The 'United Monarchy' on the Ground: The Disruptive Character of the Iron-Age I-II Transition and the Nature of Political Transformations

It is commonly agreed that the Iron Age II transition was gradual and that processes of social complexity initiated in Iron Age I simply matured in Iron Age II. The emergence of the Levantine Kingdoms--whether the so-called "United Monarchy" (i.e., the highland polity) or other polities--has therefore been seen as an outcome of this gradual maturation, even if the date(s) of their emergence is hotly debated. This paper challenges both the purported gradual nature of complexity in the Iron Age and the dated understanding of state formation processes that lies behind the common scholarly reconstructions of Iron Age political developments. For its part, my paper seeks to show that the Iron Age I-II transition was a troubled one and was accompanied by drastic changes in many sectors, whether settlement patterns, settlement forms, or various material elements. Acknowledging these transformations is thus the first step toward understanding the process whereby local kingdoms in the Levant emerged. The main part of my paper briefly outlines these changes, which are then incorporated into a suggested historical scenario, in which I reconstruct the processes leading to and accompanying the emergence of the monarchy in Iron Age Israel. The final part of my paper briefly situates these processes within a broader discussion of state formation in general and the debate about the highland polity (The "United Monarchy") in particular, and reconstructs the emergence and expansion of that polity. See also ##1311, 1320. [Adapted from published abstract: Christopher T. Begg]