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Discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa in 2011

The Spring/Summer 2011 issue of DigSight has just been released by the Institute of Archaeology of Southern Adventist University. The newsletter includes a good primer on biblical minimalism and its shifts in the last two decades. Another article discusses “Evident Silence or Silenced Evidence” in defense of the historicity of Daniel 5.

The lead article summarizes the major tasks and discoveries of the 2011 team:

Completion of excavation of 4th-century BC large building with olive press
Discovery of early 10th-century BC stone quarry that continued in use in Hellenistic and/or Roman times
Excavation of three Iron Age rooms with some partially restorable vessels and a standing stone (signifying a cultic area?)
Discovery of best-preserved example of Iron Age floor at the site.
Significant small finds including a faience scarab seal, a bone seal with lion and man, an iron ring, and a portion of an Aramaic ostracon
Excavation of more than 25,000 pieces of pottery in Area D alone

The newsletter notes that the Institute’s three-year excavation of Qeiyafa has now concluded and the next two years will be used for publishing the final results.

The quality of the newsletter is superb but reading it in the issuu format has its drawbacks. Unlike previous issues, downloading the newsletter in pdf format requires login and the only login I could see to use was Facebook. (And I don’t know yet what adverse effects there may be from that.)

Tagged 10th Century, Discoveries, Excavations, Shephelah

Tell Qarqur: Survival in the Midst of Collapse

From the University of Arkansas:

The end of the third millennium B.C. – roughly 2200 to 2000 B.C. – is often described as a dark age because this period experienced the collapse of many major states, including the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, Old Kingdom Egypt and the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley. Major cities and small towns across the Middle East that had been occupied for centuries were suddenly abandoned, leaving a gap in the archaeological and historical record.
“Tells” are the name for ancient cities and towns, preserved today as large mounds, throughout the Middle East. Until the 1980s, little was known about Tell Qarqur, the site of two large mounds that archeologists know was occupied continuously for more than 10,000 years, from 8500 B.C. to the medieval period. Tell Qarqur experienced particularly large occupations during the Bronze and Iron Ages, from 3000 to 500 B.C.
The researchers are now trying to understand why Tell Qarqur survived, when nearly all civilizations in the region during that time collapsed. Some anthropologists have attributed the demise of these settlements to widespread drought. If there was a drought, Casana said, the important question was how it affected the environment and ancient communities, that is, how susceptible were their agricultural strategies to drought and did they adapt to changing conditions? These are some of the questions Casana seeks to answer with continued research at the site.

The full press release is here, Live Science reports on the excavations here, and nine photos may be viewed here.

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Excavations, Syria

Jericho Excavations 2011

Rome “La Sapienza” University and the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage (MOTA – DACH) excavated at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) in March 2011 and have now posted a preliminary report online.

The team excavated four areas with remains from the Early and Middle Bronze periods. The report contains the following sections:

Palestinian Culture Protection: Jericho, 10,000 years of History of Humankind
Restorations of EB IIIB (Sultan IIIc2, 2500-2350 BC) Palace in Area G
Area A: MB I-II (Sultan IVa-b, 1900-1650 BC) stratigraphic sequence, MB III (Sultan IVc, 1650-1550 BC) Cyclopean Wall and rampart, Iron Age IIC (Sultan VIc) house and installations
Area B: the South Gate in EB IIIA (Sultan IIIc1) double line of fortifications
Area E: MB II (Sultan IVb, 1800-1650 BC) Curvilinear Stone Structure and connected features
Area E: MB II (Sultan IVb, 1800-1650 BC) Curvilinear Stone Structure and connected features
Middle Bronze II-III (Sultan IVb-c) Palace foundation walls W.633 and W.1175
EB IV (Sultan IIId) installations
EB IIIB (Sultan IIIc2) Palace G

Palace G is believed to be the residence of the city’s governors in the third millennium BC.

The continuation of the exploration of Palace G during this season allowed to produce a more complete plan and architectural section of the building, which extended at least on three different terraces on the eastern slope of the Spring Hill. The connection with previous excavation plans to the north-west (in Sellin and Watzinger’s squares 5G-H; Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 39-42, figs. 18-20) and in Kenyon’s square HII (see above note 45), allow to draw out an overall plan of the palace, which was the seat of the rulers of Jericho in the third quarter of the 3rd millennium BC. Its monumental architecture and special finds, such as carefully executed pithoi and storage jars, seal impressions, ceremonial vessels, as well as the copper dagger, further corroborate this identification.

The palace was restored this season with plastered mudbricks. Photos of the excavation and restoration works are also available (figures 1-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-11, 12-15, 16-19, 20-21, 22-25).

HT: ANE-2

Tagged Excavations

Reports on Latest Excavations and Surveys in Israel

The latest issue of Hadashot Arkheologiyot: Excavations and Surveys in Israel has now been published online. Most of these excavations are salvage digs, conducted quickly in advance of a building project. The list of sites is impressive and includes:

Ashkelon
Bethlehem of Galilee
Caesarea
En Gedi
Omrit
Jerusalem: Sultan’s Pool, City of David, Via Dolorosa
Kafr Kanna (Cana?)
Kinneret: Path around the Sea of Galilee
Nein (Nain of Luke 7)
Ono
Tel Dor
Tel Qasile
Tel Rekhesh
Zippori (Sepphoris)

One report, however, is missing. Last week reader Roi Brit alerted me to the report on “Jerusalem, the Old City, Wilson’s Arch, and the Great Causeway.” This is now missing from the list and the link is defunct. One can still see, however, evidence of its existence in the list of “Recently Published” on the home page (just above the notice of “Copyright Legalicy” [!]). I can only speculate why the report was removed, but given the sensitivity of the area of Wilson’s Arch and the Great Causeway, it’s tempting to suppose that political considerations are involved. The Wayback Machine is not helpful this time.

Great Causeway near Western Wall of Temple Mount

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem

Summer 2011 at Tel Zayit

Tel Zayit is a small site in the Shephelah of Judah best known for the 10th-century abecedary discovered in 2005. Tel Zayit is 5 miles (8 km) south of Gath (Tell es-Safi), 6 miles (9 km) southwest of Azekah, and 4.5 miles (7 km) north of Lachish. The excavator, Ron Tappy, has suggested that Tel Zayit is biblical Libnah, though for that identification Zayit is competing with Tel Burna (pdf), only 2.5 miles (4 km) to the east.

Gordon Franz joined the Tel Zayit team this summer and he has posted some of his personal reflections and experiences on his blog.

There were no spectacular small finds at Tel Zayit this summer. The most important discovery, however, was a clearer understanding of the stratigraphy of the site. In K-20 it was the newly discovered Persian period level as well as another phase of the Roman period. In O-19 all indications point to the abecedary being clearly dated to the 10th century BC. If this date is correct, it would demonstrate that Israelites living in this out-of-the-way city were literate and, therefore, not a bunch of hillbillies living in some little cow town!

I’ve heard that the team will not be in the field next summer, but you may want to consider joining as a volunteer in 2013.

Important sites in Shephelah. Source: Google Earth. For other images with marked routes, see Chris McKinny’s blog.

Tagged Excavations, Shephelah

Kinect Game System To Be Used in Jordan Excavation

From Popular Science:

Archaeological digs are a painstaking process even after the earth has been excavated — artifacts must be carefully catalogued so researchers know exactly where they were found, which tells information about their past. On an upcoming dig in Jordan, a modified Kinect could serve as a 3-D scanner, making this process simpler — and decidedly more high-tech.
Researchers hope students traveling to an archaeological dig in Jordan will use a hacked Microsoft Kinect as a mobile scanning system, making 3-D models of ancient sites that can then be visited in a virtual-reality environment.
[…]
The modified ArKinect — archaeology and Kinect — would scan an entire dig site, and the data would be used to reconstruct the site in 3-D. Calit2 has an immersive VR system called StarCAVE, a 360-degree, 16-panel setup, which allows researchers to interact with virtual objects. A realistic 3-D portrayal of ancient cookware, for instance, would be a lot more valuable than a 2-D photograph, because it would show more detail and craftsmanship and even help researchers understand how an artifact was used.

The full story is here.

HT: Charles Savelle

Tagged Excavations, Technology