Paléorient, vol. 40.2, p. 183-201 © CNRS ÉDITIONS 2014 Manuscrit reçu le 13 décembre 2013, accepté le 19 juin 2014 NEW EVIDENCE FOR THE ANATOLIAN
ORIGINS OF ‘ KHIRBET KERAK WARE
PEOPLE’ AT TEL BET YERAH (ISRAEL),
CA 2800 BC
R. GREENBERG, R. SHIMELMITZ and M. ISERLIS
One of the central quests of the past decade and a half of research and excavation at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet Kerak) in the Jordan Valley (fi g. 1) has been to establish markers for the presence of distinct migrant communities from the Kura-Araxes/ Early Transcausian Culture (ETC), and more specifi cally— from South-Eastern Anatolia, in the Southern Levant (Greenberg 2007; Iserlis 2009; Paz 2009; Greenberg
et al. 2012). 1 As early as 1951, Red-Black burnished ceramics (Khirbet Kerak Ware, henceforth KKW) and anthropomorphic
1. The Tel Bet Yerah Research and Excavation Project at Tel Aviv University has, since 2000, been engaged in the publication of excavations at the site conducted between 1933 and 1986 ; excavations were renewed in 2003, with six seasons of excavations conducted to date (2014).
portable andirons found in the Levant were construed as evidence for such a migration (Hood 1951; Amiran 1952), yet the absence of any other material testimony undermined the argument, allowing scholars to suggest that other forms of cultural diffusion or transfer might be responsible for the spread of the Khirbet Kerak style (e. g., Todd 1973; Philip 1999). Pottery as such, it was suggested, could not stand in for an entire migrating community (de Miroschedji 2000). Moreover, the adoption of a limited suite of cultural preferences could be effected by
