Talk:Tel Yarmuth

Creation of category "EB cities in Southern Levant"; also "EB sites in Southern Levant"

I suggest the creation of a category named "EB cities in Southern Levant". I mean the core of the "bridge land" between Egypt and Syria & Mesopotamia, which seems to have had a much more lively urban EB phase than previously thought. The category would include, Bab edh-Dhra, Bet Yerah, 'En Esur, Jericho, Tel Arad, Tel Kabri, Tel Megiddo, Tel Yarmuth, etc.

If extended to include more than just urban EB sites, don't forget:

Jerusalem, Shechem, Rujum en-Nabi Shu'ayb, Rujm el-Hiri (Golan), etc.

A good, but somewhat dated source is Suzanne Richard, "Archaeological Sources for the History of Palestine: The Early Bronze Age: The Rise and Collapse of Urbanism", The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 50, No. 1 (March 1987), pp. 22-43, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The American Schools of Oriental Research. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3210081 Arminden (talk) 09:20, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'd expand "EB" to "Early Bronze Age" (?) though. – Joe (talk) 09:34, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Of course. Arminden (talk) 09:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey! First of all, let me propose using List of archaeological sites in Israel and Palestine as reference (and also help me complete this list!). Theoretically, wouldn't it be wise to create a category for Early Bronze Age settlements in the Southern Levant" and make the cities a sub-category? I say it strictly because I don't think we would be able to achieve a scholarly consensus on what exactly constitutes a city in the EB. I can't provide a source because nothing has been published in this matter, but I known that there is some criticism over the definition of En Esur is a huge city in the EB, since it was customary in the EB when structures stood for decades and began collasping, to abandon them and copy them to a nearby location (And hence the density of some EB sites). I think "settlement" is a much more neutral and inclusive term. In much clearer periods such as the IA or the Hellenistic period, the distinction between cities and other settlements is much clearer.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:56, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

There do seem to be a number of cats already. I see En Esur is in "cities of the great rift valley" for heavens sake. How much overlap would the new cat have with "bronze age sites in isreal" and "bronze age palaces in israel" for example. Maybe the bronze age categories need to be split into EB and MB (and maybe LB). Having fought the "what is a city" battle a few time in List of cities of the ancient Near East I can tell you its hard to get agreement which doesn't mean you shouldn't try, just giving you a heads up. Anyway, the new cat seems like a fair idea, noting that the EB is maybe a 1000 years long depending on who you ask so it might get big.Ploversegg (talk) 19:43, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to have cats for EB, IB, MB, and LB. While we are taking about periods spanning between 500 and a 1000 years (recent scholars have dated the initial village-period of the EB to 3700 BCE), I don't believe there are too many articles in Wikipedia about these sites, so it shouldn't be so difficult. For example, I opened the Open University's Archaeology of the Land of Israel: From Neolithic to Alexander the Great (2019) and for EB II-III (the urban periods of the EB) there are about 30 sites mentioned for each chapter, of them I would safely assume at least 10 are missing from Wikipedia. Anyways, I have plenty of access to recent literature on the entire Bronze Age both in English and Hebrew. I think that a cat for each of the four divisions of the Levantine Bronze Age is a good idea. A more radical move would be to replace "Israel" with "Southern Levant" and include sites in Jordan, Lebanon and southern Syria. This makes a lot of sense from an archaeological point of view.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:25, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, the * in Israel, in Jordan, etc. categories are useful for integrating with national history articles, but from an archaeological point of view it's an arbitrary and unhelpful distinction. It would be nice to have a parallel category scheme with more 'natural' geographical regions, especially for the prehistoric and protohistoric periods. – Joe (talk) 15:32, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

These categories should serve the articles they are referring to. For example, we have a Prehistory of the Levant article and it would make sense to have a "Prehistoric sites in the Levant". Hypothetically we can go to the highest of resolutions, making categories for "Early Bronze Age III sites in the Jezreel Valley", but this would only be neccessary when the article framework will reach that level of detail. I am considering the option of making a framework for the Bronze Age in the southern Levant. Maybe starting an article for each of the periods and laying foundations for expansion and future contribution. This would include the creation of elaborate templates and usefuly categories. I suspect such a thing won't attract many readers but that's just the nature of things. But I think we can agree that Category:Early Bronze Age sites in the Southern Levant, Category:Middle Bronze Age sites in the Southern Levant and Category:Late Bronze Age sites in the Southern Levant will serve a good purpose here.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:56, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

For the earlier periods, a while ago I created {{Epipalaeolithic Southwest Asia}} and {{Neolithic Southwest Asia}} with a bunch of red links. It's quite helpful for getting an overview of which articles we have, and which we don't (a lot!). Plus I think these curated navboxes are slightly more useful to readers than categories. – Joe (talk) 11:33, 29 May 2022 (UTC)