Terrasse

However, to bring the heads of the league the sooner to a capitulation, it was resolved upon in his council, to attack all the suburbs at once, which he executed on the night of the twenty seventh of July , with great success , having carried them in less than an hour , and bloated up all the doors , before which his men erected their lodgings , after terrassing the houses that were next the ditch.

Gottwald lists three elements which may have made it possible for an Israelite tribal society to emerge in the Palestinian mountainous areas around 1200: the introduction of iron tools; the new technique of lining cisterns; and the new method of cultivation, which entailed terrassing the mountain slopes in order to control the use of the available rainfall.