TEL AVIV Vol. 36, 2009, 218–240 © Friends of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University 2009 DOI 10.1179/033443509x12506723940811 The Har emar Site: A Northern Outpost on the Desert Margin? Yuval Yekutieli Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Archaeological fieldwork in the southern Judean Desert has traced an Early Bronze Age ascent and a control site—Har emar—situated next to it. The ceramic finds included quantities of northern wares such as North Canaanite Metallic Ware (NCMW) and Khirbet Kerak Ware (KKW). The paper describes the ascent and the site of Har emar, and suggests dating their operation to 2800–2700 ± 50 BCE. It proposes that the NCMW represents remains of trade items discarded along the interregional route using the ascent, while the KKW was used mainly by the road controllers residing at Har emar. The paper proposes that the latter were foreigners hired by local authorities to guard the road, i.e., an early type of mercenary, and identifies them as KKW-bearing people. keywords Judean Desert, Khirbet Kerak Ware, North Canaanite Metalic Ware, Early Bronze Age, Mercenaries For about a decade a Ben-Gurion University team directed by the author conducted a survey in the southern Judean Desert (Fig. 1; Map of >En-Boqeq). One of the results of this survey was the discovery of an ascent dated to the Early Bronze Age (Figs. 2, 3). The ascent which rises from the area of the Dead Sea coast northwestwards was noticeable due to scatters of potsherds along its route. This trail of sherds also led to a built site on the ridge of Har Ḥemar, previously labelled Site 48–4, and now called the Har Ḥemar site (Yekutieli 2001, 2004, 2006a, 2006b). In previous papers it was suggested that the ascent—henceforth the EB Zohar Ascent—is a part of a longer interregional road that connected two large EBA socio- political units: a Dead-Sea Ghors complex in the east, and the Arad Valley complex in the west. The surveyed segment of the road passes through an arid and unsettled buffer zone between these two units. The ascent’s components, its political and economic signiicance and the operation of control and power mechanisms along its route have been described in detail in earlier reports (Yekutieli 2001, 2004, 2006a, 2006b). >