A community in transition: The early bronze age site of qiryat ata as a test case

The urbanization process of the Early Bronze Age (EB) has usually been discussed at the general/regional level. This paper utilizes the detailed information from Qiryat Ata—an EB IB–II (late 4th-early 3rd millennium BCE) settlement located on Israel's northern Coastal Plain—to conduct a more detailed analysis, at the site level, in order to examine the transformations experienced by a single community over time. The excavations revealed social and economic changes in practically every aspect of the site's material culture during the period of its existence. The site was founded as a village during the EB IB and rapidly grew in size as the economy became market-oriented. The leaders of the settlement may have taken control of surpluses, while economic conditions for the remainder of the population deteriorated.