Scholar’s Bookshelf

Highlands of Many Cultures: The Southern Samaria Survey—The Sites

Israel Finkelstein and Zvi Lederman, eds. (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv Univ., 1997) Monograph Series, no. 14, 2 vols., 959 pp., 420 figs., 18 maps, $95.00

In the 1980s, while excavating Biblical Shiloh—an early Israelite cult site about 20 miles north of Jerusalem—dig director Israel Finkelstein decided to widen the scope of his research by surveying the surrounding region in Samaria. Finkelstein and assistant directors Zvi Lederman and Shlomo Bunimovitz sought to gain a better understanding of the settlement patterns of the hill-country populations during the Late Bronze (1550–1200 B.C.E.) and early Iron Ages (1200–1000 B.C.E.)—a transitional period when many scholars believe that the Israelites first emerged in this region.

These two handsome volumes provide a detailed presentation of the archaeological data from their survey of a 400-square-mile area located between Shechem and Ramallah. A third volume will integrate all the survey data with historical, economic and demographic information, with the hope of offering a full synthesis of the data from both the material culture and the literary record.