The Iron Age I–II Transition in the Northern Levant: An Emerging Consensus?

The development of a refined, and widely accepted, chronological and cultural sequence has eluded the study of the Iron Age Northern Levant, despite more than a century of archaeological exploration and research. The renewed investigations at Tell Tayinat (ancient Kunulua), capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Palastin/Walastin and scene of large-scale excavations by the Syrian-Hittite Expedition in the 1930s, have resulted in a tightly constructed stratigraphic and chronological cultural sequence, or “local history,” for this period. This refined “Amuq Sequence” indicates a number of culturally and historically significant transitions, including the transition from the Iron Age I to the Iron Age II, ca. 900 BCE, and it offers the prospect of forging a consensus regarding the cultural and chronological periodization of the broader Iron Age Northern Levant and Southeast Anatolia.