An Elite Middle Bronze IIA Warrior Tomb from Yehud, Central Coastal Plain, Israel GILAD ITACH,DOR GOLAN, AND SHIRLY BEN DOR EVIAN A salvage excavation held at the city of Yehud (Israel) revealed an unusual burial of the Middle Bronze (MB) IIA period. The grave was isolated from other MB burials in the Yehud area and was ex- ceptionally large and rich in terms of the types and diversity of burial offerings, which included pottery vessels, metal objects, and animal bones. An outstanding find among the burial goods was an anthro- pomorphic jug whose neck was shaped in the form of a seated figure supporting its head with the right hand, evoking the image of Rodin’s “Le Penseur.” This paper presents the grave and offerings uncovered in the excavation and an interpretation of these finds, along with a discussion of the grave within the wider context of Middle Bronze Age burials in Yehud and beyond, suggesting it was associated with an elite warrior, who served most likely as a local leader. Keywords: Middle Bronze Age; burial; Yehud; southern Levant; anthropomorphic jug; warrior tomb A n exceptionally large number of Middle Bronze (MB) Age burials have been excavated in recent decades along the Israeli central coastal plain. These graves shed light not only on burial customs, but also on the social organization and material culture of the MB pop- ulation of this region. One of the largest MB cemeteries known in the area, was recently unearthed through a num- ber of salvage excavations within the modern city of Yehud, one of which exposed in 2016 an unusual MB IIA tomb (henceforward T312), as well as other remains from the Late Chalcolithic and Byzantine periods. 1 Tomb 312 (T312)— the focus of this paper—was relatively isolated from other MB burials in the Yehud area and was exceptionally large and rich in terms of the types and diversity of burial offerings. These included pottery vessels, metal objects, and animal bones. An outstanding find among the burial goods was an anthropomorphic jug whose neck was shaped in the form of a seated figure supporting its head with the right hand, evoking the image of Rodin’s Le Penseur. This paper begins with a brief overview on the typology of MB II burials in the southern Levant and the main burial sites in Israel’s Central Coastal Plain. This is followed by an introduction of the site of Yehud, and a detailed presentation Gilad Itach: Israel Antiquities Authority, Central District, 12 Levanda Street, Tel-Aviv 6602919, Israel; itachgilad@gmail.com Dor Golan: Israel Antiquities Authority, Central District, 12 Levanda Street., Tel Aviv 6602919, Israel; golandor@hotmail.com Shirly Ben Dor Evian: University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Avenue, Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel; bdevian@gmail.com Electronically Published October 12, 2022. Bulletin of ASOR, volume 388, November 2022. © 2022 American Society of Overseas Research. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press for ASOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/721809 1 For the excavation preliminary report see Itach, Golan, and Zwiebel 2017. For the Late Chalcolithic final report, see Itach et al. 2019. The ex- cavation, Permit No. A-7804/2016, undertaken on behalf of the Israel An- tiquities Authority (IAA) in the southeast corner of Wienhaus and Herzl Streets (New Israel Grid 18938–52/65958–64) and financed by the Aura- Israel Company, Ltd., was directed by Itach, with the assistance of Golan and Elisheva Zwiebel (area supervision), Getta Rosenzweig (area supervi- sion assistant), Yoni Amrani and Eli Bachar (administration), Eliran Oren and Jenny Marcus (preliminary inspections), Yossi Elisha (antiquities in- spection), Maxim Dinshtein (field photography), Mendel Kahan and Avi Hajian (surveying and drafting), Angelina Dagot and Chen Ben-Ari (GPS), Natasha Zak and Dov Porotsky (plans), Irina Lideski-Reznikov (pottery and metal drawings), Clara Amit (studio photography), Elisheva Kamaisky (res- toration), Yossi Nagar and Vered Eshed (physical anthropology), Nimrod Marom and Zohar Turgeman-Yaffe (archaeozoology), Yaniv Agmon and Carman Hersh (graphics), Lena Kupershmit (metal restoration), Johanna Regev and Elisabetta Boaretto ( 14 C analysis), Oren Ackermann (geology), Peter Gendelman and Edwin C. M. van den Brink (scientific consultation), as well as Anan ʿAzab and Doron Ben-Ami from the IAA Central District.