Count on Jericho! Early Bronze Age counting tools at Tell es-Sultan/Jericho

The aim of this poster is to analyze the appearance and use of counting tools (tokens, calculi and pierced shells) at Tell es-Sultan/Jericho during the Early Bronze Age, compared with the contemporaneous frame of the Southern Levant. This study is part of a PhD project (supervised by Prof. Lorenzo Nigro) on the development of calculation and counting ways in the Southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age in order to understand the administrative systems in this peripheral region of the Ancient Near East. During the Early Bronze Age several flourishing centers have developed in the Southern Levant, such as Tell es-Sultan/Jericho, Tell el-Mutesellim/Megiddo or Tell el-Far’ah North, which controlled the surrounding territories and numerous trade routes. Such a development must necessarily require a central management systems of community goods, although there weren’t found written texts or archives. Except for the few quotations made by D. Schmandt- Besserat, most of the attestations of tokens come from excavations of contexts between the seventh and fourth millennium BC. Although, several counting tools were recently identified in Beth Shean, Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, Tell es-Sultan / Jericho and Khirbet al-Batrawy, leading us to think that counting tools can be attested in the Southern Levant from the Early Bronze Age.