**5. Conclusions**

The future for a zooarchaeology of Israelite religion is bright indeed thanks to pioneering archaeological methodologies developed by a previous generation that are maintained and built upon with new developments in scientific techniques, as well as more and more data from textual sources that may be compared and contrasted with biblical texts coming to light and an increasing nuance to the critical engagement of these texts that has been developing in biblical studies. This essay has sought to outline these trends and to encourage the integration of archeological and textual studies centered on the topic of Israelite religion. It has suggested a methodology that may be outlined by a series of questions:

	- -What Type of Space Is It?
	- -Is It a Deposit?
	- -What Type of Deposit Is It?
	- -Is the Context Yahwistic?
	- -What Is Recorded and How Is It Determined?
	- -How Are Bones Counted and Compared?
	- -How Do Ancient Near Eastern Practices Relate to Practices Described in the Bible?
	- - How Do Critical Methodologies Applied in Biblical Studies Affect the Understanding of Texts?

With new samples of faunal remains coming from previously unknown and recently excavated sites of Israelite cultic practice, such as Tel Moz.a, as well as from numerous examples of household cults, and from new analyses of materials from sites excavated by a previous generation, we anticipate a sustained and enduring impact of integrated methodologies and look forward to new syntheses.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** I wish to thank Avi Faust for his invitation to contribute to this special issue, and for his comments on the paper, and I am also grateful for the comments of my anonymous reviewer and for those given by Nimrod Marom. Any shortcomings and mistakes are my own.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

Aharoni, Yohanan. 1968. Arad: Its Inscriptions and Temple. *The Biblical Archaeologist* 31: 1–32. [CrossRef]


Binford, Lewis Roberts. 1981. *Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths*. New York: Academic Press.

Biran, Avraham. 1994. *Biblical Dan*. Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College.

Bloch-Smith, Elizabeth. 1992. *Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs About the Dead*. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Boessneck, Joachim. 1969. Osteological Differences between Sheep (*Ovis aries Linné*) and Goat (*Capra hircus Linné*).

In *Science in Archaeology*. Edited by Don R. Brothwell and Eric S. Higgs. New York: Praeger, pp. 331–58. Brett, Mark G., ed. 2002. *Ethnicity and the Bible*. Boston: Brill.


Kisilevitz, Shua. 2015. The Iron IIA Judahite Temple at Tel Moz.a. *Tel Aviv* 42: 147–64. [CrossRef]


Milgrom, Jacob. 1991. *Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary*. Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday.

Monson, John. 2000. The New 'Ain Dara Temple: Closest Solomonic Parallel. *Biblical Archaeology Review* 26: 20–35.


Renfrew, Colin, and Paul Bahn. 2016. *Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice*. New York: Thames & Hudson. Davis, Simon J. M. 1987a. *The Archaeology of Animals*. New Haven: Yale University Press.


Sapir-Hen, Lidar, Guy Bar-Oz, Yuval Gadot, and Israel Finkelstein. 2013. Pig Husbandry in Iron Age Israel and Judah: New Insights Regarding the Origin of the 'Taboo'. *Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palastina-Vereins* 129: 1–20.


Zevit, Ziony. 2001. *The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches*. London: Continuum.

© 2019 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
