Jordan Archives - Page 33 of 38

Wednesday Roundup

Two Neolithic figurines were discovered at Moza (biblical Emmaus?) along the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. High-res photos from the IAA are available. Two men were arrested for trying to steal bones from excavations in Beth Shemesh. The Israeli government has appealed the verdict in the case of the Jehoash Inscription, but the rationale for doing so is unclear. Shmuel Browns suggests a 10-day itinerary that will take you to many places you won’t see on a typical Christian tour. Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg provides a review of the archaeological stories in July. Aaron’s tomb near Petra is a “quiet, austere holy site.” There is a lot to see in the Kidron Valley of Jerusalem. Accordance 10 has some nice new features for photographs and maps. Now shipping: Alexander to Constantine: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, by Eric M. Meyers and Mark A. Chancey. HT: Charles Savelle Neolithic figurine from Moza. Photo by Yael Yolovitch, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem, Jordan, Judah, Shephelah, Tourism, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

The Macherus article in the newest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review is quite good, especially with its reconstruction diagrams. A particularly impressive photo is the panoramic shot from Macherus showing Masada, Herodium, and Jerusalem. I was surprised to see the entire article available online this morning. If you don’t subscribe to the print edition, you have a brief chance to read it before it goes behind the subscription wall. An annual digital subscription to BAR is now available for $20. A 21-m-long sediment sample near the Dead Sea is providing scientists with information about the area’s climate in history. According to Thomas Litt, the results “clearly show how surprisingly fast lush Mediterranean sclerophyll vegetation can morph into steppe or even desert vegetation within a few decades if it becomes drier.” The level of the Sea of Galilee dropped more than two feet this summer. Carl Rasmussen has just added photos to his site of a place in Galilee I have not seen: Domus Galilaeae is a Roman Catholic retreat center overlooking the northern side of the Sea of Galilee. And his latest travel tip suggests an alternative viewpoint now that Arbel is controlled by Park Rangers and closes way too early. Wednesday marked the 200th anniversary of John Lewis Burckhardt’s visit to Petra. He was 27 when he re-discovered the Nabatean city for the western world on August 22, 1812. Gus W. Van Beek died this week. He was Curator of Old World Archaeology in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and recent author of Glorious Mud! How in the world did the ancients ever move massive stones such as the trilithons in the Jupiter Temple of Baalbek that weigh more than 1,000 tons? Paleobabble answers that question with diagrams and translation from an older French article. Trilithon in Jupiter Temple, Baalbek (photo from the Lebanon volume of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)

Tagged Dead Sea, Galilee, Jordan, Lebanon, Technology, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

We begin with reports from the field. Tel Burna has posted photos of their finds from Week 2. The Jezreel Expedition has completed its first season. Omrit wrapped up its season with the possible discovery of a bath complex. Work and discoveries continue at Ashkelon. Reports and photos from the first couple weeks at Bethsaida are posted. The team at Bethsaida is hoping to reveal a 10th-century gate this season and they have posted reports from Week 1 and Week 2. Excavations are scheduled to begin tomorrow at Tiberias, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tel Hazor, Kfar HaHoresh, Tel ‘Eton, and Tel Bet Yerah.

The New York Times has a travel piece on the four-day hike through Galilee on the Jesus Trail.

The pilot study for the Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project has concluded and results have been announced.

Aren Maeir has posted three short videos on: (1) food in Philistine and Israelite society; (2) Philistine religion; (3) work in the archaeological lab.

National Geographic has photos of gold treasures recently found in Israel.

Claude Mariottini notes the publication of The Iron Age I Structure on Mt. Ebal, by Ralph K.
Hawkins. Had another publisher released this work, it would have been certainly included “Joshua’s altar” in the title.

A study by Norwegian archaeologists has revealed how the great city of Palmyra could exist in the middle of the Syrian desert.

Wayne Stiles describes each of the 8 gates of the Old City of Jerusalem, providing a photo with each one as well as video footage of General Allenby entering Jaffa Gate.

Google is sponsoring a project to read some unrollable Dead Sea Scrolls. A video shows how the technology works.

The Times of Israel has more information on the tomb robbers caught in the act of plundering an antiquities site near Modiin.

HT: David Coppedge, Joseph Lauer

Tagged Excavations, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jordan, Philistines, Technology, Weekend Roundup

Thirty Years at Gerasa

From The Jordan Times:

Regional politics, Jordanian hospitality and a stroke of luck kindled a three-decade-old love affair between a team of French archaeologists and one of the Kingdom’s most important archaeological sites.
Last week marked the 30th anniversary of an excavation by the team that led to the reconstruction of the ancient city of Jerash and the shattering of many assumptions about daily life 2,000 years ago.
According to the archaeologists, their lifelong bond with the Greco-Roman city sprouted from a chance encounter.

Besides the temple of Zeus and the ancient oracles, the article notes the discovery of a “seating chart” for the northern theater.

Perhaps one of the team’s more groundbreaking discoveries was a seating chart of the city’s northern theatre.
The inscription demarcating various tribes’ seats on the tribal council — a local democratic assembly found throughout the empire — leaves approximately one-fourth of the seats empty.
The team believes that the unmarked seats were reserved for a second chamber, making Jerash one of the first and perhaps only cities in antiquity with bicameral legislatures.

The article concludes with the team’s plans for the future.

HT: Joseph Lauer

North theater of Gerasa

Tagged Excavations, Jordan

Survey of Gerasa Region

One does not often read reports in the media of archaeological surveys, and this review of the Jarash Hinterland Survey is an interesting account of the final season in October 2010. The article notes that the population of Jerash (biblical Gerasa) has doubled in the last 15 years, making the survey of field and farm, tomb and quarry, an important project. They estimate that about “10% of the archaeological sites around the city are being lost to development year upon year.”

The team faced dangers such as scorpions, shabab-ed, and nappies. But they had great success as well, identifying 203 tombs, along with numerous other ancient features.

It is all too easy to get distracted from the survey by kind offers of tea, but as always local knowledge is gained as a result. For instance, to be informed that a tomb containing about twenty sarcophagi on Abu Suwan had been used as a bomb shelter in 1973 and had subsequently been filled in leaving no visible trace represented a great result. The route of a Classical water course in the Wadi Deir – now scattered and bulldozed – was shown to us by a man who played in it as a child. An intense artefact scatter also got us excited, only to be told to our disappointment that it had been deposited by trucks moving earth from elsewhere in the preceding few months.

The article includes a video and some great photos (click one to begin a slideshow).

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Jordan

Interview with Thomas Levy

Foundation Stone has posted a three-part interview from their LandMinds radio show with the UCSD professor who is excavating copper mines in the Arabah south of the Dead Sea.

“There is no Turning Back!” Prof. Thomas Levy, UCSD, says the trowel and a good eye are no longer enough in the field. Tom rode the wave of an immense California investment in technology applied to Hirbet en-Nahas in Jordan.
The kicker is, unexpectedly, his excavations showed a rise of copper industrial production in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, with a falling off in the 8th. This may be in conflict with the Low Chronology, requiring a new look at the textual and archaeological interface, about which he has written and edited a book.
Everyone is talking about his work and its implications – hear Prof Levy himself! (Barnea overloaded his circuits here in the late night Skype recording, he was so fascinated, pardon him…).

You can access the mp3 files via these direct links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

LandMinds also has a facebook page.

HT: Jack Sasson

Four-room workshop, Khirbet en-Nahas

Tagged 10th Century, Excavations, Jordan