Talk:Levantine archaeology

There is a proposal to move from Syro-Palestinian archaeology to Levantine archaeology

What is this? Seems duplicative of the above?

talk) 22:51, 21 December 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

It is a request for comment. Drsmoo (talk) 00:25, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A request for comment for moves is what the above section is. I am not sure what exactly this section is supposed to be doing. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Adds an rfc to the History and Geography rfc board Drsmoo (talk) 13:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Levantine title is reasonable. Misdemenor (talk) 05:13, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. It matches with Levantine cuisine BlueBirdo (talk) 15:12, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

After the move, the article now begins "Levantine archaeology is the archaeological study of the southern Levant", immediately begging the question in the header. It doesn't seem right, but I leave it others to purse the question. Johnbod (talk) 18:56, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The subject matter of the article should reflect the subject. I'll change it now, obviously more changes need to be made throughout the article. Also creating articles for Archaeology of Syria and Archaeology of Palestine Drsmoo (talk) 19:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I believe this move was ill considered, since the article now covers only half of the title's scope. I have added a tag to this effect. If the article is not expanded within a reasonable amount of time (a month or two?) I will propose moving it back.

talk) 23:18, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks for the helpful tag. I'm modifying it to better fit the article as it stands. Obviously the article will adjust to fully fit the contemporary field of study and I look forward to seeing you, Johnbod, and many others contribute. The move change passed with overwhelming consensus reflecting the common name of the subject and the contemporary field of academic research. Your threats and ultimatums due to

WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT five hours after the article was moved are not going to fly. You're being asked to edit cooperatively, respect consensus, and add to the article constructively rather than making threats and ultimatums. I hope you can do that. If you can't, leave the editing to those interested. Drsmoo (talk) 02:41, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

In this edit, a number of sources and quotes seem to have been deleted.

• The paragraph removed in that edit was about the geographic scope of Syro-Palestinian archaeology which no longer applied, prehistory (which imo could have stayed, perhaps as part of the expansion of scope from Biblical archaeology: will include that in a bit) and a sentence that said Syro-Palestinian archaeology wasn't a term used in Palestine itself (again, not crucial information to the lead now that the scope has changed). While
  WP:OWNERSHIP, and while I'm sure you're commenting with good intentions during what it necessarily a transitional phase, it does come across quite badly! ‑‑Yodin^T 16:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Wait, the stone age part is covered at the end of the first para, and the formation of the field in the 1970s is better conveyed in the second. Can't make an omlette without breaking eggs! ‑‑Yodin^T 17:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oncenawhile, Yodin Your contributions to the article would be appreciated. There's actually not that much work to do in terms of getting things up to speed. But the more ideas and perspectives the better. Drsmoo (talk) 19:27, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Bibliography of encyclopedias has a somewhat reasonable length section on archaeology. Some of the works there may be useful in determining the content of this article and any subarticles. John Carter (talk) 17:02, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just gained access to the Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant, which should be a helpful source! Drsmoo (talk) 19:56, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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I wasn't aware of the article and the discussions here. Reading a bit through the article before looking at the talk-page, it became very obvious to me that we have a patched-up, unsatisfying hybrid, with more gaps than allowed. Since the move is already some 6 years old, this is very disconconcerting. What can be done now? Was the "move", actually a change of topic rather than one of name, as Zero noted back then, an exercise in misunderstood and misapplied political correctness? Nkthing more than eliminating that unfashionable term, Biblical archaeology, and avoiding the trouble with how to deal with Israel/Palestine? A faulty motive leads to week results, time and time again. WP editors, like any unpaid volunteers, will focus on what interests them. If Hathay, Cyprus, and Syria don't have much of a enWiki lobby, and Lebanon is insufficiently excavated, this still leaves us with an I/P article, actually a Palestine (region) article in the widest sense. Pretense isn't reality, and damn PC if it's just a fetish. Arminden (talk) 01:20, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More concrete: instead of endless paragraphs on tiny, specific topics and their evolution, as we have now (and probably nobody cares to read), what about actually defining L.A.? Why does it exist, why is it one unit? Why, really? A few ideas to chew on:

• bridge/corridor between continents
• contact space between empires (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hittites; other later incarnations). Specific to the region: relatively small states, developing in the shadow of empires.
• early innovations in agriculture and animal husbandry, mining and metallurgy, the alphabet, religious thought
• desert fringe civilisations
• contact between, indeed fluid change from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles
• for those facing the sea: maritine culture, different from the Greeks
  

etc., with focus on what is specific, i.e. different from other parts of the Fertile Crescent (and the Caucasus, Arabia, and North Africa). If the term L.A. is indeed so well-entrenched, then there must be dozens of works dealing with what makes it a coherent topic.

So not a collection of paragraphs on national archaeological research, why traditional B/biblical archaeology is outdated, and so forth. That's escapism, fleeing from the topic, quilt, not encyclopedia. What is L.A.? What area does it cover? Why eastern Syria no, but Cyprus yes? What is common and specific? What is important to the wider world, why should one care if they're not ethnically or religiously connected? Arminden (talk) 01:53, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I also don't really understand what this article is supposed to be about. A related problem is the out-of-control proliferation of regional overview articles. We have:

• Levantine archaeology
• Biblical archaeology
• Ancient Near East
• Near Eastern archaeology
• Archaeology of Palestine or Archaeology of Syria
  )
• Archaeology of Lebanon
• Prehistoric Cyprus (but not any other countries in the Levant)
• Prehistory of the Levant
• History of the ancient Levant
• List of archaeological periods (Levant)
• Chronology of the ancient Near East
• Time periods in the Palestine region
• Timeline of the history of the region of Palestine
• Epipalaeolithic Near East
• History of ancient Israel and Judah
• Near Eastern bioarchaeology
• Genetic history of the Middle East
• Nonferrous archaeometallurgy of the Southern Levant

I get that they all define their scope slightly differently, but in practice most of the content is overlapping. There is no reason why we have to have a standalone article on every notable combination of ways to slice the region geographically and temporally. Many have been around for years but none are particularly comprehensive or well-sourced. Surely it should be possible to come up with a rationalised scheme that lets us concentrate efforts on a few good overview articles? – Joe (talk) 12:38, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this often happens on WP, & some fairly brutal pruning, merging & redirecting is needed. Generally I think we need a set of "history" articles & a set/couple of archaeology ones, plus possibly a separate timeline, or not. I suppose some concessions to the more narrow biblical interest may be prudent. I'm likely to support any sensible scheme or process. Johnbod (talk) 13:13, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's not do as if we didn't know why: a) the Bible (OT, NT) and, connected to it, the Koran; and b) politics - I don't know how it has varied lately, but for many, many years the Arab-Israeli conflict has been said to take 10% of all international news, anywhere. People are focused on those two, and some end up going deeper into particular topics, beyond the religion & news level. That means: many specific topics of interest, which in itself is legitimate, as Wiki is trying to serve real, existing fields of interest. But less chaotically, please.

Why the overlaps? Sometimes out of lack of care, but certainly mainly because of the "parallel universes" phenomenon in highly conflicted areas (one truly only sees, or admits to see, his own side of things; the "Other" doesn't exist, or must be programmatically ignored), plus the extremely different level of research in the various countries involved. Israel/Palestine has been an early starter and has continued at a very high pace, due to Biblical archaeology, followed by a Zionist "back to the Land" motivation, and gradually by a more independent academia. The other countries had fewer interested Western academic powerhouses to get the work started, and more troubled and less affluent national histories and governments to push it on, plus their national myths are less dependent on archaeology. All real factors, and Wiki isn't in the business of outright bending reality according to a higher, more rational p.o.v. Only just a bit so :)

For history and archaeology, the geographical units are seldom overlapping with modern borders, in the Levant probably less so than in Europe. Also, which are the periods most in focus? This is very relevant, as the geographical cards were rearranged several times between Palaeolithic, Crusades, and later on. For the exit of humans from Africa, all of the Levant (less Cyprus) constituted the main corridor (the Arabian route being a second). For the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, it's again a main focal point. For the Bronze Age, Mesopotamia and Egypt become the main foci, and the Levant lags behind in many regards (not as many as we thought, but still). For the Iron Age, Biblical archaeology takes centre stage for most non-specialists, and for many scholars as well (let's not play ostrich). But "local Hittites", Arameans, Arabs, Sea Peoples etc., are added to the empires in playing a major role. Phoenicians hugely project outwards. Hellenism changes the game completely, tying in the Levant into a much wider acculturation process, continued under Rome. Christianity resets the deck, and then Islam does the same. The Crusader episode was much more important than admitted by many locals (full Islamisation finally takes hold in Palestine, to mention just one major outcome). The Ottomans again make the Levant part of a world empire.

So, what is this article going to focus on and why? Why did the term Levantine archaeology take hold, with which main periods in mind? Because the 'Levantine' binder is much weaker in some periods than in others. It's not up to us to push our opinions forward, but to look into what has been written by those who have invented and established the term. We're not the masters of the topic, we're just here to present what academia has come up with. (Somebody was trying to convince me that Wikipedia is more independent than that, that it can have articles on terms that hardly do exist in English, but in such a well-trodden domain as Levantine archaeology, when dealing with a firmly established academic term, we most certainly don't have the latitude to improvise). I don't have the drive to do it myself, but judging by the amount of time & energy spent here on fighting it over, some do. Better go to the sources than trying to reinvent the wheel.

As to the list of articles: we should perhaps start by organising them according to some logic. My five cents: allowing for "some concessions to the more narrow biblical interest" may not just be prudent, but 100% needed. We're not acting in a void or ivory tower. Altogether, if a topic is of large interest, it deserves an article. The Near Eastern archaeology#Geographic subdivisions looks like a well-founded, very useful starting point. And it does separate northern from southern Levant!

General overview

• History of the ancient Levant
• Near Eastern archaeology
  • Ancient Near East
• Levantine archaeology
  • Biblical archaeology

"National" criteria

• Archaeology of Palestine because there is so little of it post-48 and post-67 outside what's being done by Israeli archaeologists. Which is a shame, but we're talking facts, not political correctness. The area covered by the "Archaeology of Israel" though is a tricky subject, as is anything I/P (think for instance Herod's winter palaces in Jericho). Archaeology of Syria
  : I know far too little about it, but how much has been done? I just know the French have been very active during their mandate and stayed on after that, with a huge focus on the "Frankish" castles.
• Archaeology of Lebanon

Periodisation (archaeological and historical), and timelines

• Chronology of the ancient Near East - the Near East is defined here much wider geographically than the Levant. The focus here are Mesopotamia and Egypt, with Hittites & Levant in tow.
• List of archaeological periods (Levant)
• Time periods in the Palestine region - more care in distinguishing between archaeological and historical periods; outdated Israeli terms deserve a short mention, not centre-stage presence.
• Timeline of the history of the region of Palestine
  - quite useful, but I never knew it exists.

By periods & regions

• Prehistory of the Levant
• Prehistoric Cyprus (but not any other countries in the Levant) - well, as an island it is quite particular. I would welcome more articles on the other (sub)regions.
• Epipalaeolithic Near East
• History of ancient Israel and Judah

By topic

• Near Eastern bioarchaeology
• Genetic history of the Middle East: just see how many recent headlines it made (Jews & Palestinians, Phoenician-Lebanese continuity etc.).
• Nonferrous archaeometallurgy of the Southern Levant: bronze! Hugely important locally (from the Chalcolithic cultures to the emergence of Edom to Herod's wealth)

Essential here: interlink the articles! Several of them I'm discovering here for the first time, and I'm using enWiki a lot. They could be very useful, but are hidden, not sufficiently linked. I'm afraid creating categories and using existing ones might not help much, they are hidden in the technical frame at the bottom of the page, I suppose many users don't look that far. "Main" tags and "see also" lists are more visible, along with in-text wikilinks. I'm against removing "main" tags and "see also" listings once in-text links are created, as the latter are also far less visible. Most users rush to the topic of interest, don't study the Wiki articles in detail.

On separating history from archaeology: only for the second tier. Archaeology is not an end in itself, it's just a means of reconstructing history. So no, IMHO. One should branch off large bits of archaeology from history articles into independent articles, but those are "just" serving the historical narrative. So in WP terms: history articles first, well linked to secondary archaeology articles.Arminden (talk) 16:29, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Archaeology is not an end in itself, it's just a means of reconstructing history." Many, many, many archaeologists will disagree with you here... ;) Zoeperkoe (talk) 17:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As a heavy contributor (&if I recall right, original creator of it), I am very distressed to see this move, which has just created a duplicate of the many others above. Tiamut^talk 16:03, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note that it was originally titled

Palestinian archaeology. Tiamut^talk 16:08, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

Who has access to the relevant Oxford dictionaries? Arminden (talk) 08:30, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's even worse than I thought. We have TWO different redirects:

• Syria-Palestine to Syria (region)
• Syro-Palestine to Levant

Worst possible situation. To preempt any silly comments: Syro- and Syria- are 100% the same, whereas those two targets might or might not be the same. If they are, merge them or interlink them thoroughly; if they aren't, decide to which of the two S-P should redirect, 'but not to both!" Fuck PC. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 08:40, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

According to Syria (region):

• "The historic region of Syria [...], in modern literature called Greater Syria, Syria-Palestine, or the Levant"

And according to Levant:

• "Today the term is often used in conjunction with prehistoric or ancient historical references. It has the same meaning as "Syria-Palestine" [...] Both the noun Levant and the adjective Levantine are now commonly used to describe the ancient and modern culture area formerly called Syro-Palestinian"

(By the way we also have Syria Palaestina)

One solution could be to merge Syria (region) and Levant. What do you think? A455bcd9 (talk) 22:22, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A455bcd9, hi. you were of course just technically wrong. This region is a minefield, with nationalists blocking most common-sense mergers. What we need to do then is not to confuse the user additionally, and interlink as much as possible, by all imaginable permutations of redirects and headnotes, the articles which are actually largely covering the same topic. As a first though, checking all that's already there is the only way to avoid such, I admit, unexpected conundrums. So good luck with the merger, but the two different redirects now are a killer.

Syria Palaestina is an ancient admin. province, that one doesn't trouble us.Cheers, Arminden (talk) 23:16, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

I don't understand: what was I wrong about? Also, could you please Wikipedia:Assume good faith and be nice?

The pages are already interlinked as the first sentence of Syria (region) points to Levant. And the second sentence of Levant points to Syria (region) ("In its narrowest sense, it is equivalent to the historical region of Syria ("greater Syria")"). A455bcd9 (talk) 08:47, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'm sorry if I wasn't nice. I most certainly never doubted your good faith. I've sorted it out meanwhile, for me the main problem is solved, at least in its broadest terms (a dedicated space for the various quasy-synonyms would still be needed, as a note to self). The issue was: in a matter of very specific terminology, making edits in a field which is not one's specialty, just on the base of a logical deduction, can easily go wrong. Setting a redirect creates serious technical obstacles for future edits; removing a redirect is difficult, as it depends on others. Total good faith, of course, but the result was in the pudding, and that was

• Syria-Palestine redirected to Syria (region)
• Syro-Palestine redirected to Levant
  .

That in itself, why it can't be good, needs no further comments.

I readily admit, searching for Syria-Palestine before adding a redirect for Syro-Palestine (or was it the other way round? Doesn't matter.) might not be easily expected. Except if you come across both terms once every few weeks or days in your work. With all due respect, I haven't seen your name in this parts of enWiki, so...

Deductions of the type "A connects to B, B connects to C, so A connects (and must be redirected) to C" are prone to go wrong, unless one knows based on good sources that it's indeed the case – in actuality, not just because it seems logical. That's all. Sorry again for being too aggressive. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 11:29, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

Thanks for your answer and no worries at all :)

Syro-Palestine now both redirect to Levant so all good, thanks for your edit

!

By the way, I contributed a lot on Levantine Arabic—which is also called "Syro-Palestinian" by some scholars— and brought it GA status (now working on FA), even though I didn't contribute on the Levant and Greater Syria articles specifically.

Cheers, A455bcd9 (talk) 14:07, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A455bcd9, thank you! Great, I wasn't aware of the linguistic aspect – would you care to add it to the article? I have added a section specifically on archaeology, maybe cuisine should also get its own section, but linguistics definitely deserve one! All I know is that in both Israel & Palestine, and in Jordan, there are areas or groups who create exceptions to the rule, i.e. speak dialects closer to the ones of Egypt and of the northern Hijaz, rather than following the rule of being part of a Syrian continuum. This of course connects to historical and ethnic aspects (Bedouin kinship, population movements - either through voluntary migration or through forced expulsion), so very interesting and relevant. Happy to see you around and learn from you! Cheers, Arminden (talk) 14:35, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes the "borders" between Arabic varieties aren't clear at all...

There's already a section Levant#Language, what do you think should be added?

By the way, your feedback is more than welcome on Wikipedia:Peer review/Levantine Arabic/archive2. Cheers, A455bcd9 (talk) 14:38, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ooops, I had actually even read it. Editing in a hurry... Not good, sorry. Arminden (talk) 15:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"The list below, from the Paleolithic Age to the Byzantine period, is drawn from the definitions provided by the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. For periods thereafter, the terminology and dates come from Sauer and Hoppe."

Giving exact years for such a large region is misleading. The various empires conquered different parts of the region at different points in time, sometimes decades or even centuries apart (see for instance the Assyrians). The Mercer Dictionary OF THE BIBLE concentrates on Palestine, not on Syria, which covers much more territory and is by no means less important, but is less in the focus of modern researchers. It's not helpful to pretend that "one size fits all". Arminden (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Arminden: What do you think of the table at List of archaeological periods (Levant)? Would it be better to just include that table in the article or does it also have problems? — Wug·a·po·des​ 07:14, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Wugapodes: As I said, the region is far to large to give such precise dates for the entirety of the concerned cultures. There are lots of different chronologies used by very serious authors. A table must necessarily be a simplification, unless you produce one with lots of columns, each for one chronology – but even there, the fact that even the periods as such and their names differ from author to author would make it almost useless (the most poignant example is the Intermediate Bronze Age clearly defined for Palestine, which is however totally ignored at List of archaeological periods (Levant), where it's mostly subsumed to Early Bronze Age IV and its beginnings to Early Bronze Age III). The most reasonable way to create chronologies is based on archaeological cultures contemporary to each other, which however a) don't necessarily share all the main characteristics, and b) are never fully synchronous over such a large territory. A fundamental innovation or the influx of a more developed group or technology reaches different areas at different moments in time, the communicating vessels principle can have some inertia.

Also, the way of subsuming a period to a larger one differs from school to school, for instance the Chalcolithic is regarded by some as separate from the Stone Age.

Concretely: that table seems to be compiled from two sources, one possibly valid for the Northern Levant, and the second for the Southern. Most of the Stone Age periods differ from, say, Negev & Gibson's (2001) dates for Palestine – a 5000-year difference for the Upper Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic limit is huge, equal to about half of the entire Epipaleolithic. From Iron Age to Modern, the dates seems copied & pasted from a Palestine chronology, which is ridiculous for Syria etc. (why should the Babylonian period start for the entire region with the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE? Or the Early Roman with Herod's ascension to the throne, and the Late one with the start of the Bar Kokhba revolt? And so forth). I'm not even talking of small differences (587 BCE seems to be the preferred date now; in WWI Jerusalem falls in 1917, but Damascus in 1918).

Probably the best would be to find a very recent, very reliable and widely accepted source for a Syrian chronology and to set it next to the one for Palestine, w/o making any attempt at combining them. Or a couple of such (again, for Syria only, apart from Palestine) and find how well they coincide and offer both sets of data next to each other. And update the Palestine dates a bit (the list is slightly dated).

I'm all for user-friendliness, so if the above suggestion is put into practice, I'd like to see the "List of archaeological periods (Levant)" left in place, and a maybe more concise version on this page as well (less clicking around for the user).

I know close to nothing about the archaeology of Syria, so I probably won't touch that topic. But somebody will have to do it, and others will have to see the result it's balanced, especially that modern politics don't influence the result too much :)

Jordan was part of Greater Syria for most of its past, but it's being quite intensely researched and it's interesting to compare the dates for both Syria and Palestine with those for Transjordan. I have two online addresses here, an official one archived in 2015, and a US MA thesis from 2010, quoting Donald S. Whitcomb of the Chicago U. (1992). Cheers, Arminden (talk) 13:20, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Arminden: Probably the best would be to find a very recent, very reliable and widely accepted source for a Syrian chronology and to set it next to the one for Palestine, w/o making any attempt at combining them. Or a couple of such (again, for Syria only, apart from Palestine) and find how well they coincide and offer both sets of data next to each other. And update the Palestine dates a bit (the list is slightly dated). I agree this would be helpful, but I'll admit I'm not an archaeologist, let alone one with expertise in this area. A strategy I've found useful for articles in linguistics is to look at edited volumes for guidance as these tend to survey the field and synthesize the literature in a way that would be helpful to us. As a tertiary source, Wikipedia wants to provide a broad overview of the field, and unlike journal articles which tend to focus on narrow reviews related to the specific topic, book chapters tend to be closer to tertiary sources by providing an overview and synthesis of multiple primary and secondary sources. Is there some kind of Handbook of Levantine Archaology with a chapter "Relative chronological evidence for archaeological periods in Syria and Palestine"? Wishful thinking, but it's an example of the kind of source I think we'd want. I'll do some digging, but if you know of any resources like that I'd be willing to check them out as well. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:53, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This might be what you are looking for:

Akkermans, Peter M. M. G.; Schwartz, Glenn M. (2003), The Archaeology of Syria. From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (ca. 16,000–300 BC), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

ISBN 0-521-79666-0

Best, Zoeperkoe (talk) 07:32, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The section '

Race no longer, since I've moved the part on 1960s archaeological schools into history.

Iskandar323 (talk) 15:59, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply

]