75 City-States to States: Polity Dynamics in the 10th–9th Centuries B.C.E. Israel Finkelstein Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University Ramat Aviv, Israel It is conventional wisdom that the Late Bronze Age Egypto-Canaanite system of city-states came to an end in the second half of the 12th century b.c.e. (e.g., Ussishkin 1985; Singer 1988–89). But what happened next? Was this the final collapse of second- millennium Canaan? After all, both the Early Bronze and Middle Bronze Age urban systems suffered major shocks and recovered after a relatively short period of time. In other words, do we know when and how the city-state system of Canaan came to an end? In the early days of research, cultural lines were not drawn by archaeology but, rather, according to two “historical” considerations: the biblical account of the conquest of Canaan and the “Israelite Settlement” that followed; and the Egyptian texts concerning the invasion of the “Sea Peoples” (e.g., Albright 1949: 109; A. Mazar 1990: 295). Theo- retically, one might argue that the culture of Canaan could have recovered from the “Sea Peoples’” migrations. So the only reason for marking the year 1200 b.c.e. as the critical point in the history of Canaan would be textual—that is, biblical. But, with the progress in archaeological research, it has become abundantly clear that Canaan was not wiped out in a single military campaign and that early Israel (and its neighbors) emerged from the autochthonous population of the southern Levant. Still, the images of the devastated cit- ies of Canaan, the eradication of the indigenous population, and young Israel’s emergence from the ruins have not faded away. On the textual side, there is wide agreement among scholars that the biblical narratives in question were not put into writing before the 7th century b.c.e. (e.g., Cross 1973: 274– 88; Nelson 1981; Halpern and Vanderhooft 1991). And even if the texts preserve some ear- lier materials, in most cases these are beyond recovery, because the Deuteronomistic historian enmeshed them in his ideology and presented them in such a way that they could be used to advance his political goals. Therefore, anyone reading the biblical de- scription of the conquest must be aware that he/she is in the ideological world of late Mo- narchic Judah, not in Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I realities. Hence, the description of the conquest of Galilee, which may have been based on an authentic folk-tale, was in- tended to show that Judah was the only legitimate heir to the territories of the then- vanquished Northern Kingdom. The report on the land that still remained to be taken aims to delineate what could not be fulfilled, even of the dreams of the late Davidic kings. The list of cities that were not conquered—all in the territories of the North—is no more than a theological fable on the failure of the Northern Kingdom to eradicate Canaanite