Some 2,900 years ago, the Upper Galilee region in modern-day northern Israel was in upheaval, caught between the warring kingdoms of Israel and Aram.

Yet, the shepherds of Tel Hazor continued to herd their sheep and goats on rolling hills and green pastures as distant as the Golan Heights, apparently undisturbed by the conflict, a new study published in the prestigious journal PLOS ONE last week has suggested.

The authors, most of whom are affiliated with the University of Haifa, performed isotope analysis on sheep and goat teeth dating to the eighth to 10th centuries BCE found at the site during decades of excavations by the Hebrew University. They found no change in the areas where the animals grazed, despite evolving geopolitical scenarios.

According to the study, this suggests that the line between Israel and Aram never turned into a hard, impenetrable border and did not affect the simple people and communities living in the area.

“Studies on the Iron Age [1200-586 BCE] usually ask the questions about the top of society, the leaders, the army, the kingdoms; [researchers] don’t usually look at the common people,” said senior lecturer Shlomit Bechar of the University of Haifa, one of the authors of the PLOS ONE paper. “We wanted to see how the wars between Israel and Aram affected common people, and we thought we could do so by examining their sheep and goats.”

Hazor has been excavated since the 1950s, when the first expedition was led by legendary Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin. Since the end of the 1990s, archaeologists have been returning to the site to continue exploring it almost every year. Bechar has been excavating there since 2007.

A prominent biblical  site

Hazor features prominently in the Hebrew Bible.

“Joshua then turned back and captured Hazor and put its king to the sword —Hazor was formerly the head of all those kingdoms,” reads the book of Joshua (11:10; translation JPS).

The site was a prominent Canaanite city in the second millennium BCE until it was completely destroyed around 1250 BCE.

“We know when and how, but we do not know by whom or why,” Bechar noted, saying that most........

© The Times of Israel