https://www.academia.edu/178884962/Nigro_2026_SA_32_1_The_Spring_Hill_at_Tell_es_Sultan_in_the_Late_Bronze_Age?email_work_card=title
This article presents a new reconstruction of the urban, political and social layout of Tell es-Sultan/Jericho in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1200/1190 BC). It draws on the latest results of the Italian-Palestinian Expedition and on a critical reassessment of the data from earlier expeditions. Jericho was destroyed at the end of the Middle Bronze III and almost abandoned in the Late Bronze IA. From the mid-15th century BC onward it regained an urban form, smaller than before but still structured, and became part of the system of vassal centres of the Egyptian empire of the 18th and 19th Dynasties. The paper focuses on the “Spring Hill”, the eastern acropolis of the site. New excavations there have clarified its complex stratigraphy and defined the role of the so-called “Middle Building”. This building is interpreted as the residence of the local governor and as a seat of administrative and ideological functions, as a 14th-century BC cuneiform tablet shows. The study of the necropolis, especially Tombs 4, 5 and 13, adds a complementary picture. It shows a socially stratified elite with access to Cypriot, Aegean and Egyptian imports, active in the same chronological horizons as the residence on the acropolis. Taken together, the topographical, architectural, funerary and historical-political data show that Late Bronze Age Jericho was not a marginal or abandoned site. It was a resilient urban centre, though reduced in size. The city came to an end within the first quarter of the 13th century BC, probably through a combination of earthquakes and military action in the Ramesside period. Finally, the article confirms that there is no archaeological basis for linking this phase of the city’s history to the biblical account of Joshua 6, which was written many centuries later in the ideological and political context of the 1st millennium BC.
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