Continuities and Discontinuities: A Reexamination of the Intermediate Bronze Age—Middle Bronze Age Transition in Canaan

Abstract

Archaeological scholarship of the Bronze Age in Canaan has long noted and remarked on the discontinuities between the Intermediate Bronze Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, and the significance that this has for understanding the rise of Middle Bronze Age Canaanite culture. Total discontinuity suggests that there was a break in human development in Canaan, whereas continuity implies that the later era drew on preexisting patterns of settlement and represents a continuum of human development in this region. The question posed by this study is whether the prevalent view of almost complete discontinuity is either entirely logical or fully supported by the archaeological record. Evidence from Tell el-Hayyat, settlement patterns in regions of the Jordan and Hula Valleys, and the recent excavations at the Middle Bronze Age cemetery site of Gesher provide data relevant to the examination of the transition between these eras; it is here suggested that considerable continuity between these periods existed, particularly in regard to mortuary customs and certain subsistence strategies, which indicates that the later era was not marked entirely by new traditions imposed on the previous landscape but instead incorporated elements of preexisting culture and settlement.

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