NAMI'S MIDDLE BRONZE AGE SUBURB: THE COASTAL SETTLEMENT AT SITE 104-106

This study presents a late 19th to early 18th cent. BCE, MBIIA settlement in the immediate vicinity of Tel Nami on the Carmel Coast of Israel. Site 104-106 has been all but destroyed by modern agricultural activity as well as quarrying, but a large number of ceramics and small finds were salvaged during a 1985-6 survey of Tel Nami's hinterland as well as subsequent geoarchaeological research of the area. Little of the site remains, and the current study functionally amounts to a salvage project for an MBIIA coastal site, which was mentioned in an earlier survey. Geomorphology reveals how the sandstone kurkar ridges in this area of the coast governed the dynamic relationship between Tel Nami and its hinterland. Comparable ceramic chronology for Site 104106 presented derives from Aphek-Antipatris, Megiddo, Kabri, Tel Ifshar, Tel Nami itself, and other MBIIA coastal sites of the Southern Levant. The ceramics include well-produced local wares as well as imports from coastal Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus confirmed by petrographic analyses. Finds suggest a small agro-industrial site in the immediate periphery of the coastal Tel Nami.