The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age

This book examines the early history of the biblical Philistines who migrated to the Levant during the early twelfth century BC.

Assaf Yasur-Landau (Author)

9781107660038, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 June 2014

402 pages, 309 b/w illus. 16 maps 8 tables
25.1 x 17.5 x 2.3 cm, 1 kg

In this study, Assaf Yasur-Landau examines the early history of the biblical Philistines who were among the 'Sea Peoples' who migrated from the Aegean area to the Levant during the early twelfth century BC. Creating an archaeological narrative of the migration of the Philistines, he combines an innovative theoretical framework on the archaeology of migration with new data from excavations in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel and thereby reconstructs the social history of the Aegean migration to the southern Levant. The author follows the story of the migrants from the conditions that caused the Philistines to leave their Aegean homes, to their movement eastward along the sea and land routes, to their formation of a migrant society in Philistia and their interaction with local populations in the Levant. Based on the most up-to-date evidence, this book offers a new and fresh understanding of the arrival of the Philistines in the Levant.

Introduction
1. The archaeological identification of migration and other ranges of interregional interactions
2. Setting the scene: the Mycenaean palatial culture and the outside world
3. The twelfth-century-BCE Aegean: political and social background
4. Preconditions for migration
5. Along the routes
6. Strictly business? The southern Levant and the Aegean in the thirteenth to the early twelfth century BCE
7. The material culture change in the twelfth-century Philistia
8. The Philistine society and the settlement process
9. A short history of the Aegean immigration to the Levant.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]