Was Deuteronomy among the Economists?

ABSTRACTIn a recent article published in JSOT, S.L. Richter suggested that Urdeuteronomium can be dated by the economic features in the text. She restored, supposedly by archaeological means, three "economies" of "ancient Israel" that fit three chronological phases of the Iron Age; and concluded that "the economy assumed in Urdeuteronomium is best suited to the late Iron I/Iron IIA era and/or to a rural and isolated sector of the Iron IIB era" (Richter 2017: 50). Berge et al. (2019) have criticized some issues with this article. In this paper I dis-cuss other aspects, mainly archaeological and economic, which show that Richter's conclusion is not valid.