do constitute a self-contained ethnicity on stylistic grounds. The nature of the Iron I settlement patterns defined later in this study will further support this thesis. The Merneptah Stele is direct positive evidence that the term “Israel” was used for some entity in the highlands of Palestine in the parlance of Late Bronze IIb sources (this stele will be treated more fully in Chapter 6). In another sense, it makes no difference what the Iron I highlanders called themselves: they were the direct