The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest

Avraham Faust is Professor of Archaeology at the Department of General History, Bar-Ilan University. He is currently directing the excavations at Tel 'Eton in the Judean Shephelah, and the survey in its vicinity, and he is also the director of "The National Knowledge Center on the History and Heritage of Jerusalem and its Environs". His research interests include the archaeology of ancient Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages (biblical archaeology), especially from social and anthropological perspectives, as well as aspects of settlement archaeology, ethnicity, processes of social complexity, and excavations and survey methods and methodology. He has more than 200 publications, covering various aspects of the region's archaeology from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, with a special focus on Iron Age society.

• 1: Introduction 2: Before the Empire: The Southern Levant in the 8th century BCE 3: Under the Empire: Settlement and Demography in the Southwestern Periphery of the Assyrian Empire in the 7th Century BCE 4: Prosperity, Depression, and the Empire: Economic Developments in the Southwest during the 7th Century BCE 5: Assyrians in the Southwest? The Evidence for Assyrian Administration and Presence 6: The Empire in the Southwest: Reconstructing Assyrian Activity in the Provinces 7: Local Responses to the Empire: From Armed Resistance to Integration 8: "They Make a Desolation and They Call it Peace": Reexamining the Nature of the Imperial Peace 9: Empire by Design? Imperial Policies and Planning and the Conquest of the Southwest 10: A Province Too Far? The Assyrian Empire, its Southwestern Margins, and the Dynamics of Imperial Expansion, Conquest, and Rule

Written primarily from an archaeological point of view, this book offers an excellent summary of the key data used by different scholars to offer rival interpretations of Assyria's impact on each main site in the Southwest Levant.