Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin.
Jacobs, Paul F.
In the decade of the 1980s the Israel Antiquities Authority initiated
a survey of the central hill country of Israel. Archaeological Survey of
the Hill Country of Benjamin presents results from that survey,
reporting on some five hundred square kilometers between Ramallah and
Jerusalem, data essential to any comprehensive overview of settlement
patterns, trade and political alliances, routes of communication, and
the like for any period in the past. This book takes an essential and
large step toward the (archaeological) reconstruction of past cultures
and sub-cultures of the surveyed region.
For readers without access to modern Hebrew, much that the book
offers will be beyond reach: the English section of the book is a much
abbreviated version of the Hebrew, as a comparison of the numbers of
pages allotted to each shows. Indeed, the format of the Hebrew portion
of the book makes the data easier to locate and, hence, to compare from
one site summary to another. The Hebrew also contains some information
not included in the English. For example, the English summary of each
site lists site number, map location, site name, size in dunams, summary
description, sherds by era and by percentage, and total number of
sherds. The Hebrew gives, in addition, elevation above sea level,
distance from the site to a source of water, and a description from a
single line to a small paragraph in length. Each (Hebrew) chapter lists
sites corresponding to a surveyed map section (e.g., section 16-14)
located on the accompanying 1:50,000 map (the English, not divided into
chapters, consists of a serial list of sites). In addition, at the
beginning of each Hebrew chapter are summaries.
This book is an essential purchase for any serious archaeological
library (including those dedicated to English-reading patrons). It is
unfortunate that the entire book has not already been translated;
however, the struggle to read the Hebrew text, even with dictionary in
hand, is worth the effort.
The usefulness and excellence of the book are obvious; only two
general matters detract from it. First, the reader is informed that
because of widely divergent field conditions, a variety of (sampling?)
methods and recording techniques formed the base level of data; however,
nowhere do the editors discuss theoretical (or practical) matters of
interpreting and incorporating data drawn from divergent methods. Though
this does not appear to detract much from a report on a "full
coverage survey" (p. 9*), some discussion of the matter seems
required for the reader to evaluate the reports. Second, an undertaking
as large as the survey of the hill country of Benjamin necessarily faces
severe limitations in publication of amassed data. Ideally, every piece
of evidence would appear, so that the reader might judge the accuracy of
interpretations of the pottery, as well as to allow future ceramic
specialists to apply to the data newly discovered temporal, cultural, or
geographical dimensions. Unfortunately, a book containing descriptions
and drawings of all of the sherds (and other materials) would prove too
costly to produce.
In this light, Finkelstein's intimation of shrinking
archaeological resources (some of the sites reported in this volume have
already disappeared under modern construction techniques) also serves to
refocus attention on the obligation archaeologists and historians have
not only to publish their research, as this book surely does, but also
to learn to do much more with their data. Fortunately, archaeology now
participates in an age that enables positive response (at least in part)
to these necessities. Because of advances in electronic storage and
retrieval systems, the obligation to publish extends now, I believe, to
complete publication of archaeological data. The Benjamin survey lends
itself naturally to electronic reporting methods, a means whereby it is
feasible to make available in digitized format every diagnostic sherd
(not merely, for example, 26 of the 213 collected from Site 1).
The important advances made by this volume are welcome and to be
praised; but they simultaneously highlight the frustrations of
traditional publication. Shrinking resources on all sides
(archaeological and financial) also become opportunities for the editors
of this and future projects to realize the full value of their field
work by complete publication of this full coverage survey of the hill
country of Benjamin.
PAUL F. JACOBS MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY
