1997/03/01 by Andrea M. Berlin · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Ancient Egypt and Archaeology #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Period (music) #Settlement (finance) #Hellenistic period #Ancient history #Palestine #CONQUEST #Battle #History #Population #Archaeology #Art #Demography #Sociology
paper · doi:10.2307/3210581
openalex publication_date 1997/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Most historical reconstructions of the Hellenistic period narrate the epoch's inaugural and subsequent military clashes, from the Alexandrian conquest through Ptolemaic and Seleucid struggles, from the Maccabean uprising to the Roman invasion under Pompey. Archaeological data take us beneath and beyond such recitation to gain a glimpse of what life was actually like in Hellenistic Palestine. A presentation of the period's architectural remains, changes in its settlement patterns, and the variety of its material cultures helps us understand how the inhabitants of various parts of the country lived and how their lives changed during the course of these momentous centuries. Peaceful and increasingly wealthy and cosmopolitan lifestyles emerge from the obscuring dust of the historian's preoccupation with battles. True, the many campaigns fought in and over the region produced an ebb and flow of the population landscape, but lifestyles and routes of exchange continued in the patterns of previous centuries. These were ordered by two forces more fundamental and long-lived than battle formations: commercial opportunity and religious affiliation.