Socio-Economic Fluctuations and Chiefdom Formation in Edom, the Negev and the Hejaz during the First Millennium BCE

JUAN MANUEL TEBES

Unearthing the Wilderness: Studies on the History and Archaeology of the Negev and Edom in the Iron Age

Peeters

Lugar: Leuven; Año: 2014; p. 1 - 30

This paper studies how changes in the Iron Age world-system affected the economy and society of Edom, the Negev and the northern Hejaz. Contrary to traditional studies, which have failed to recognise how different local peoples were from modern nation-states, and the ´tribal kingdom´ model, which has stressed the tribe as a static, almost non-historical entity, the world-system view has demonstrated that the local, essentially tribal society, evolved through two phases of chiefdom-formation and posterior dissolution. Interrelated political events--military pressure from contemporary empires and neighbouring petty states--and economic factors--the Arabah copper mining and longdistance trade in Arabian aromatics--that had long-lasting impacts on the local tribal groups can be seen under the light of these world-system interactions.