The aim of this volume is to examine various forms of adaptation adopted by coastal societies in the ancient Mediterranean in response to external pressures they occasionally experienced. The investigation spans the longue duree stretching from the epi-paleolithic to the Medieval period. Special attention is given to the impact of two groups of variables: climate and sea level changes on the one hand, and fluctuations in political circumstances connected with the domination of empires, on the other hand. For adaptation, the volume analyses modes of coastal residence, subsistence, and maritime connectivity, not as a static feature, constant throughout history, but as a process that requires permanent adjustments due to changes in environmental, social and political conditions. Methodologically, various forms of case studies are employed, isolating thematic issues, geographic micro-regions, temporal boundaries, and disciplinary perspectives, ultimately seeking to embrace as wide an array of phenomena as possible in the human experience of collapse and adaptation.

The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan) from the Paleolithic period to the Islamic era, presenting the past with chronological changes from hunter-gatherers to empires. Written by an international team of scholars in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and bioanthropology, the volume presents central debates around a range of archaeological issues, including gender, ritual, the creation of alphabets and early writing, biblical periods, archaeometallurgy, looting, and maritime trade. Collectively, the essays also engage diverse theoretical approaches to demonstrate the multi-vocal nature of studying the past. Significantly, The Social Archaeology of the Levant updates and contextualizes major shifts in archaeological interpretation.

In this study, Assaf Yasur-Landau examines the early history of the biblical Philistines who were among the 'Sea Peoples' who migrated from the Aegean area to the Levant during the early twelfth century BC. Creating an archaeological narrative of the migration of the Philistines, he combines an innovative theoretical framework on the archaeology of migration with new data from excavations in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel and thereby reconstructs the social history of the Aegean migration to the southern Levant. The author follows the story of the migrants from the conditions that caused the Philistines to leave their Aegean homes, to their movement eastward along the sea and land routes, to their formation of a migrant society in Philistia and their interaction with local populations in the Levant. Based on the most up-to-date evidence, this book offers a new and fresh understanding of the arrival of the Philistines in the Levant.