Free David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman Page B

that he was a tenth-century BCE northern highland leader who claimed a large area on both sides of the Jordan, with a special core in the hill country of Benjamin, north of Jerusalem. So, what kind of “kingdom” was that?
    THE RISE OF THE NORTHERN HIGHLANDS
    If Judah of the tenth century BCE was a remote and isolated chiefdom, the highlands to the north were very different. We get a quite remarkable picture from the large-scale archaeological surveys that have been conducted in the hill country to the north of Jerusalem and from excavations of some important Iron I sites in that area. We now know that in the later phase of Iron I—the late eleventh and tenth century BCE —the territory in which the Bible localizes Saul’s territory was relatively densely inhabited as the result of a major settlement shift. A dramatic demographic expansion is evident in the number and distribution of settlement sites, and in their growing size. From only about twenty-five recorded sites in the area between Jerusalem and the Jezreel Valley in the preceding Late Bronze Age, the number skyrockets to more than 230 in the late Iron I period. Their estimated population was just over forty thousand, compared to less than five thousand in the entire hill country of Judah.
    Environment obviously played a major role in the area’s economic difference from rugged, semiarid Judah. Large parts of the highlands north of Jerusalem are well suited for extensive agriculture. The plateau of Benjamin, the small fertile valleys to the south of Shechem, the larger ones between that city and the Jezreel Valley in the north, as well as the less arid eastern flank of the highlands, offered their inhabitants wide areas for the cultivation of grain. Even the more rugged parts of the western side of the northern hill country were extensively terraced for vineyards and olive groves. Indeed, excavations in some of the more important mounds in this area revealed evidence for public construction and clues for significant administrative activity: an elaborate storage facility at Shiloh (reported in the Bible as a central shrine in the later days of the period of the judges) and a possible continuity of activity in the ancient monumental temple of Shechem.
    A similarly dramatic settlement expansion took place across the Jordan, in the northern part of the Transjordanian plateau. There, too, the number of settled sites vastly expanded, from about thirty in the Late Bronze Age to about 220 in the Early Iron Age. In the area of Gilead, with its fertile plateau, where agricultural potential was high, surveys have identified the largest single cluster of settlements in this period, indicating a significant settled population there.
    Hence, while the number of tenth-century settlements in the Judahite hill country was extremely limited—probably numbering no more than twenty—and the villages were relatively small (most not exceeding an acre in size and inhabited by no more than a hundred people), the highlands to the north were occupied by many more settlements, many of which were larger, representing a much more significant and potentially powerful demographic phenomenon.
    In the last chapter we drew some important information from the Tell el-Amarna letters about the society and economy of the highlands in the Late Bronze Age. A south-north division is implicit in their reports of the contemporary situation, since at that time, two main centers—Jerusalem and Shechem—divided the highlands between them, each ruling over extensive areas of approximately six hundred square miles. Yet while the southern territory of Abdi-Heba was beset by strife on its western border and by a shortage of the manpower necessary for territorial expansion, the northern area (ruled from Shechem by a local prince named Labayu) was on the offensive and engaged in repeated attempts to expand its territory. In fact, Labayu seems to have been intent on expanding from his highland base into the