Fragments of an anarchic society: Kura-Araxes territorialization in the third millennium BC town at Tel Bet Yerah. Issue 3 (27th May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Greenberg, Raphael
• Is Part Of: World archaeology. Volume 53:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 384
• Page End: 400
• Publication Date: 2021-05-27
• Subjects: Kura-Araxes -- Khirbet Kerak -- Levant -- foodways -- marginality -- anarchism; Archaeology -- Periodicals; Archéologie -- Périodiques; 930.1
• DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.1999855
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0043-8243

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Neither a polity, nor a culture, nor an ethnicity in any strict sense, Kura-Araxes has been described as a 'society against the state', with an aversion to structures of economic and social centralization. What happens when such a society is thrown into an apparently dependent relationship with a settled urban population? This question is explored through the lens of Tel Bet Yerah/Khirbet el-Kerak, in the Jordan river valley, where a small diasporic Kura-Araxes community settled in abandoned spaces within a 25-hectare walled town, maintaining its corporate identity over a span of two or three generations.