Or it may reflect the complexity of the Sea Peoples confederation: different groups with different origins, some from the Aegean proper and some from its margins.

Archaeological work at the major Philistine cities, particularly the spectacular excavations at Ashkelon by Lawrence Stager and later the Leon Levy Expedition, and at Ekron (Tel Miqne) by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin, have established in extraordinary detail what the Philistine material culture looked like.

The Philistines were clearly a people with Aegean roots who adapted quickly to the Levantine environment, adopting aspects of Canaanite and Egyptian culture while maintaining some distinctive features of their own.

But archaeology can tell us about material culture — what people made, what they ate, how they built — without telling us definitively where they came from biologically.