Revealed by their jewelry: Ethnic identity of Israelites during the Iron Age in the southern Levant
Revealed by their jewelry: Ethnic identity of Israelites during the Iron Age in the southern Levant

Summary/Abstract: In modern times, jewelry is worn not only for adornment, but also to publicize an association or identification with a cultural group or a set of beliefs. Because they are items of a very personal nature, jewelry is thus used to convey information about the cultural, religious or ethnic affiliation of its wearer, highlighting both significance and function within society that go far beyond ornamentation. While this is often readily apparent in our own society, can we identify similar uses of jewelry in past societies? As part of the biblical narrative, the peoples of the southern Levant have aroused tremendous interest over the past decades, and archaeological research has often sought to illuminate them by singling out distinctive material culture remains that would characterize their presence. When a specific jewelry type is found recurring time and again at sites clearly affiliated by their material culture, their geographical location and historical and temporal context with a certain cultural or ethnic group, it may be considered a possible ethnic marker of that culture or group. An interdisciplinary approach seeks to pinpoint certain types of jewelry that may possibly be seen as characteristic of the biblical Israelites, whose choice of what to wear was not necessarily a function of the prevailing fashions, but rather an expression of the austere ideology that identified their own cultural group.

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