the history of both social and economic theory pertaining to the Late Bronze Age in Syria-Palestine. Chapter Three describes the neighboring economic systems of Mycenaean Greece, Crete, Cyprus and Ugarit. Chapter Four is a database of all archaeological material used in this study. Chapter Five considers the relevant textual information. Chapter Six is a synthesis of the archaeological and textual material by which potential dendritic trade routes are modeled. Chapter Seven presents two case studies on Megiddo and Yavneh-Yam that provide further support for the Dendritic-Trade network Model.