Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
Prologue Four Eyewitness Accounts versus 'Arguments in Stone'
1: Shifting Paradigms for the Byzantine: Islamic Transition
2: From Polis to Madina: The Evolution of Large Urban Communities
3: A Tale of Two Cities: Jerusalem and Ramla in the Early Islamic Period
4: The Changing Land: Settlement Patterns and Ethnic Identities
5: The Transformation of Settlement and Society: A Synthesis
6: Conclusion
Appendix I: Cities in Byzantine Palestine, Phoenice, and Arabia
Appendix II: Early Islamic Settlements in Palestine and Jordan
Appendix III: Regional Surveys Byzantine and Early Islamic Sites
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Gideon Avni is the Head of the Archaeological Division in the Israel Antiquities Authority and a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His academic interests focus on various aspects of Classical, Late Antique and Early Islamic archaeology, the cultural and religious transformation of the Near East from Byzantine to Islamic rule, and the archaeology of desert societies in the Levant. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in
the Negev Desert, Beth Guvrin, Jerusalem, and Ramla.

Reviews

In The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archeological Approach, Gideon Avni provides a synthesis of current knowledge on the archaeology of Palestine and Jordan in the period from the sixth to eleventh centuries ... Avni provides a huge service to other scholars in bringing together a large amount of recent, specialist material in an accessible format.
*Phil Booth, American Historical Review*