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Reconstructing the Social Landscape of Early Israel: Rural Marriage Alliances in the Central Hill Country

Abstract This paper explores long-term trends underlying alliances and marriage coalitions in early Iron Age highland villages of Palestine. In applying generalizations of social interaction such as endogamy and exogamy, spatial analysis attempts to outline and explain territorial differentiations in the early Israelite society, stressing the significance of the family as one of the most important structures underlying the organization of the society and its mode of production in ancient Israel. Through an application of archaeological, historical and anthropological data on marriage patterns in ancient Israel and non-industrial societies, settlement archaeology is able to analyze and to explain not only aspects of subsistence economy in the settlement pattern of Iron Age I communities in the central hill country, but also aspects of the social fabric that tied these very small villages together.