Officers from the Israel Antiquities Authority arrested four antiquities thieves illegally excavating a site near Moshav Zecharya in the Shephelah.  They were charged with crimes that bring up to five-year prison sentences. From the Jerusalem Post:

“Me and my men noticed a vehicle parked near the site close to Moshav Zecharya. Over the last few months we have discovered holes in the ground left by potential robbers on the site, so we had reasons to believe that the vehicle belonged to them. We snuck up to the site and saw the men digging a deep hole near one of the ancient walls. When we saw what they were doing we immediately arrested the perpetrators and called the border police unit to take them away to the police station, where they spent the night before seeing a judge the next morning,” said Ganor.
[…]
Ganor said that the alleged robbers, like everyone involved in the trade of archeological artifacts, were looking to get rich from their findings. “Where archeologists see history, robbers see dollar signs. The hope of finding valuables, be they ancient coins, jewelry or even pottery, is what drives them to destroy centuries of history.”
According to Ganor, every year 150 robbers are caught in the act of digging up archeological sites. Of these, 85 percent are charged and convicted. Ganor said that the Antiquities Authority knows of 300 archeological sites that are dug up every year and estimates that there are probably 300 more that they don’t know of.
“Israel has more than 30,000 archeological sites. Many of them have stories or legends about buried treasure hidden within them. Dreams of ancient riches are what drive the robbers to commit the crimes,” said Ganor.
“The robbers are very familiar with the land, often more than us. They know where the sites are and know where to look for valuables. Sometimes they also dig up graves in search of objects that were buried alongside the deceased.”
Ganor said it was impossible to profile the average robber. “Unfortunately it is a problem that exists in all segments of the population. There are Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, even foreign nationals – all share the dream of digging up the find that will make them rich.”

The full article is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Edward Cook has a good summary and analysis of the Qeiyafa Ostracon on his blog.  He concludes that the inscription is:

(1) A text written from left-to-right. (2) A text written in the Old Canaanite form of the alphabet, the form that the letters took before (but more about this later) the evolution of national scripts. (3) A text whose language, although North-West Semitic, is still undetermined. (4) The most significant fact about the ostracon, in my view, is the date. If the dating of the level it was found in is correct – late 11th/early 10th century BCE – then the use of this Old Canaanite script is surprising. Within a century or less of the ostracon’s writing, another inscription would be made in ancient Israel of a very different sort.

Read the whole thing for his explanations.

Gershon Galil has proposed in a message posted on ANE-2 that Khirbet Qeiyafa should be identified with biblical Netaim.  You can read the entire message on the list, but he summarizes as follows:

So in my opinion Khirbet Qeiyafa is Neta‘im for three main reasons: (a) it is located near Gederah; (b) its name is preserved in Khirbet En-Nuweiti‘; (c) it was inhabited only in the 10th century. That is why Neta‘im is not mentioned in the list of the cities of Judah in Josh. 15, which is dated to the 8th or 7th century BCE.

Netaim is mentioned only in 1 Chronicles 4:23, and not much can be deduced from this passage.  It’s apparent that Netaim is in the territory of Judah, may or may not be located in proximity to Gederah, and was home to a group of royal potters.

1 Chron 4:23 (ESV) These were the potters who were inhabitants of Netaim and Gederah. They lived there in the king’s service.

That’s not a lot to go on.  I’m probably less inclined to believe that the name of Netaim was preserved 2 miles (3 km) away, as Galil proposes.  That’s a long distance in the densely occupied Iron Age Shephelah. 

Galil has previously offered his translation of the Qeiyafa Ostracon, and he concludes his message by relating his identification to the inscription.

This new identification indicates that Khirbet Qeiyafa/ Neta‘im was inhabited by potters who worked in the king’s service. In the same city, a member of a family of scribes (probably also in the king’s service), wrote the Qeiyafa inscription, the most ancient and important Hebrew inscription ever found:
[……] (1′) do not do (it), but worship […].
(3′) Judge the slave and the widow / Judge the orph[an] (3′) and the stranger.
Plead for the infant / plead for the poor and (4′) the widow.
Avenge (the pauper’s vengeance) at the king’s hands.
(5′) Protect the poor and the slave / suppo[rt] the stranger.

I will be interested to read more of Galil’s argumentation if/when he publishes an article.  I think it’s noteworthy that he does not accept Garfinkel’s identification of Qeiyafa as Shaaraim, but he does believe that Qeiyafa had two gates and was settled only in the 10th century.