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The article discusses the evidences of pig avoidance and pork consumption among Philistines and Canaanites in the southern Levant, common perceptions related to pork consumption habits among various cultural groups and irrelavance as a cultural marker to classify an ethnic identity.

During the first decade of the Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Excavation Project, various areas in the upper city were excavated. Based on the results of the surface survey, however, it was clear that there was extensive settlement in the area to the north of the upper city up until the Elah Valley riverbed. Ten years ago, the excavations were expanded to the lower city, commencing with Area D (fig. 1). Since then, Area D has been extensively excavated, with a broad range of finds mainly from the Iron Age (for additional excavations in Area K of the lower city, see Welch in this issue). Here we will describe some of these finds, with a particular focus on the Philistine cultic remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Philistine Gath fell to the Arameans in the late ninth century B.C.E. (Maeir 2008; 2012: 47-48) the huge city atop Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath was a ghost town for several decades. Some structures had been burnt or otherwise destroyed, but many were simply abandoned to the elements. As years passed, winter storms and the processes of nature eroded the roofs and walls of hundreds of ownerless houses and other buildings. The devastation was alluded to by the Judahite prophet Amos when he predicted the eventual demise of Samaria: "Go down to Gath of the Philistines," he challenged the Israelites, to behold what complete desolation is like (Amost 6:2; Maeir 2004). Aside from the presence of a few squatters who settled in the north lower-city ruins near the Elah riverbed, the forlorn ghost town of Gath slowly decayed away, until a cataclysmic earthquake shook the entire region somewhere around 760 B.C.E. (Chadwick and Maeir, forthcoming; Maeir 2012: 49-50). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall objective of archaeological excavations is to extract as much reliable information as possible from the whole archaeological record: both macroscopic and microscopic. An effective approach to achieve this goal is to integrate observations on the macroscopic and microscopic records as the excavation proceeds by operating an on-site analytical laboratory at the excavation. In this way important primary context locations can be better identified as they are exposed, and the excavation and sampling strategy can be adapted accordingly (Weiner 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite over a century of research conducted on the Philistines and their material culture, a very small quantity of finds relating to their burial customs has been reported. This has led to quite a lot of speculation on Philistine mortuary customs, with little evidence in support. At a number of sites, suggestions to distinguish "Philistine" burials were attempted, most notably, the erroneous attribution of the anthropoid coffins to the Philistines (Dothan 1982), the suggested cremation burials found at Azor (Dothan and Dothan 1992; Ben-Shlomo 2008, 2012; Buchennino and Yannai 2010), and the burial caves yielding Philistine bichrome pottery at Tel Eton (Edelstein and Aurant 1992). However, the problematic interpretations of these finds, coupled with the fact that none of this evidence was found at the main urban sites of the Philistines, calls into question their centrality within the Philistine realm, and their attribution on a whole to the ethnic group that populated the southern Coastal Plain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all of the excavated areas at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath have yielded Philistine decorated pottery. This includes Areas A (Strata A6 and A5), E (Stratum E3), F (Stratum F11), and P (Stratum P2) on the upper tell, as well as Area D (Stratum D5) in the lower city, thus indicating that the consumption, if not actual production, of Philistine decorated pottery was quite widespread throughout the entire site during the twelfth through tenth centuries B.C.E. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the arrival of the Philistines in the southern Levant is an event that happens "off camera," that is, before the appearance of their settlement remains, it is an event that was narrativized in the recent past by archaeologists working in Philistia who interpreted the local production of Aegean style pottery as evidence of a massive colonization by Mycenaean migrants (Hitchcock and Maeir 2016a). By and large, the understanding of the Philistines and their culture was centered around the biblical and Egyptian images of the Philistines, and their continued reception and interpretation until modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology is, for the most part, the study of material remains of the past. Archaeologists survey, excavate, analyze and construct a picture of past human life. They do their best to understand the daily life, the economy, the belief systems, the political and social structures, and so much else about long-gone civilizations. And, in many parts of the world and for long stretches of the human past, they do without recourse to written sources, simply because writing did not exist through most of that time. But if and when written records are available, they provide context, specific facts and dates, and much additional information that then give us a more complete picture of the history of the site or area that we are investigating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence that we have for the language(s) spoken by the Philistines is not plentiful, but what we do have is interesting (though far from conclusive). Two types of evidence predominate: (1) inscriptions from Philistine sites (thus these inscriptions may have been produced by Philistines), and (2) Philistine words and names borrowed into other languages of the region and recorded (however imperfectly) in non-Philistine records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution offers comparative evidence to the previous contribution on Philistine feasting. During a visit to Papua New Guinea, I documented and participated in a traditional feast in a remote village in the Finisterre Mountain Range. Although the cultural manifestations seen were very different from those of ancient Near Eastern cultures, various aspects which I witnessed provide interesting analogies for understanding ancient feasting in general, and archaeological evidence of feasting from the ancient Near East in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents evidence for feasting in the late Iron Age I Philistine culture from a circumscribed locale in Area A at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath. The remains are characterized by architectural features, installations and rubbish dumps containing a rich array of animal bones, symbolic objects, and a series of unique installations all dating to the tenth and eleventh centuries B.C.E. These activities are informed by parallels from Mycenaean Late Bronze Age feasting events, though at Tell es-Safi/Gath they may have served a different purpose, specifically, the maintenance and promotion of Philistine cultural identity through the adoption of behaviors and symbols from the Aegean past by portions of the Philistine population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented, in which the author discusses various topics within the issue on topics including study of the Philistine material culture, glyptics from the Bronze and Iron Age, and overall effect on planning and results of the project Uziel and Maeir.

The article talks about the canine tooth from a male hippopotamus recovered at the Philistine Temple Complex 650, the center of religious life in Ekron. Cultural modifications made on the tooth, which is regarded as rare, are described, including a row of decorative circular incisions. It discusses whether the tooth was brought to the temple as a sacrificial gift or as a symbolic artifact.