Bronze Middle Age period
The rise of the Middle Bronze Age marked a return to vigorous urban life at Pella. The spread of new settlements from the coastal hinterland has led many to see this rebirth as a consequence of the mercantile expansion of a newly reunited Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Whatever the ultimate causes, settlement returned to the main mound of Pella early in the second millennium BCE, and within 200 years this had expanded into a major city occupying more than 8 hectares. Massive 4-metre thick mud-brick fortifications ringed much of the site. Burials (mostly single) within the context of the city were the norm in earlier Middle Bronze Age times, but large cemeteries of chamber tombs honeycombed many of the exposed hillsides in later Middle Bronze Age times. Ten large Middle Bronze Age chamber tombs have been excavated across the northern face of Tell Husn, and these constitute the main Middle Bronze Age cemetery of the settlement. the Probably most spectacular of our recent Middle Bronze Age discoveries on the main mound has been the massive 32 x 24 metre stone and mud-brick fortress temple, intensively excavated since 1997. As excavations proceeded, it became clear that the entire temple precinct had been largely undisturbed since its final destruction around 800 BCE, and that up to six distinct phases of temple architecture, stretching over more than a thousand years of occupation (c. 1900800 BCE), were preserved one on top of the other. At least three of the temples had suffered destruction b...