The Regional Economy of the Southern Levant in the 8th-7th Centuries BCE

The late Iron Age in the ancient Near East was a period marked by dramatic changes. Politically, the rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire ushers in the beginning of imperial rule. At the same time, Phoenician expansion efforts across the Mediterranean, and the emerging South Arabian caravan trade led to greater connectivity across the ancient Near East and Mediterranean worlds. In the southern Levant, the late Iron Age is also a period marked by change, including large scale urbanization at sites such as Jerusalem and Ekron, increased scale of production of goods such as wine and olive oil on the coastal plain, and increased settlement in previously marginal areas such as the Negev and Judean deserts. Yet despite all of these changes, the local economy shows a remarkable continuity with previous periods.;In this dissertation we examine the regional economy of the southern Levant, focusing on Judah and the Philistine city-states, during the 8th-7th centuries BCE through the lens of New Institutional Economics. In order to do this, we focus on the different regional players that impacted economic life during this time period: the local producers and consumers living in the southern Levant, the imperial governing structures of the Assyrians, the emerging caravan trade from the Arabian peninsula, and the world of the Mediterranean trade networks of the Phoenicians and Greeks. By examining the archaeological and textual evidence relating to these different players we attempt to build a picture of the diverse social contexts, or institutions, that governed different spheres of economic behavior. Furthermore, we examine how these different regional players encouraged and motivated participation in a large variety of overlapping social contexts, and explain changes and developments in local economic structures during the late Iron Age.