Har Adir (or Mount Adir) is an archaeological site that is believed to be the center of a previously unknown polity in the Galilee prior to the rise of Israel and Judah. The site, a trapezoidal fortress roughly 47.5 meters wide with a casemate wall, sits on a mountain peak in Meron Ridges of the Upper Galilee. The peak is 1004 meters above sea level and commands a good view of the surrounding hills, giving it a strategic advantage. There are no mentions of Har Adir in the Hebrew Bible or other textual sources, and its proposed chronology of the Iron Age IB (12–11th centuries B.C.E) predates ancient Israel or Judah.
Discovery and excavation
The fortress was discovered by accident in 1975 when road construction revealed two walls. The construction area around that road and a corner of the fortress were subsequently excavated by Vitto and Davis under the Israel Department of Antiquities (now IAA). Further excavated in 2019 by Hayah Katz, the recent studies have led to a reevaluation.
Katz asserts that there are two discernable occupation layers at Adir, not three as suggested by Vitto and Davis, and that the larger Stratum I should be dated to the 11th century while the earlier Stratum II cannot yet be dated. The large scale and well-built walls of the site are unusual amongst the sites that existed in the Upper Galilee at this time. 22 pottery vessels were analyzed via petrography, which showed that the majority were made in the vicinity of Adir and some were imported from the Phoenician coast and eastern Galilee. By the beginning of the Iron IIA (mid-10th c. B.C.E), this well-connected fortress was either abandoned or destroyed and never occupied again.
Hypothesis concerning the fortress
Due to the lack of historical context, archaeology is the only lens to study the site. From this lens, scholars have come to three different conclusions regarding who controlled Har Adir. One is that Har Adir, along with neighboring sites like Tel Harashim, marked the northwestern border of Israel and the kingdom of Tyre. Another takes the opposite approach, claiming the site was under Phoenician control, like the coastal areas to the west. Most recently, scholars have suggested that Har Adir was not constructed and manned by a foreign state but was the heart of the short-lived ‘Upper Galilee Polity.’ This newest hypothesis does seem to align with broader trends of many new settlements and even small polities forming in the Galilee during the Iron I, immediately preceding the formation of larger kingdoms like Omride Israel.
Bibliography
Ilan, D. (1999). Northeastern Israel in the Iron Age I: cultural, socioeconomic and political perspectives. [Doctoral dissertation, Tel Aviv University]. DaTA.
Katz, H. (2020). Settlement Processes in the Meron Ridges During the Iron Age I. BASOR 383(1), 1–18.
Katz, H. (2021). Mount Adir: An Iron I Polity in the Upper Galilee? Tel Aviv, 48(2), 171–198.
Pagelson, Y., Katz, H., & Goren, Y. (2022). The geopolitics of the Upper Galilee at the dawn of the Iron Age: a petrographic study of Mt. Adir. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 14(1).