demographic shift in this region. In place of a few larger centers that functioned as forts for the Canaanite city-state leaders, there was an explosion in the number of villages that took place at the end of the thirteenth century. Where there had been at most two or three dozen villages, there appeared as many as three hundred that have been identified so far. While there could be a variety of causes for such a change, it is difficult not to see here a sociological phenomenon that matches closely