Levantine Entanglements: Cultural Productions, Long-Term Changes and Globalizations in the Eastern Mediterranean

The editors of this book note that they delivered the finished manuscript at the height of the world-wide COVID epidemic—a seemingly unconnected event that, in their words, “provided an unwelcome, yet powerful, illustration of a main concept in this volume” (xiii). In Levantine Entanglements, they have seen, like other scholars of the past (e.g., Cline 2021), that behind every salubrious effect of globalization lies a potentially dangerous cascade of consequences. Bringing the perspectives of Braudelian long-term change and global history to bear on their analyses of cultural production in the Levant, the editors have amassed a large body of scholarship in one volume.This represents an impressive undertaking, and the purpose of the work is no less lofty. The editors seek to change the way the histories of this region are written by narrating the Levantine past as “part of the story of humankind and the planet, avoiding succumbing to modernist awe for imperial glories, to charter narratives for nations and religions, or to one-eyed modern secularism” (1). The contributors to the volume turn to archaeology, history, religion, anthropology, sociology, political science, epigraphy, and architecture (among other disciplines) in order to achieve this objective.Since archaeology began, the challenge of extracting lived realities from inanimate things has intrigued scholars. Archaeologists of the Levant have a unique relationship to material culture among scholars of the ancient Near East for several reasons. Ironically, although the Levant was the source of one of the world’s most influential books, the Bible, Levantine archaeology has had less contemporary written evidence to rely on than is available elsewhere in the Near East. Thus, much archaeology in the land of the Bible draws upon what some might call commonplace material culture (such as ceramics, tools, crude figurines, and simple dwellings) supplemented by a text that essentially operates as an ethnographic analogy— that is, it is of the place and the culture but not the time of the events it represents (Scham 2002). As the editors of Levantine Entanglements suggest, this entanglement between biblical narratives and the interpretation of Levantine material culture still permeates archaeological exploration in the region.Entanglement is a compendium of theories about material culture including basic cultural materialism (Harris 2001; Skibo and Schiffer 2009) and I. Hodder’s more recent notion that humans and things have relied upon each other throughout history. Humans create things to serve their needs, while things need humans to use them and keep them in good repair—and this continues as long as each fulfills their part of the bargain. The complexity of the human-thing relationship depends upon the extent of this mutual dependency (Hodder 2011, 2012). Hodder argues that this connection is a defining characteristic of human life and that long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time. This relationship can be restored or enhanced by archaeologists.For example, many artifacts from the “Land of the Bible” are unremarkable things created for daily use by people living in small villages. In the modern world, however, they increase exponentially in value and veneration. As T. Stordalen and Ø. S. LaBianca state in the introduction to their book, “certain cultural products may become iconic, or they become symbolic for social, cultural, religious, or political values. If such products are migrated, a different kind of entanglement occurs, as people elsewhere on the globe become involved in ‘doing’ cultural productions originating from (and sometimes still being modified in) the Levant” (7).This double sense of what entanglement means explains the organization of the book, which is divided into two main parts. In the first part, “Levantine Localities and Long-Term Change,” the editors address the contribution of the Levant to world history. Part 2 of the book contains four subsections, dubbed “panels,” that provide case studies. The first of these, “Places and Ideologies,” focuses on Tall Hisban in Jordan and the site of Palmyra in Syria and features articles by Ø. S. LaBianca, J. P. Hudon, T. Stordalen, F. F. Jacobsen, and E. H. Seland about the biblical record of Heshbon, contested space at Tall Hisban, and the site of Palmyra as a demonstration of local power dynamics in the Roman Near East.The second panel, “Scriptures—Ideology, Practices and Community,” examines religion and ideology. In this section, D. V. Edelman discusses early forms of Judaism in the context of the local versus the international in the ancient world, K. Berge explores power and ideology in Judah during the Persian period, and Stordalen examines scripture as “accumulative cultural production” in the Levant. “Pilgrimage—Localities and Global Discourse,” the third panel, features articles by Ø. Norderval, J. E. Marshall, C. Amadou, and J. Kreinath on the Holy Land during the time of Constantine; the agency of women during the early Christian period in the Levant; the cult of Saint George in Lydda; and the interreligious dynamics of saint veneration in early Christian Hatay, Türkiye. The final panel, “Polycentrism—Local Communities and Trans-local Formations,” is composed of articles by H. F. Teigen, B. J. Walker, and E. van der Steen. The authors investigate Egyptian and Levantine Manichaeism; medieval Syria; and the concepts of honor, shame, and hospitality as indicative of how political power became concentrated “in the hands of non-state actors—local strongmen, warlords, and tribal chieftains and village elders” across the Levant (52).Two subjects covered thoroughly in this volume exemplify its major themes—the legendary Saint George and the site of Tall Hisban/Heshbon in Jordan. Saint George was a third-century Christian martyr who lived in the village of Lydda (now Lod on the southern coast of Israel). Over time, he became one of the most recognized saints in the world. The site of Tall Hisban (https://madabaplains.org/hisban/), described by its excavators as a witness to history as well as a “window on daily life in Jordan through the ages” (424), has not achieved a similar renown but clearly demonstrates the interplay of the regional and international dynamics of its day.Saint George has been immortalized in the legend of Saint George and the Dragon and is venerated throughout eastern, western and southern Europe, as well as in Malta and Ethiopia. The cult of Saint George of Lydda, according to Amadou, provides an example of “how imperial ideologies with global ambitions are received, contested, and reframed in a local context” (424). Saint George symbolizes not only the materiality of the sacred but of secular authority as well. While as a saint (and a symbol of royalty) George represents courage and faith, the early Christian cult places of the saint demonstrate a more complex reality. An obscure local cult originating in Palestine, evidenced at first by the humblest of sacred spaces and the most mundane material culture, became an international symbol of Christian imperialism. Saint George and the places and relics associated with him are intercessors not only between the material and ideal but between religion and history, representing the forces that eventually led to the Christianization of the Roman army and the Byzantine Empire.The archaeological record of Tall Hisban tells a story of pastoralists and farmers living in an obscure village that developed in the land between the great powers of the ancient Near East. In their discussion on the “Connectivity of the Levantine Corridor” (26), the editors note that the Levant was the primary connector between Egypt and Mesopotamia since prehistory. Hisban itself was close to the major routes between north and south, and its material culture over time became a reflection of that position, showing local adaptations of the cultural products of the great civilizations (LaBianca and Scham 2016).This book offers many scholarly insights on current questions about the past, including one very important one posed by the editors in the first case study. “Why is it,” they ask, “that these tiny and fragmented lands became the breeding grounds for such globally relevant and historically resilient cultural paradigms?” (34). The answer lies in the remnants of the products of individual and collective minds discovered in places like Hisban and Lydda—seemingly small and unimportant villages at the intersection of roads leading to the imperial cities of Egypt and Mesopotamia.