Life and Death at Tell Umm Hammad: A Village Landscape of the Southern Levantine EB IV

Introduction
The Early Bronze Age IV/ Intermediate Bronze Age (ca. 2500-2000 b.c.e.) of the southern
Levant remains one of the most problematic phases of the Early Bronze Age lę It is charac-
terised by the abandonment of the urban, fortified centres of the Early Bronze Age II -III in
favour of small undefended villages, of which only a handful have been excavated2. Tell
Umm Hammād in the central Jordan Valley is one such site. Excavated between 1982 and
1984 by Svend Helms and Alison Betts, it has revealed an occupational history spanning
the Fifth through to the First Millennia b.c.e. Importantly, Tell Umm Hammād is one of the
few sites to incorporate both a settlement and cemetery ( Tiwãl eš-Šargī) and thus has the
ability to shed new light on settlement and cemetery correlations during the final centuries of
the Third Millennium b.c.e.