A RADIOCARBON SEQUENCE FROM TELL ABU EN-NI`AJ, JORDAN AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR EARLY BRONZE IV CHRONOLOGY IN THE SOUTHERN LEVANT

摘要

Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, an agrarian Early Bronze IV village in the northern Jordan Valley, Jordan, provides a series of 24 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) seed dates spanning seven stratified phases of occupation. Bayesian analysis of these ages reveals that habitation at Tell Abu en-Ni'aj began between 2600 and 2500 cal BC and ended just before 2000 cal BC. This sequence provides the longest radiocarbon record of occupation for an Early Bronze IV settlement in the southern Levant and pushes the beginning of the Levantine Early Bronze IV earlier than proposed previously. When integrated with C-14 dates from an array of sites in the southern Levant, Egypt, and Lebanon, this evidence aligns with recent C-14-based chronologies calling for earlier ages for Early Bronze I-III, details Early Bronze IV chronology through the course of this period, and corroborates the date of the Early Bronze IV/Middle Bronze Age transition similar to 2000 cal BC.