BEER-SHEBA III THE EARLY IRON IIA ENCLOSED SETTLEMENT AND THE LATE IRON IIA-IIB CITIES Ze’ev Herzog and Lily Singer-Avitz Volume I Monograph Series 33 Tel Aviv University · Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology I 33 BEER-SHEBA III ZE’EV HERZOG And LILY SINGER-AVITZ A Tel Aviv University expedition at Tel Beer-sheba, headed by the late Yohanan Aharoni, resulted in expos- ing a small city that had served as an administrative cen- ter of the Kingdom of Judah in the northeastern Negeb almost 3000 years ago. The well planned, fortiied city contained a network of streets, blocks of residential dwellings, storeroom-buildings and a sophisticated wa- ter-system – all aimed at seving political, military, cultic and economic elite. Tel Beer-sheba yielded a uniquely rich repertoire of potery vessels, and a variety of other artifacts and ecofacts that exhibit the material culture of the site during the Iron IIA and Iron IIB periods. The tell was developed by the National Parks Authority and in 2005 UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site. Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology