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11th Annual Archaeology Conference in City of David

11th Annual Archaeology Conference
City of David, Jerusalem, Israel

Wednesday, September 1, 2010
From 4:00 pm visit new excavation sites in the City of David

The City of David

18:30 Gather in the City of David, Area E

19:00 Opening Remarks

Ahron Horovitz, Director of the Megalim Institute
Representative of the Israel Antiquities Authority
Guy Alon, Israel Nature and National Parks Authority

19:15 First Session – Chair: Prof. Aaron Demsky

Prof. Jodi Magness

Archaeological Evidence of the Sassanid Persian Invasion of Jerusalem

Prof. Zohar Amar, Dr. David Illouz

The Persimmon in the Land of Israel

Ms. Sara Barnea

The History of the Mapping of the Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives

20:40 Break

21:00

Second Session – Chair: Dr. Hillel Geva

Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, Ms. Yana Tchekhanovets
The Givati Parking Lot – Roman-Period Discoveries and Finds

Eli Shukron, Prof. Ronny Reich
The excavation between the stepped Shiloah Pool and the interior face of the damming wall at the southern end of the Tyropoeon Valley, Jerusalem

Prof. Ronny Reich, Eli Shukron
The Large Fortification Near the Gihon Spring in Jerusalem, and its Relationship to Wall NB Discovered by Kathleen Kenyon

22:00 Estimated end of conference

Entrance is free, but spaces are limited (there is no advance registration)

It may be cold at night so dress accordingly

Parking is available in the Mount Zion Parking Lot and the Givati

Parking Lot (for a fee)

Public Transportation: Buses 1, 2, 38.

www.cityofdavid.org.il

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Lectures

Restoring Israel’s Antiquities

Haaretz has an interesting story this weekend on the work of a ceramics restoration specialist in the Israel Antiquities Authority. Her job is to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Many years before the corruption allegations, something entirely different was uncovered at the Holyland project site in Jerusalem: traces of several ancient communities, including shards of two clay vessels. The piles of potsherds were delivered to the table of Elisheva Kamaisky, a ceramics restoration specialist for the Israel Antiquities Authority, who reconstructed the jugs in a gentle work of piecing together a complex jigsaw puzzle.
“I love the earliest periods because they didn’t use tools then. No two vessels are the same. I’m full of awe in front of their technical abilities. In the Roman period mass production starts, and then if you’ve seen one vessel you’ve seen them all,” she says. “The beautiful thing about ceramics is that the same techniques are used today. True, we have electric furnaces and control the heat better, but the basics are the same in the most ancient jug and the ceramics NASA uses to coat its spaceships.”
Kamaisky is one of the Antiquities Authority’s six-member restoration team who reconstruct objects and implements of the material culture in the country since human habitation began. They receive potsherds, threadbare cloths, metallic weapons, golden coins, delicate glassware and more. Unlike their colleagues in the rest of the world, Israeli law bars them from working with human remains.
Archaeologist Zvika Greenhut says restoration work is important “because it’s the only way you can see the entire picture. For example, in one dig I worked on in Motza we found a room full of pitcher shards. But only when we started piecing them together did we understand that the room couldn’t possibly hold all these vessels. There were two possibilities: Either they were all stored one inside each other, or there were shelves that held them but didn’t survive into our time. It was clearly a storeroom and this means something about that culture.”

The full story is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Restored Iron Age cooking pots, Eretz Israel Museum

Tagged Excavations, Technology

Geography Quiz

I may get in trouble for this one, but with limited time, it’s either this or nothing today. And it is ostensibly related to biblical places. Published at Arutz-7, this feature is entitled “Do You Know Your Geography of Israel?” You can take the test by identifying the locations of thirteen photos.

UPDATE 9/6: I regret posting this “quiz.” I was first intrigued by a “geography quiz” of Israel and then surprised at the “answer.” I posted it more for amusement value than as a declaration in support of certain “truths.” I have no knowledge that the claim of this quiz is accurate and no interest in promoting it as accurate (even if it is). But this was certainly not clear in my original posting.

Deleting this post would halt my continued perpetuation of this “story,” but it would not provide the opportunity for the clarification that I am making now. For some specifics of the problems with this “story,” see Tom’s second comment below.

Tagged Challenge

Diamonds in the Kishon River

The Kishon River drains the Jezreel Valley into the Mediterranean Sea, and it was the location of the slaughter of the prophets of Baal during the time of Elijah (1 Kgs 18:40). From Arutz-7:

The Kishon River, considered the most polluted river in Israel, will soon be the object of a major cleaning and purification project. The initiative is a joint project of the Ministry of the Environment, the Kishon River Authority, and factories and chemical plants on the river’s banks. At the same time, the Shefa Yamim company continues to seek diamonds under the Kishon riverbed, based on advice from the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. The company, which has already found diamonds and associated minerals in the vicinity, plans a stock issue of $100 million in the coming months. The Kishon River’s pollution stems in part from daily contamination for over 40 years by runoff of mercury and other metals from nearby chemical plants. It has been claimed that there are more chemicals than water in the Kishon. The river runs 70 kilometers from Jenin in Samaria, via the Jezreel Valley and Zevulun Valley, and into the Mediterranean Sea near Haifa.

The full story is here.

Tagged Jezreel Valley

Archaeology and Women

“Digging Up Women” is the title of a new article posted at The Bible and Interpretation. Elizabeth McNamer provides some insight into the daily life of women using biblical texts and archaeological finds from Bethsaida. She writes:

Most of the artifacts found at Bethsaida are in the domain of women: loom weights, ovens, cooking pots, jugs, juglets, grinders, flourmills, fish plates, olive bowls, pruning hooks, oil lamps, water jugs, jewels, wine jars (and cellars), needles, ungent jars, eating utensils. Clothes were made of linen and wool. Making wool was a time-consuming task. It involved sheering the sheep, sorting and grading, spinning the yarn, and dying the wool, setting up the loom to make the fabric and then making it into clothing. Spinning was mandated by the Talmud (even rich women were required to spin). So many linen spores have been found at Bethsaida that we think there may have been a linen factory there. (It was required for sailing boats and for shrouds for the dead among other things). To clothe a family of six would have required about three hours a day of labor (and taking the Sabbath off). If she produced more than her family required, there were local markets and fairs at which the surplus could be sold.

The article provides some of the “other side” of the story, for archaeology is often most concerned with fortifications, palaces, and other discoveries built and destroyed by men.

Tagged Galilee

Weekend Roundup

Two articles that I contributed made it to the “Most Viewed” list over at The Bible and Interpretation. Both articles are brief and challenge current thinking:

Probably the most important work of historical geography ever written is The Sacred Bridge, by Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley. At $100, you may need convincing that it’s worth the sacrifice. I look at it this way: take the number of years left in your life and divide $100 by that. It is worth a few bucks a year to have such an extensive reference tool at arm’s length. Leen Ritmeyer has posted a brief review of the book on his blog. If you don’t need the original languages, you can cut the price in half by purchasing Carta’s New Century Handbook and Atlas of the Bible.

If you’d like a free classic to offset the expensive purchase, you can download the entire work of George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land (pdf). This is the 4th edition (of 26!), but as far as I know, the content is largely the same. I am not sure if residents outside the US have access.

Tagged Resources, Weekend Roundup