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The Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (CSSL) database comprises some twelve thousand items from controlled excavations in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, transforming and bringing to completion Othmar Keel's pioneering vision to publish all seals and sealings from the region. The CSSL platform not only represents a newly available digital research tool for southern Levantine studies and related fields, but also aims at exploring innovative approaches to advance the digital study of glyptic more broadly. As the SNSF-funded Sinergia project Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) completes its goal, we ask: What comes next? This article provides an overview of the CSSL database; situates this new resource alongside other contemporary digital tools for the study of glyptic; and briefly reflects on the possibilities for more collaboration and integration across digital humanities projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent excavations and high-precision radiocarbon dating from the largest Iron Age (IA, Ca. 1200-500 BCE) copper production center in the southern Levant demonstrate major smelting activities in the region of biblical Edom (southern Jordan) during the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. Stratified radiocarbon samples and artifacts were recorded with precise digital surveying tools linked to a geographic information system developed to control on-site spatial analyses of archaeological finds and model data with innovative visualization tools. The new radiocarbon dates push back by 2 centuries the accepted IA chronology of Edom. Data from Khirbat en-Nahas, and the nearby site of Rujm Hamra lfdan, demonstrate the centrality of industrial-scale metal production during those centuries traditionally linked closely to political events in Edom's 10th century BCE neighbor ancient Israel. Consequently, the rise of IA Edom is linked to the power vacuum created by the collapse of Late Bronze Age (LB. Ca. 1300 BCE) civilizations and the disintegration of the LB Cypriot copper monopoly that dominated the eastern Mediterranean. The methodologies applied to the historical IA archaeology of the Levant have implications for other parts of the world where sacred and historical texts interface with the material record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]