James A. Sauer was for many years the Director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, leading it to the preeminent place it now occupies as a research institution dedicated to the archaeology and history of Transjordan. This volume honors him, with more than 50 contributions from colleagues and friends. With this volume, the Harvard Semitic Museum inaugurates a new series entitled "Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant."

'Beyond the Jordan' is a collection of essays written to honor the life and labors of W. Harold Mare. Dr. Mare spent much of his academic career as Professor of New Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. A man of indefatigable energy, broad interests, and an unswerving commitment to the Christian faith, his research expanded from New Testament interests to the archaeology of that world, including ancient Canaan and Israel as well as the eras following the establishment of Christianity. Apart from his work in textual studies, W. Harold Mare will be remembered for his excavations of Abila of the Decapolis in Jordan, yet he also published a study of the archaeology of Jerusalem. Thus the title of this volume is ambiguous enough to allow a broad spectrum of topics relative to either side of the River Jordan.

The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes, reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing religious change, and the first section of the book examines some of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally, a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.

A handbook for biblical scholars and historians of the Ancient Near East William G. Dever offers a welcome perspective on ancient Israel and Judah that prioritizes the archaeological remains to render history as it was—not as the biblical writers argue it should have been. Drawing from the most recent archaeological data as interpreted from a nontheological point of view and supplementing that data with biblical material only when it converges with the archaeological record, Dever analyzes all the evidence at hand to provide a new history of ancient Israel and Judah that is accessible to all interested readers. Features A new approach to the history of ancient Israel Extensive bibliography More than eighty maps and illustrations

The natural arc of resource-rich land which forms the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of South-West Asia is regarded as the earliest centre of village-based farming in the world and has been the focus of much of our understanding of the transition from Epipalaeolithic hunter-gathers to Neolithic farmers. Beyond the Fertile Crescent is the first volume of the Azraq Project, a large-scale archaeological and palaeoenvironmental survey and excavation project undertaken between 1982 and 1989 in the ecologically diverse sub-region of the Azraq Basin in north-central Jordan: an area rich in Palaeolithic and Neolithic archaeology. Beginning with an overview to the Project aims, a detailed analysis of past and present environments and land use and the history of excavation in the Basin, Beyond the Fertile Crescent explores the geology, stratigraphy and dating of the Late Palaeolithic sites and provides a detailed description of the technology and typology of the lithic assemblages from the sites. These are then compared with those from the wider Levant, in order to explore possible links between technological traditions and social groups in order to understand the evidence for settlement strategies across the region.

The contributions to this volume reflect upon changing paradigms within biblical scholarship, and in how biblical scholarship is taught. Taken together, they offer a multifaceted and informative indication of how open-mindedness in one's approach can yield fascinating results across the study of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. The range in topic of the contributions is exemplified in the difference between the first chapter, which works from the personal anecdote of the changing opinion of its author to make a wider point about models for Pentateuchal formation, and the third chapter, which comments on the current state of the study of ancient Israel in universities today. Other contributions include; an essay on the subject of space as a social construct in Isaiah 24-27; civil courage and whether the Bible allows room for protest; the question of monotheism in Persian Judah; the historical Ezra, and the telling of the story of Joseph (Genesis 50: 15-21) in children's Bibles in the Netherlands. The contributors include Hugh Williamson, Ehud Ben Zvi, Rainer Albertz, Karel von der Toorn, and Christoph Uehlinger.

This volume is a compilation of results from sessions of the Second International Conference on the Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans, which took place between November 30 and December 6, 2014, in Hokkaido, Japan. Similar to the first conference held in 2012 in Tokyo, the 2014 conference (RNMH2014) aimed to compile the results of the latest multidisciplinary approaches investigating the issues surrounding the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans. The results of the sessions, supplemented by off-site contributions, center on the archeology of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of the Levant and beyond. The first part of this volume presents recent findings from the Levant, while the second part focuses on the neighboring regions, namely, the Caucasus, the Zagros, and South Asia. The 13 chapters in this volume highlight the distinct nature of the cultural occurrences during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods of the Levant, displaying a continuous development as well as a combination of lithic traditions that may have originated in different regions. This syncretism, which is an unusual occurrence in the regions discussed in this volume, reinforces the importance of the Levant as a region for interpreting the RNMH phenomenon in West Asia.

Despite the large number of well-preserved domestic contexts in Bronze and Iron Age sites, household archaeology has not been a common approach to studying the material culture of Ancient Israel. Until recently, the dictates of “Biblical Archaeology” led to a narrow set of questions that ignored issues such as gender, status and production within the household. The present volume, which grew out of a session at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, attempts to redress this issue. The seventeen papers herein reflect innovative viewpoints on the theory and praxis of household archaeology in this region. The next step in household research is presented here, with the use of tailor-made data collection strategies designed to answer specific questions posed by household archaeology. "The neglect of households and the archaeology of the activities of its members are ambitiously attended to in this volume. Its exceptional breadth of various modes of inquiry coupled with the application thereof justifies the household as a topic of discussion. I would highly recommend this book for institutions, libraries, scholars, and students interested in any aspect of daily life in the southern Levant, and I very much look forward to the future research projects it will inspire." Cynthia Shafer-Elliot, William Jessup University "...as a whole the work is impressive, and most contributions are commendable for their sophistication in engaging interdisciplinary research in order to understand the nature and function of households in ancient Israel and surrounding areas." Carol Meyers, Duke University

This volume includes new research on the theoretical implications regarding the mechanisms of change in the geographical distribution of hunter-gatherer settlement and land use. It focuses on the long-term changes in the hunter-gatherer settlement on a global scale, including research from several continents. It will be of interest to archaeologists and cultural anthropologists working in the field of the forager/ collector model throughout the world.