American Journal of Archaeology

Anthropological studies highlight the importance of food in constructing and negotiating various aspects of individual and group identity, including social status. Archaeologists have also explored this topic, working with various types of evidence and frequently applying a diachronic perspective that is usually inaccessible to other disciplines interested in foodways, such as anthropology. Previous studies examining how social status was established, maintained, or negotiated in Early Mycenaean Greece have relied heavily or solely on mortuary data, a necessity given the early focus on mortuary contexts for excavation and publication. In this article, I take a different approach and concentrate on settlement data, in particular the data deriving from those sites that have yielded evidence for the emergence of social inequality. Through the analysis of the cooking pottery repertoire, I investigate the issue of how food was manipulated by those competing for status. I argue that the appearance of innovative cooking utensils and their sets can be associated with changes in food-preparation practices, leading to more elaborate cuisine. Such a cuisine constituted a very effective means of social differentiation and was extensively used in the highly competitive environment of Early Mycenaean polities.

This article presents the results of new excavation, remote sensing, and conservation activities at the Phrygian capital of Gordion in central Turkey. The most important discoveries were of Iron Age date and relate to Gordion’s fortification system and city plan. Fieldwork focused on the southern side of the Citadel Mound, where excavation yielded a large Early Phrygian (ninth century B.C.E.) glacis or stepped terrace wall more than 2.5 m in height that supported a substantial fortification wall nearly 3 m wide. New fortifications dating to the Middle Phrygian (eighth century B.C.E.) and Late Phrygian (sixth century B.C.E.) periods were also uncovered in the same area, as was a new gateway leading into the citadel. A sondage beneath the Early Phrygian “Terrace Building Complex,” or industrial quarter, produced traces of occupation during the Early Bronze Age, as well as evidence for the construction of an enormous terrace during the ninth century B.C.E. A new campaign of remote sensing clarified the street plan in Gordion’s two residential districts (the “Lower Town” and “Outer Town”), in addition to revealing the presence of fortification walls, defensive ditches, and a large fort on the western side of the Outer Town. Conservation activities focused on the Terrace Building, the ninth-century B.C.E. pebble mosaic floor from Megaron 2, and the Early Phrygian Gate Complex, still the best-preserved citadel gate in Iron Age Asia Minor.

Excavations of the Egyptian New Kingdom fortress in Jaffa (Tel Yafo, ancient Yapu), on the southern side of Tel Aviv, were renewed by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project from 2011 to 2014. This work is an outgrowth of the project’s reappraisal of Jacob Kaplan’s excavations in the Ramesses Gate area from 1955 to 1962. As the Egyptian fortress in Jaffa is the only one excavated in Canaan, its archaeological record provides a unique perspective on resistance to Egyptian rule from ca. 1460 to 1125 B.C.E., but especially during the second half of the 12th century B.C.E., when Jaffa was twice destroyed. Radiocarbon dates from these two destructions are presented, and it is suggested that they offer the clearest basis thus far for proposing ca. 1125 B.C.E. as a terminus post quem for the end of Egyptian rule in Canaan. The archaeological evidence, taken together with textual sources, yields a picture of local resistance to the Egyptian military presence in Jaffa likely originating in Canaanite centers located throughout the coastal plain.

A hoard of objects was found in 2008, buried under a floor pavement of a room in the Hellenistic administrative building at Tel Kedesh in northern Israel. The hoard consists of an Eros terracotta figurine, glass astragals and gaming pieces, writing paraphernalia made of metal, and a hairpin. In this article, I explore the hoard, its meaning, and its context in terms of findspot and the geographical location of the site on the periphery of Hellenistic Phoenicia. Based on the objects from the hoard, as well as on literary and visual sources from the Hellenistic world and particularly from the southern Levant, I argue that the objects were the property of a young, upper-class bride who buried them as part of a premarriage ritual.