**2. Definitions and Aims**

At the outset, it is important to define the terms employed when we speak of the "zooarchaeology of Israelite religion," as well as the aims of this subfield. This is especially so in regard to current debates surrounding ancient Israel and its relationship to the texts of the Hebrew Bible portraying its history.

## *2.1. Defining Terms*

By "zooarchaeology," sometimes known as "archaeozoology" or simply "animal bone archaeology" (see Hesse and Wapnish 1985 and Gifford-Gonzalez 2018 for discussions of the terms), we mean the analysis of animal bones undertaken to explore archaeological questions about the relationships between animals and peoples in the past (cf. Hesse and Wapnish 1985; Davis 1987a; O'Connor 2008; Reitz and Wing 2008; Sykes 2014; Gifford-Gonzalez 2018). In this application, we are particularly interested in the human side of the relationship. As such, zooarchaeology involves the excavation and identification of teeth and animal bone fragments from common domesticates, wild game, and fish and birds,1 that are analyzed to address questions related to issues such as herd management and animal consumption, with an eye toward opening windows of insight to the economic, social, and cultic aspects of a given society.

Defining our use of "Israelite religion" is more complex due to the variety of applications, and/or misapplications, of the very term "Israelite" and what such a designation may or may not imply regarding religion. The source of the complexity is disagreement about the degree of the difference between the "Israel" described in the Hebrew Bible (sometimes called "Biblical Israel"; cf. Davies 2007), on the one hand, and a certain people group named "Israel" that is identified in inscriptions, on the other.2

The discussion is further complicated by new understandings of how people groups form and identify and the growing recognition that the way many think of ethnic descriptors today, especially in light of recent advances in genetics, is very different from the way ancient peoples conceptualized identity (cf. Barth 1969; Emberling 1997; Finkelstein 1997; Jones 1997; Sparks 1998; Brett 2002; Insoll 2004; Miller 2008; Faust 2006, 2017). As has long been noted, even among contemporary societies, ethnic differences do not necessarily correspond to cultural differences (see, especially Barth 1969; cf. Eriksen 2015, pp. 97–108). Indeed, various ethnicities may share a common cultural identity, and that identity may be more flexible and varied than is often assumed, thus complicating correlations between material culture and ancient peoples. Such groups are defined both internally and externally by comparison with "the other," and the establishment and negotiation of certain boundaries—or, better, *frontiers* (cf. Eriksen 2015, p. 105, following Cohen 1994, pp. 121–22)—that are established (or emerge) to define "in" and "out." These frontiers, further, expand and contract over time depending on the interaction with, or isolation from, other groups.

For many ancient societies, "religion" served as a fundamental frontier-defining system, and it retains this power in many societies to this day. Religion—here restricted to certain beliefs, symbols, and practices centered on the worship of a certain deity, or a larger pantheon of deities—often differentiated one group from another, or a conglomeration of groups from others. In the case of ancient Israel, according to biblical texts and epigraphic remains from the Iron Age II (10/9th c.–6th c. BCE), the cult was centered on the deity know as Yahweh, but there is also evidence in both corpora that Israelites worshiped a number of different deities (or venerated their symbols), as well (cf. Smith 2002; Dever 2005). Due to such diversity, instead of using the term "religion," some justifiably prefer to speak of "religions" in the plural to represent this reality (e.g., Zevit 2001; Hess 2007; Stavrakopoulou and Barton 2010). The way in which Yahweh was viewed in relationship to these other deities is

<sup>1</sup> Other microfauna, such as rodents and reptiles, are beyond the scope of this inquiry in that there is not conclusive evidence that such species were consumed by peoples associated with ancient Israel in the southern Levant during the Iron Ages.

<sup>2</sup> The name is first attested in the Merenptah stela at the end of the 13th c. BCE and while some question the reading of *ysrỉ3r* as "Israel," the r/l interchange between Egyptian and Semitic languages is expected (cf. Hoch 1994, p. 430) and the use of the hieroglyphic determinatives following the appellation makes it quite clear that the reading identifies a foreign, unsettled people group, as opposed to those centered in city-states, such as Ashkelon and Gezer also mentioned in the inscription (cf. Kitchen 1994, p. 76; Stager 1985, pp. 60\*–61\*). The name is again mentioned in inscriptions from the 9th c. BCE, namely in the Mesha Stela and the Tel Dan inscription discussed below, and, though some question the equation of these terms, that they are related to each other is likely. For a full discussion of the various views associated with these debates, see (Moore and Kelle 2011).

complicated by a range of opinions regarding the incorporation of the Hebrew Bible and the dating of certain religious traditions, as well as by how one understands the epigraphic remains. That said, our earliest inscribed monuments from the period of the Hebrew kingdoms (9th c. BCE), i.e., the Mesha Inscription (Tebes 2018) and the Tel Dan stela (Younger 2018), both associate these kingdoms, northern Israel and southern Judah (or, more specifically, "the House of David"), with the worship of Yahweh and no other deity, explicitly in the case of the former and by association in the theophoric names of the kings mentioned (though in broken contexts) in the latter. In that both monuments were commissioned by adversaries, in them we have an etic association with Yahweh that is in concert with the emic association of Yahweh portrayed in the biblical texts, whatever their dates of composition. Thus, regardless of any diversity among the religious expressions within ancient Israel in regard to the worship of other deities or their representative icons, the association of Yahweh with the Israelite kingdoms (Israel and Judah) was understood and officially projected in such a way that, at least by the 9th c., it served as a frontier to differentiate Israel from Moab and Aram-Damascus, in these instances, as well as in others elsewhere (cf. Faust 2017).

In this paper, then, we take "Israelite religion" to be those beliefs, symbols, and practices centered on the worship of Yahweh during the Iron Age and Persian periods in the southern Levant, while the diversity of religious expression that would have included other deities alongside of Yahweh is fully recognized (cf. Albertz 1994; Miller 2000; Zevit 2001; Smith 2002; Hess 2007; Stavrakopoulou and Barton 2010, among others). In this regard, and in light of the above discussion of ethnicity, while the designation of "Israelite religion" is retained, rightly understood, our endeavor may be more accurately defined as the zooarchaeology of *Yahweh-centric* religion.
