The Manasseh Hill Country Survey is an archaeological survey of the Manasseh Hill Country, a region in Israel and the West Bank associated with the territory of the biblical Israelite tribe of Manasseh. It began in 1978 under the direction of Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal, and continues for over 40 years.[1] Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein described the survey as “one of the most important ever undertaken in the Land of Israel”.
The survey covered an area of more than 2,500 square kilometers, from the Jordan Valley in the East to the Israeli coastal plain in the West, and from Nahal Iron in the North to the north-eastern point of the Dead Sea in the South.[2] It unearthed over 200 Iron Age I sites covering the area's settlement from 1250 to 1000 BCE.[3] Among the sites discovered during the survey were the Mount Ebal Site (1980)[4] and Ahwat (1992).[5]
The survey's findings were published in seven volumes, originally in 1992 in Hebrew, with an English edition first published in 2000.[6]