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Radiocarbon Evidence for the Early Bronze Age Levant: The Site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (Lebanon) and the End of the Early Bronze III Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Felix Höflmayer ,
Michael W Dee ,
Hermann Genz  and
Simone Riehl
Felix Höflmayer*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, The Oriental Institute, 1155 East 58th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
Michael W Dee
Affiliation:
RLAHA, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
Hermann Genz
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Simone Riehl
Affiliation:
Universität Tübingen, Germany
*
Corresponding author. Email: fhoeflmayer@uchicago.edu.
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Abstract

Absolute dates for the end of the Early Bronze Age ancient Near East are of crucial importance for assessing the nature and extent of mid- to late 3rd millennium BC transitions in the Near East and their alleged link to the 4.2ka BP climatic event. This article presents a radiocarbon sequence for the Early Bronze Age site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (Lebanon) and argues that the end of the Early Bronze III period has to be dated considerably higher than previously estimated. There is no reason to assume that the 4.2ka BP event might have contributed to or even triggered the collapse of the first urban cities in the southern and central Levant.

Type
Chronology
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , 2014 , pp. 529 - 542
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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