The Chalcolithic was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in different areas, but was absent in some parts of the world, such as Russia, where there was no well-defined Copper Age between the Stone and Bronze ages. Stone tools were still predominantly used during this period.
The Southern Levant is a geographical region encompassing the southern half of the Levant. It corresponds approximately to modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria and/or the Sinai Peninsula. As a strictly geographical description, it is sometimes used by archaeologists and historians to avoid the religious and political connotations of other names for the area.
The Arabah/Araba or Aravah/Arava is a loosely defined geographic area in the Negev Desert, south of the Dead Sea basin, which forms part of the border between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east.
Tel Megiddo, called in Arabic Tell el-Mütesellim "tell of the Governor", is the site of the ancient city of Megiddo, the remains of which form a tell or archaeological mound, situated in northern Israel at the western edge of the Jezreel Valley about 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of Haifa near the depopulated Palestinian town of Lajjun and subsequently Kibbutz Megiddo. Megiddo is known for its historical, geographical, and theological importance, especially under its Greek name Armageddon. During the Bronze Age, Megiddo was an important Canaanite city-state. During the Iron Age, it was a royal city in the Kingdom of Israel.
The archaeology of Israel is the study of the archaeology of the present-day Israel, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. The ancient Land of Israel was a geographical bridge between the political and cultural centers of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
According to the Deuteronomistic history in the Hebrew Bible, a United Monarchy or United Kingdom of Israel existed under the reigns of Saul, Eshbaal, David, and Solomon, encompassing the territories of both the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
The Timna Valley is located in southern Israel in the southwestern Arava/Arabah, approximately 30 kilometres (19 mi) north of the Gulf of Aqaba and the city of Eilat. The area is rich in copper ore and has been mined since the 5th millennium BCE. During early antiquity, the area would have been part of the Kingdom of Edom.
Tafilah is one of the governorates of Jordan, located about 180 km south-west of Amman, Jordan's capital.
The Old Copper complex or Old Copper culture is an archaeological culture from the Archaic period of North America's Great Lakes region. Artifacts from some of these sites have been dated from 7500 to 1000 BCE. It is characterized by widespread copper artifacts, including tools and weapons, as well as ornamental objects. The archeological evidence of smelting or alloying is subject to some dispute, and it is commonly believed that objects were cold-worked into shape. Furthermore, some archaeologists are convinced by the artifactual and structural evidence for metal casting by Hopewellian and Mississippian peoples.
'Ubeidiya, some 3 km south of the Sea of Galilee, in the Jordan Rift Valley, Israel, is an archaeological site of the early Pleistocene, c. 1.5 million years ago, preserving traces of one of the earliest migrations of Homo erectus out of Africa, with only the site of Dmanisi in Georgia being older. The site yielded hand axes of the Acheulean type, but very few human remains. The animal remains include a hippopotamus' femur bone, and an immensely large pair of horns belonging to a species of extinct bovid.
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5,200 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing having spread to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Edom was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east. Most of its former territory is now divided between present-day southern Jordan and Israel. Edom appears in written sources relating to the late Bronze Age and to the Iron Age in the Levant.
Nonferrous archaeometallurgy in the southern Levant is the archaeological study of non-iron-related metal technology in the region of the Southern Levant during the Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age from approximately 4500BC to 1000BC.
Thomas Evan Levy is Distinguished Professor and holds the Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of the Department of Anthropology and Jewish Studies Program. Levy is co-director of the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology and directs the Center for Cyber-archaeology and Sustainability at the Qualcomm Institute UC San Diego research group at the California Center of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).
Wadi Feynan or Wadi Faynan is a major wadi and region in southern Jordan, on the border between Tafilah Governorate and Aqaba and Ma'an Governorates. It originates in the southern Jordanian Highlands with the confluence of Wadi Dana and Wadi Ghuweyr, and drains into the Dead Sea via Wadi Araba.
Khirbat Faynan, known in late Roman and Byzantine texts as Phaino or Phaeno, is an archaeological site in Wadi Faynan, southern Jordan. It lies just south of the Dead Sea in Jordan. The site was an ancient copper mine that overlooks two Wadis and is the location of one of the best and most well-preserved ancient mining and metallurgy districts in the world.
Erez Ben-Yosef is an Israeli archaeologist best known for leading 21st century digs at the ancient copper mines in the Timna Valley, Sinai peninsula. He is Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.
Khirbet er-Ra'i, also Khirbet al-Ra'i, is an archaeological site in the Shephelah region of Israel. It is located 4 km west of Lachish.
Ashalim is one of four metallurgical sites investigated by Ezra Ben-Yosef in his 2008 study of the Arabah Valley. His attempt to place the four copper production sites in a chrono-cultural context using archaeomagnetic dating was noted for its metallurgical significance.
Tel Masos is an archaeological site in Israel, in northern Negev, about 15 kilometres southeast of Beer-Sheva, along the Beer-Sheva River. It is actually a cluster of different sites scattered around the wells in the area.
