The Cultural and Economic Composition of Late Hellenistic Upper Galilee: A Case Study of the Squatters at Tel Kedesh.

Abstract

In 1999 a large building was discovered at Tel Kedesh that had been the administrative center for northern Upper Galilee in the Persian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid periods. The building had been partially destroyed and abandoned around 143 BCE, a date that corresponds remarkably well with 1 Maccabees’ account of the defeat of the Seleucid army by the Hasmonaeans (1 Maccabees 11:62-74). Approximately 5 years later it was repurposed for domestic use and inhabited by an otherwise unknown group of people (“the Squatters”) whose material culture was very different from both that of the Persian/Hellenistic Administrative Building (PHAB) and that of the Late Hellenistic Stuccoed Building, a villa at Tel Anafa, ca. 12 km northeast of Kedesh that was being built at the same time that the Squatters were living in the administrative building. Many of the Squatter vessels came from Lower Galilee and represent shapes that have parallels at Jerusalem, Shechem, Pella, Gamla, and Khirbet esh-Shuhara; they also suggest southern potting traditions. This dissertation explores the possibility that the Squatters at Tel Kedesh could have been Jews settled by Jonathan after his defeat of Demetrius II (or Galileans who migrated northward) within the context of academic debates over early Hasmonaean annexation of and Jewish expansion into Galilee (i.e., prior to 103 BCE). It uses the data from Kedesh to explore important questions about social changes brought about by the decline of Seleucid power and the consequent rise of autonomous “states” on the eve of Roman annexation of the Eastern Mediterranean. On a more theoretical level it raises questions about the degree to which we can equate material remains with actual cultures in history (“Do pots equal people?”), issues of identity in antiquity (individual, group, ethnic, religious, and cultural), and intercultural relations and economic transactions in border regions. In synthesizing the above analyses it concludes that the Squatters were most likely the dispossessed urban poor of the city of Kedesh and exposes the ubiquitous but previously unstudied phenomenon of people making homes in abandoned urban buildings in antiquity.