Vanessa Workman

More {EMAIL FOR AN OFFPRINT} than a century of study of the Philistines has revealed abundant remains of their material culture. Concurrently, our understanding of the origins, develop- mental processes, and socio-political matrix of this fas- cinating culture has undergone major changes. Among other facets, Philistine technology has been discussed, but in our opinion, a broad view of its importance for understanding Philistine culture is still lacking.  e more than twenty years of excavation at Tell es-Sa /Gath, one of the central sites in Iron Age Philistia, o er an oppor- tunity to review a broad range of technology-related evidence from this site, and from this to suggest a cur- rent interpretation of Philistine technology within the broader picture of the Iron Age and the processes, mech- anisms, interactions, and identity politics of this culture.

In this article, we focus on the analysis of dyed textile fragments uncovered at an early Iron Age (11 th-10 th centuries BCE) copper smelting site during new excavations in the Timna Valley conducted by the Central Timna Valley (CTV) Project, as well as those found by the Arabah Expedition at the Hathor Temple (Site 200), dated to the Late Bronze/early Iron Ages (13 th-11 th centuries BCE). Analysis by HPLC-DAD identified two organic dyestuffs, Rubia tinctorum L. and indigotin, from a plant source (probably Isatis tinctoria L.). They are among the earliest plants known in the dyeing craft and cultivated primarily for this purpose. This study provides the earliest evidence of textiles dyed utilizing a chemical dyeing process based on an industrial dyeing plant from the Levant. Moreover, our results shed new light on the society operating the copper mines at the time, suggesting the existence of an elite that was interested in these high quality textiles and invested efforts in procuring them by long-distance trade.