The Timnian culture complex in the southern Levantine deserts: A rationale

An historical overview of the idea of a Timnian culture is presented, including discussion of early definitions. The final systematization of the Timnian Culture Complex, and the associated synthesis of its material culture corpus, has three primary goals: 1. To establish basic continuities between the protohistoric cultures/assemblages of the Negev, and by extension those of adjacent desert regions, by organizing the archaeological materials into a coherent and consistent sequence; 2. To demonstrate the essential independence of the protohistoric desert cultural trajectory from that of settled zone societies; and 3. To offer an explanatory framework for these two inter-related phenomena by attaching the long-term development of the Timnian Culture Complex to the dynamics of the evolving desert pastoral societies.