The Shephelah was densely settled in the Late Bronze Age, but most of the settlements were gradually abandoned during the transition to the Iron I period. Only a few Iron I settlements existed in the eastern part of the region (excluding the Philistine sites at the northwestern edge of the Shephelah), forming a small Canaanite enclave. During the Iron II period the region was gradually resettled, and it became part of Judah. This process lasted until the 8th century BCE, when the region reached an unparalleled demographic peak. Sennacherib’s campaign brought wide-scale destruction, and the region recovered only partially before being devastated by Nebuchadnezzar. After reconstructing the region’s settlement history, the article reassesses its political and demographic history in comparison to the neighbouring regions of the Judean highlands and the southern coastal plain, it is concluded that the Shephelah had a lesser role in the history of Judah than some recent studies suggest.

Study analyzes early development of the slowly nascent Judah/Israel with special emphasis laid on three cites in Shephelah, namely Khirbet Qeiyafa, Beth Shemesh and Tel Batash that offer abundant evidence of the rapidly changing cultural and political climate in the Sorek and Elah Valleys during the late 11th and 10th centuries BCE. Instead of providing a clear-cut solution to the question of exactly when Judah/Israel first came into existence, the author tries to formulate general methodological points that might serve as a foundation for further discussion on this very complex and intricate issue.

Two issues are frequently discussed in relation to Ancient Judah in archaeological research covering the period of Iron Age I and IIA. The first of these concerns the question of the existence of a so-called United Monarchy. Older archaeological research and its findings generally overlapped with the biblical texts related to this period. This was also the case with the United Monarchy, which was dated from the end of 11th century BCE and was considered to be a real historical and political state with three kings – namely, Saul, David and Solomon – who ruled successively. Shortly after 930 BCE, the death of the third ruler was followed by a split in the monarchy. The extent of the political entity that is described in biblical texts included vast territories to the north and south, a portion of land beyond the Jordan River, and part of the Coastal Plain to the west. An extensive description of this period is recorded in 2 Samuel 8, which expresses a particular view regarding the ter...

Over the last decade, new excavations (see below) and the publication of survey materials (cf. Dagan 2000, 2010, 2011b) have shown that the Late Bronze Age (LB) was a period of great significance in the Shephelah. Unlike most of the southern Levant, settlement in the Shephelah during the LB (56 sites actually increased following the Middle Bronze (MB) II (47 sites). This evidence seems to indicate that the Shephelah was more immune to the destabilizing forces that characterized the southern Levant during the transition between the MB and LB (e.g., Gonen 1984, 1992b, 1992a; Mazar 1990: 239–241; Weinstein 1991; Fischer 2006; Maeir 2010: 165–178). The historical rationale for this relative immunity goes beyond the scope of our paper, however, in what follows we would like to layout the current archaeological landscape of the Shephelah during the LB with a specific emphasis on the 13th century BCE, which to date is the only phase from the LB that we have excavated at Tel Burna. In order to accomplish this, we will compare the excavated results of the main archaeological sites of the Shephelah that were inhabited during the LB to the contemporaneous remains from Tel Burna.