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Bronze and Iron Age Near East

The term casemate wall is used in the archaeology of Israel and the wider Near East, having the meaning of a double wall protecting a city or fortress, with transverse walls separating the space between the walls into chambers. These could be used as such, for storage or residential purposes, or could be filled with soil and rocks during siege in order to raise the resistance of the outer wall against battering rams. Originally thought to have been introduced to the region by the Hittites, this has been disproved by the discovery of examples predating their arrival, the earliest being at Ti'inik (Taanach) where such a wall has been dated to the 16th century BC. Casemate walls became a common type of fortification in the Southern Levant between the Middle Bronze Age (MB) and Iron Age II, being more numerous during the Iron Age and peaking in Iron Age II (10th–6th century BC). However, the construction of casemate walls had begun to be replaced by sturdier solid walls by the 9th century BC, probably due the development of more effective battering rams by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Casemate walls could surround an entire settlement, but most only protected part of it. The three different types included freestanding casemate walls, then integrated ones where the inner wall was part of the outer buildings of the settlement, and finally filled casemate walls, where the rooms between the walls were filled with soil right away, allowing for a quick, but nevertheless stable construction of particularly high walls.