Late Bronze Age Scarabs from the Southern Levant - Chronological and Historical Implications
Nir Lalkin

More then 1900 scarabs have been found in Palestine in Late Bronze Age strata. Except for scarabs bearing royal names, these artifacts received little if any attention. Some are in a Middle Bronze Age style, and thus many scholars dated them to the Middle Bronze Age. But when examining the different aspects of these scarabs and their context, a different picture emerges. It seems that these scarabs were made in the Late Bronze Age in a Middle Bronze Age style. Some of them continue from the Middle Bronze Age through the Late Bronze Age and even to the Iron Age. Others have a shorter span of use and disappear sometime in the Late Bronze Age. The stylistic development of the scarabs enables us to date some of them with more precision and thus to use these scarabs for chronological purposes.

Variants of Late Bronze Age scarab types such as the imn-r' group or the Sphinx, which are produced throughout the Late Bronze Age, can also be used for chronological purpose.