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2010 Excavation Blogs

I’ve started a list of active blogs, and would be grateful to learn of any others that you know of.

Gath – this is the best excavation blog I know of, thanks to the tireless work of the archaeologist, Aren Maeir. This year they are excavating July 4-30, but that’s less important because Maeir updates the blog year-round.

Ashkelon – this is a primarily an educational blog written by one of the supervisors. Note that this is a new location (as of 7/13). The season began June 6 and wraps up on July 16.

Bethsaida – the 24th season ran from May 23 to June 26, and brief summaries and photos are posted.

Tel Burna – they had a very successful first season (June 20 – July 1) and I have hopes there will be periodic updates as they do analysis and prepare for next year’s dig.

Tall el-Hammam – the website provides season summaries, but there appears to be no blog updating readers during the winter excavation seasons (upcoming: December 10, 2010 to January 20, 2011).

Hazor – excavations are on-going now (June 20 – July 30), and the current diggers have a Facebook page where they can upload photos and videos. The official Tel Hazor Facebook page is rather limited, and I am unaware of any blogging about the excavations.

Hippos (Susita) – the website indicates that the 2010 season will run July 4-31. Mark Schuler has a blog for the Concordia University excavations of the Northeast Church. Other members of the team have blogs listed at virtualdig.org.

Tall Jalul – this year’s excavation has concluded, but Owen Chesnut will be adding updates periodically throughout the year. Though less well known, this site is one of the largest in Jordan.

Magdala – this relatively new dig plans to be in the field for an extended period over the next several years (ahead of construction). The blog seems to be on break, but you can follow along by Twitter @magdalaisrael.

Khirbet el-Maqatir – the two-week season ended June 6. The dig doesn’t have its own blog, but the organization sponsoring the dig does.

Dig Megiddo 2010 – this blog is frequently updated with reports from volunteers about their experiences as well as photos posted on Facebook by Eric Cline. The season this year runs from June 12 to July 29.

Khirbet Qeiyafa – the Elah Fortress website, with all of its photos and summaries, appears to have been deleted. The Hebrew U website is infrequently updated. The excavation season this year is June 20 to July 30. Blogger Luke Chandler is volunteering and may have some reports in the weeks to come.

Ramat Rahel – the website provides general details only. Excavations are slated for August 15-26.

Tel Rehov – this is another Israeli dig with (apparently) nothing more than a website. The season began on June 15 and ends on July 16.

Temple Mount Sifting Project – this blog provides periodic updates on related issues, but daily
finds are not reported.
In addition to the blogs and new sources (for major discoveries), a couple of radio programs are available online to keep you up to date with interviews with the archaeologists. These include the

The Book and the Spade (Gordon Govier) and LandMinds (Barnea Levi Selavan and Dovid Willner).

What should be added to this list? If you know of something that is regularly updated (blog, Facebook, or twitter), please post a comment or send me an email (address on sidebar). Thanks!

Excavations at Beth Shemesh, 1920s

This photo is from the Southern Palestine volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (Library of Congress, LC-matpc-09121).

Tagged American Colony Photos, Excavations

Synagogue Discovered at Horvat Kur

The Kinneret Regional Project is excavating Tel Chinnereth (Kinneret) and studying its environs on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. This season they have focused their attention on Horvat Kur, and their efforts have been rewarded with the discovery of a synagogue dated to the 4th century.

Taken all the available evidence together, it seems very likely, that KRP 2010 has discovered a part of the western wall of yet another ancient Galilean synagogue. Together with the well-known synagogues at Capernaum and Chorazin (both ca. 5th / 6th c. CE) and the recently discovered ones at Khirbet Hammam (2nd / 3rd c. CE) and Magdala (1st c. CE), the new synagogue at Horvat Kur (tentatively dated to the 4th / 5th c. CE) adds new evidence for a very tight net of synagogues in a relatively small area on the Northwestern shores of the Lake of Galilee.

You can read the full report here (and a copy here). Nothing in the article was very clear about its location, so I did a little work to locate the site and create a map using Google Earth. As you can see, the site is in close proximity to some important New Testament locations. The distance from the site to the water’s edge is about one mile.

It will be interesting to see if they discover anything from the 1st century. The report states that the site was inhabited from the Early Roman to the Early Medieval period, and Early Roman usually designates the period before Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70.

Map of northwest shoreline of Sea of Galilee

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Galilee

Western Wall Museum Controversy

Haaretz reported on this meeting yesterday, but as of now I haven’t seen an update on the ruling.

Jerusalem’s district planning council was on Sunday set to rule on a controversial museum project that archaeologists claim would destroy valuable ancient structures beneath the Old City.
The new museum is planned for the concourse beside the Western Wall of the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site.
But a group of archaeologists who have petitioned the council says the new building, designed by architect Ada Karmi, would damage an ancient Roman road, flanked by rare and elaborate columns, that runs beneath the planned construction.
They say that if Jewish relics were under threat, the project would never have been allowed.
“It is impossible to exaggerate the cultural damage and the harm to antiquities that would result if the road is encased by the new building’s foundation pillars,” the archaeologists wrote in a petition to the planning council.

Whenever someone says “it is impossible to exaggerate,” it’s a dead give-away that they are exaggerating. Unfortunately the article does not provide the names of any of the archaeologists who signed the petition.

The full story is here.

Excavations on the west side of the Western Wall prayer plaza, site of planned museum

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem, Museums

Israel Imported Honeybees from Turkey

Several years ago, excavators at Tel Rehov (near Beth Shean) discovered a series of beehives.

Scholars have now concluded that bees were imported from Turkey because they were less aggressive and more productive than Syrian bees. From the Jerusalem Post:

Although Turkey is currently in the dog house for many Israelis because of its involvement in the violent Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, during biblical times the Israelites imported bees from Turkey for the industrial production of honey in the Beit She’an Valley, according to a new archeological discovery by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The team, headed by HU archeology Prof. Amihai Mazar, found a total of 30 intact hives in the ruins of the city of Tel Rehov, dating back to 900 BCE, as well as evidence that there had been 100-200 hives made of straw and unbaked clay.
Three millennia ago, the joint Israelite-Canaanite settlement had 2,000 residents.
The hives, lined up in an orderly way, may be the earliest complete beehives ever discovered and offer a glimpse of ancient beekeeping during biblical times.
The team of archeologists and biologists was surprised that bee remnants had been found in an urban setting.
[…]
Syrian bees are aggressive and irascible, said Bloch.
Thus, it would have been difficult to keep them within a dense urban area. The Anatalyan bee, which produces five to eight times more honey, is less aggressive, making it possible to raise them in an urban setting.
The Beit She’an Valley digs also showed evidence of widespread commerce with lands in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as techniques for transferring bees in large pottery vases or portable hives. An Assyrian stamp from the 8th century BCE provided evidence that the bees had been brought 400 km. south from the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey – a distance that was just slightly shorter than that between Taurus and Tel Rehov. Thus, the import of “docile” bees apparently was a solution for the beekeepers of the Land of Israel.

The full article is here.

Tagged Excavations, Turkey

Omrit Excavations 2010

Excavations at the site of Omrit in northern Israel are wrapping up for the summer, and from the photos posted on the unofficial blog, it looks like they made some impressive discoveries this year.

In particular, note the beautifully frescoed wall near the earliest temple.

Omrit is not far from Caesarea Philippi (Banias), and the excavators have suggested that Herod’s temple was located at Omrit instead of Caesarea Philippi. A series of temples have been found at
Omrit, dating from approximately 50 BC to AD 360. For a brief review, see this post.

Thanks to Roi Brit for the tip.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Galilee

Questioning the Identification of the Magdala Synagogue

Tom Powers began to comment here on yesterday’s post on Magdala, but it grew to such length that he put it up on his own blog. Tom questions the present identification of the synagogue to the first century.

However, I must ask certain questions about the present find, especially in relation to the other synagogues long dated to the late 2nd Temple period in this country – and there are only a handful: Masada, Herodium, Gamla, Jericho, and perhaps one or two others. For one thing, what other synagogue from this period has a mosaic floor (of any kind or design)? What other synagogue lacks stepped benches around the periphery of the hall? What other synagogue has a decorative carved stone set into the middle of the floor? In short, everything about the Magdala structure seems to be an anomaly – if it is what the archaeologists claim.

These are good questions. Typically mosaic floors from this time period are found in houses or palaces, not in synagogues. Other synagogues have benches on the walls, including the 1st century synagogues at Masada and Gamla (for a reconstruction and photo of the latter, see here).

Tom is not questioning the date of the building (contra the post title; see update below), but rather whether this building is in fact a synagogue. It is a curious fact that archaeologists too often tend to find exactly what they’re looking for. Might this be a public building, not necessarily religious in nature? Tom questions whether the inscribed stone with a menorah is a sufficient basis for the synagogue identification. One further question in that regard is what periods the site was occupied.

You can read Tom’s whole post here.

UPDATE: Tom has kindly informed me that I have misrepresented his post. Indeed I have! I read what I expected rather than what he wrote. I apologize to him and to my readers. The above post has been corrected. In case it is not clear above, Tom questions the function of the building, not its date, as I previously stated.

Magdala synagogue

Carved stone in Magdala synagogue. Photos courtesy of Gordon Franz.

Tagged Analysis, Excavations, Galilee