Beersheba culture

The Beersheba culture is a Late Chalcolithic archaeological culture of the late 5th millennium BC (c. 4200–4000 BC), that was discovered in several sites near Beersheba, in the Beershebal Valley, in the northern Negev, in the 1950s. It is considered to be a phase of the Ghassulian culture. Its main sites are Bir Abu Matar, Bir Tzafad and Bir Safadi, but additional sites belonging to this cultural phase have been discovered in other parts of southern Israel.

History

In the first phase of settlement, the people of the Beersheba culture lived in underground dwellings, dug in the soft loess of the Beersheba Valley. Several of these settlements were constructed in the banks of the Beersheba Creek, in areas where water could be obtained by digging wells. In the second phase, semi-subterranean houses were built on top of underground houses that had collapsed and, in the third and last phase, houses were built completely above ground on stone foundations. The walls of the houses in the later two phases were built from pisé and the roofs consisted of branches covered in clay which lay on top of two large crossed support beams.

The different settlements of this culture were part of an economical system - they traded with one another and with other, more distant, populations. In addition to subsistence farming, each settlement tended to specialize in one particular branch of industry: in Bir Tzafad it was ivory carving and in Bir Abu Matar - copper smelting and the production of copper instruments, artifacts and jewelry.