Archaeologists Discover Philistine Cemetery
While more than a century of scholarship has identified the five major cities of the Philistines and artifacts distinctive to their culture, only a handful of burials have been tentatively identified.
Simply put, archaeologists have found plenty of pots, but very few people.
Now, the discovery of a cemetery containing more than 211 individuals and dated from the 11th to 8th centuries B.C. will give archaeologists the opportunity to answer critical questions regarding the origin of the Philistines and how they eventually assimilated into the local culture.
Until this discovery, the absence of such cemeteries in major Philistine centers has made researchers’ understanding of their burial practices—and by turn, their origins—”about as accurate as the mythology about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree,” says Lawrence Stager, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Harvard University, who has led the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon since 1985.
All I’ve ever known about the Philistines, I’ve read in the Bible- so, the local Bad Guys who would steal the Ark of the Covenant and fought Samson. I never knew that they lived in what is now the Gaza strip, or that they used Aegean script instead of Semitic, or that they fought (and lost to) the Babylonians, or that they might have been goddam pirates who ranged all over the local seas:
Many researchers also tie the presence of the Philistines to the exploits of the Sea Peoples, a mysterious confederation of tribes that appears to have wreaked havoc across the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. A relief in the mortuary temple of pharaoh Ramses III depicts his battle against the Sea Peoples around 1180 B.C. and records the names of several of the tribes, among them the Peleset, who are featured with distinctive headgear and kilts.
The Philistine burial practices are very different from the local Canaanite or Israeli methods- dug graves instead of burial chambers, and only a few small tokens are buried with the deceased. More evidence that the Philistines came from elsewhere? It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate!
Discovery of Philistine Cemetery May Solve Biblical Mystery, National Geographic