Archaeological periodization vs absolute chronology: what does not work with high and low Early Bronze Age in Southern Levant

The comparison of two sites of Tell es-Sultan and Tall al-Ḥammām, facing each other on the opposite sides of the Jordan, needs a reliable cultural and chronological correlation. Something which has been pursued by archaeologists with different methods and approaches: synchronization in time and culture is never easy. This leads to the issue of relative and absolute chronology. A recent reassessment of Early Bronze Age absolute chronology of Syria-Palestine, stemmed from a reexamination of available radiocarbon datings and from stratigraphic inter-sites correlations, poses more problems than it solves. There is a basic problem of method: to keep stratigraphy, periodization, absolute dating and cultural interpretation separated. It often happens that the latter is confused with periodization. This has deeply-rooted reasons, but it is time for archaeology to introduce a tool to distinguish periods - that are time quantities - from cultural horizons; this tool is here defined as “cultural genome”. The sequence of Tell es-Sultan, for its completeness, spatial and chronological extension and rate of publication, can be used as a reference for the whole Early Bronze Age in Southern Levant. This paper suggests how to use it.