Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in Ancient Israel and its Social Implications [signed]

Archaeological research should attempt to interpret the social context of material culture remains, beyond their typological and chronological affinities. Re-examination of key architectural features and the lay-out of excavated sites in Israel casts an entirely new light on the structure of the societies that occupied them. Careful analysis and reinterpretation of city plans, some compiled here for the first time from excavators' descriptions, reveal that urbanism was a cyclic phenomenon which waxed and waned over a period of three millennia from the Early Bronze Age to the Babylonian conquest.