The socio-economic landscape of the Early Bronze IV period in the Southern Levant. A ceramic perspective

The Southern Levant during the Early Bronze IV period (2300-2000 BC) showed a marked regionalization of material culture, which has been recognized early in the reseach on the period as the main feature in its cultural horizon. It was linked to changes in the political and socio-economic organization which followed the crisis of the Early Bronze II-III (3000-2300 BC) system in the region and the demise of the fortified settlements, after which the region reverted to village life and to the domestic mode of production. Yet, far from being a static and unitary historical-archaeological period, the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC was involved in continuous developments, gradually leading from crisis to recovery and, finally, to a new growth. The paper seeks to analyse such changes and focuses on the central and advanced phases within the period, defined through archaeological markers isolated in the ceramic record on a stratigraphic basis. Ceramic assemblages from the different ecological and cultural niches of the southern Levant are analysed adopting a perspective in which production, distribution and consumption of pottery are emphasised as primary factors in the formation and composition of the assemblages. Thus, the identification of different coexisting levels within the spheres of pottery production, distribution and consumption is proposed, and hypotheses on the reconstruction of patterns of socio-economic interaction of the different areas within the Southern Levant during the Early Bronze IV period are proposed.