Excavations Archives - Page 88 of 97

Video: Search for Sodom and Gomorrah

Ferrell Jenkins links to a new video on the excavations of Tall el-Hammam, believed by Steven Collins to be biblical Sodom. The 10-minute video is well-produced and the excavator’s arguments are easy to understand. I don’t need to make every mention of this excavation on this blog an occasion to disagree, but it is difficult to let certain statements slide by. Besides that, conservative Bible believers like myself are used to hearing critical dismissals from those who don’t trust the Bible. But just because something is opposed by critics does not mean that it is automatically right!

The problem, I believe, is that Collins’ statement “right place, right time” dooms his identification.

Finding ancient sites that have Middle Bronze occupation and then a gap until Iron Age is not difficult. That’s what Collins has found. This and the others in the area are no doubt important sites, but it does not fit the biblical data about Sodom. Collins concludes with the presentation with this statement:

Every turn of the spade at Tall el-Hammam reinforces the occupational profile predicted for Sodom from the Bible.

If this statement was negative, it would be accurate. That is, Tall el-Hammam does not match the occupational profile for Sodom given in the Bible.

Sodom, according to the Bible:

Intermediate Bronze (aka EB IV/MB I; 2300-2000 BC): occupied and destroyed
Middle Bronze (2000-1500 BC): not occupied
Late Bronze (1500-1200 BC): not occupied
Iron Age (1200-600 BC): not occupied

Tall el-Hammam, according to the excavations:

Intermediate Bronze (aka EB IV/MB I; 2300-2000 BC): occupied
Middle Bronze (2000-1500 BC): occupied [Sodom was not]
Late Bronze (1500-1200 BC): not occupied
Iron Age (1200-600 BC): occupied [Sodom was not]

With regard to the Middle Bronze occupation, understand this: you must revise the biblical dates in order for Collins’ identification to match the archaeology. He lowers the date of Abraham in order to create a match with his excavation results. The traditional biblical dating of the destruction of Sodom is approximately 2100 BC, but the Middle Bronze Age ends about 500 years later. (The key references that establish the biblical dating are Exodus 12:40 and 1 Kings 6:1.)

With regard to the Iron Age occupation, there is not one reference in the Bible to Sodom being occupied during this time. There are many references from the end of the Iron Age that indicate that its destruction testified to God’s judgment (Isa 1:9; 13:19-20; Jer 50:40; Amos 4:11; Zeph 2:9). This would hardly be the case for a city that was rebuilt and thriving as Tall el-Hammam was.

Understand, I want to believe. The data just gets in the way.

My previous posts on this site may be found here and here. Steven Collins has written a number of articles about Tall el-Hammam which may be found in his school’s journal here.

Tagged Dead Sea, Excavations

Jerusalem Excavation Photos

Years ago I would say that no city had been excavated more than Jerusalem. Today I think it’s also true to say that no city is currently being excavated more than Jerusalem. Peter Wong has shared a few photos that he took last week.

Excavations on Mount Zion. See here for more information about the summer’s discoveries.

Excavations in the Central (Tyropoean) Valley. See here for the report of the discovery of Queen Helene’s palace in this area.

Excavations in the Western Wall plaza. See here and here for earlier photos.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem

New Technology Gives 3-D Positions of Archaeological Finds

New Scientist has a popular version of an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science about recording the locations of archaeological artifacts using acoustic signals.

Every object unearthed by an archaeological dig must have its exact position recorded. This is normally a painstaking process involving measuring rods and string, but a device that uses technology originally developed to guide robots could speed up the process.
Gran Dolina in central Spain is a Palaeolithic site that contains important hominin remains which date from between 780,000 and 300,000 years ago. Thousands of fossils are discovered there every year, but registering them all by hand makes progress frustratingly slow. So archaeologists working on the site contacted Angélica de Antonio Jiménez and Fernando Seco at the Institute of Industrial Automation in Madrid, to see if they could come up with a better way.
Antonio Jiménez and Seco were working on an ultrasound system to help blind people and robots navigate, in which a mobile transmitter sends signals to a network of fixed nodes. The time taken for the signal to arrive at each node determines the precise location of the transmitter. To adapt the system for archaeological sites, Antonio Jiménez developed a 2-metre-long pointer, like a big pencil, to act as the transmitter. To prevent the user’s body blocking the signals, it has two transmitters, one at the top and one 70 centimetres below it.
When a researcher finds an object, they trace its outline with the pointer, transmitting ultrasound data to a network of nodes above the site.
Software then reconstructs not only the position of the object, but also its size, shape and orientation, to an accuracy of about 5 millimetres (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2009.06.027).

The New Scientist article continues here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Excavations

Khirbet el-Maqatir (Ai?) Highlights

Bryant Wood has posted some highlights of this season’s results at Khirbet el-Maqatir. The review includes a map, photos, and summaries of geographical and archaeological correspondences between Maqatir and biblical Ai. You can read the whole; I’ll just quote here a portion of the introduction and a portion of the conclusion.

From the introduction:

After a hiatus of nine years, ABR has resumed work at Kh. el-Maqatir, a promising candidate for Joshua’s Ai (Joshua 7–8). The site is located approximately 9 mi north of Jerusalem and 0.6 mi west of et-Tell, the site most scholars identify as Joshua’s Ai. There is a major problem identifying et-Tell as Joshua’s Ai, however, as the site was unoccupied at the time of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan. ABR was founded 40 years ago to examine this problem and field work has been conducted both at Kh. Nisya (1979–2000; Livingston 2003) and Kh. el-Maqatir (1995–2000 [Wood 1999b, 1999c, 2000, 2008] and 2009) as part of the investigation. At Kh. el-Maqatir evidence has been found for five major periods of occupation:
Middle Bronze Age, ca. 1800–1500 B.C.—pottery only on the southeast slope of the site
Late Bronze Age I, ca. 1500–1400 B.C.—fortress on the southeast slope, the focus of the ABR expedition
Iron Age I, ca. 1100 B.C.—squatter occupation on the southeast slope
Hasmonean, ca. 167–37 B.C.—fortress on the southeast slope
Byzantine, ca. A.D. 500–600—church and monastery on the summit of the site.

From the conclusion:

Excavations in the gate passageway revealed apparent evidence of severe burning in the form of reddened and fragmented bedrock, and burned and calcined building stones. On the west side, a 5 m length of the fortress wall was exposed and a 4 ft wide trench cut through it to provide a cross-section of its construction. At this point the wall is 12 ft wide at its base and preserved to a height of 4 ft. Several exploratory squares excavated on the south and east sides of the fortress in an effort to locate the fortification wall in these areas proved unsuccessful.

Tagged Excavations, Samaria

Summer Excavation Blogs

The slow pace of recent blogging here is going to be reduced further in the next few weeks. This morning I finished a project I’ve been working on for years, and that puts me in a good position ahead of summer travels. I’ll have more later on the project (whose intended audience is you if you read this blog), but for now I’ll suggest some excavation blogs that might be of interest this summer.

If something exciting comes up, I may miss it but you won’t.

At the top of the list is the Tell es-Safi/Gath weblog. Aren Maeir is not only running the show, but he posts very regularly on the latest discoveries and progress at the dig. For instance, his entry today is entitled “Update for 16/7/09 – another temple????” and he writes:

Cynthia’s team is also on top of the 9th cent. destruction level, but more importantly, they appear to have began to uncover a large building that is situated just below the 9th cent. building in which we found the interesting collection of cultic items two years ago. This building has so far revealed to very large pillar bases and some very nice brick work. Although it is a bit early to say, this might very well be a large public building, and perhaps, who knows, a temple. Time will tell….

Elsewhere, you can read daily updates excavations along the coast of Israel (somebody got smart and figured that you’re going to recruit more volunteers if you’re near the beach!): in the south, the Ashkelon excavations and in the north, the Tel Kabri dig.

A couple of volunteers at the Gezer excavation discuss their travels more than the excavation, especially since they’ve been sworn to secrecy. Apparently a four-room house was among the discoveries.

A personal account of excavation at Tall Dhiban is coming to a close.

Blogs that may be resurrected in the future include the Elah Fortress (Khirbet Qeiyafa/Shaaraim) blog and the Tel Dan blog.

If I missed an interesting one, let us know in the comments.

Tagged Excavations, Philistines

Mount Zion Excavations, 2009

Dr. James Tabor gives an illustrated report of the first three weeks of the current excavation on Mount Zion. Here is an extract:

The results have been simply astounding, the finds quite spectacular, and the whole area has been transformed….
Our major goals this season have been to remove much of the garden fill and rubble that has accumulated over the past decades so as to get down to the archaeological layers that lie below, with particular emphasis on the 2nd Temple period levels that are preserved to an extraordinary height of 10-12 meters….
We will, of course, publish full reports on our Web site later this year but in terms of an overview here are some of our more spectacular finds so far:
1. A stone vessel with an ancient inscription of ten lines written in an archaic Jewish script…. We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented.
2. Murex snail shells with holes drilled through them….
3. A fire pit that can be precisely dated to just after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE and the rebuilding of the city by Hadrian following the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 CE….
4. The threshold of a magnificent Fatimid period double gate….
5. An arched doorway with mosaic floor and plastered wall….
6. Exposure of several well preserved 2nd Temple period vaulted chambers likely containing mikvot (ritual baths) and storage areas….

The report concludes with an urgent appeal for funds:

Funding has been extraordinarily tight this season with North Carolina state funds frozen entirely and many donors feeling the pinch of the recession. In order to complete our season, plus a minimum of conservation and post-excavation work, we have inaugurated a Web fund drive (http://digmountzion.com/information/Donations.html) to raise $50,000 by July 15th and we are about 1/3 there. Gifts have ranged from $25 to $3000, with the average around $100. I hope you will join this fund drive and pass on the word to others. I think by pulling together a few hundred of us can easily meet our goal.

You can read the whole report here (also in pdf format).

HT: Jim West via Joe Lauer

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem