If you’ve ever thought it strange that they call them “pottery baskets” when they’re really just plastic buckets, the photo below may help.
This photo was taken in the first season of William F. Albright’s excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim (1926). It is one of 25 photos taken at the site included in the newly published Southern Palestine volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (originally Library of Congress, LC-matpc-05733).
Amnon Ben-Tor and Sharon Zuckerman have posted a brief summary of the excavation results of this year’s season at Hazor. The focus was on Iron Age material in Area M. Among other things, they report:
One wide wall, built with a mudbrick superstructure on a stone foundation, was uncovered in the final week of this season. This wall, 1 m. wide and 15 m. long, oriented east–west, is the first of its kind in the area. It must have belonged to a large public structure. The two central rows of worked limestone pillars are parallel to this wall, and most probably form the inner partition walls of an administrative structure. This assumption will be further checked in the next season.
The main finds attributed to the Iron Age phases in the area are pottery sherds and some complete and restorable vessels. In addition, several scarabs and seals, three Egyptianised beads made of faience, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic clay figurines, iron and bronze objects and an incised bone lid were found.
Unfortunately the website was created using frames, so you have to click this link and then select “Report of 2009 Season” unless you want to see the page without the header.
A promo video created by SourceFlix heads the page with information about the 2010 season.
Salvage archaeology is the unplanned kind which occurs when construction reveals ancient remains. In a city like Jerusalem, modern builders uncover the past far more than they would like. This Jerusalem Post article gives some good insight into the challenges and rewards.
Archaeologist Yoram Tsafrir is unhappy that the Israel Antiquities Authority is planning to build a three-story museum over the ruins of the Roman “Valley Cardo” on the western side of the Western Wall Plaza.
Stephen G. Rosenberg writes in the Jerusalem Post on two synagogues in the Golan Heights at Ein Nashut and Yehudiya.
An American geologist argued in a recent lecture that David chose the city of Jerusalem because of the karstic limestone formations. The brief article in the Jerusalem Post only covers the basics and doesn’t reveal what he has contributed to the discussion. An abstract of the article can be read here.
Case Western Reserve University has about 300 out-of-copyright books on the Ancient Near East available on their website.
The Jerusalem Post has a 3-minute video on the recent story (previously noted here) on the Western Wall tunnels and new discoveries made there.
Bridges for Peace sent me their 2010 calendar because they used one of my photos on the cover. The calendar is full of beautiful photographs and I see that they are for sale here for $10.
HT: Joe Lauer, Mondo Gonzales, David F. Coppedge
From Arutz-7:
Israel is planning a major archaeological dig under the Western Wall (Kotel) plaza, opposite the Temple Mount, officials announced Thursday. The excavations will create an archaeological park directly underneath the area where worshippers currently stand while praying at the Kotel.
The current prayer area will remain open, supported by pillars, while a new area will be added underneath, at the level at which worshippers at the ancient Temple stood in the past.
Don’t expect the Arab leaders to miss this opportunity.
The dig may be met with harsh reactions from Muslim and Arab leaders in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, many of whom have accused Israel of attempting to damage the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount. Jerusalem-area Muslims recently rioted for several days after it was rumored that “Jewish settlers” had planned to pray on the Temple Mount.
You can see an artist’s sketch of what the area will look like here. The full article is here.
The present plaza level was lowered in the 1960s, as I noted with this interesting photo comparison.
The Bible and Interpretation has published a number of provocative essays since its return earlier this year. A recent one that relates to a matter occasionally noted on this blog is Eric Cline’s “The Distortion of Archaeology and What We Can Do About It: A Brief Note on Progress Made and Yet To Be Made.” The essay is adapted from a forthcoming book and thus may feel a bit long for internet reading, but you can profitably skim it, slowing down for the sections of greater interest. After an opening illustration, the article begins:
We find similar situations every year in archaeology, for the junk science which is practiced by many pseudo-archaeologists and amateur enthusiasts (against which I have railed elsewhere) not only cannot withstand serious scrutiny, but in many cases the “results” themselves are not really results in the first place. However, when gratuitous claims of amazing finds, especially concerning Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, and Sodom and Gomorrah, are first made, they are featured prominently in the media, but subsequent rebuttals are given little or no attention.
We have to face the reality of the situation, which is that the media are going to keep reporting such stories because they sell newspapers and get people to watch TV or click on Internet links. While they are not nearly as interested in later negative responses, reporters almost always seek immediate reactions which can be used in the original story. So, we have to decide what we are going to do about this and how to turn it to our advantage. (emphasis mine)
You can read it all here.
From the Jerusalem Post:
Despite recent accusations to the contrary, the chief site engineer for the Western Wall tunnels declared on Thursday that Israeli archeological excavations were not being done under the Temple Mount, were in no way detrimental to the structural stability of the mount or its surroundings, and were actually improving such stability "tenfold." "There’s been a lot of talk about instability [based on ongoing archeological excavations in the area], and let me reassure you, we have improved the structural stability here tenfold over the last few years and have actually strengthened areas where there was danger of further collapse," the chief engineer, Ofer Cohen, said during a Government Press Office-sponsored tour of the tunnels on Thursday afternoon. Standing in a section of the tunnels known as the "Hall of Ages" – so named because the archeological and subsequent reinforcement work there spans from the First Temple period until today – Cohen and the tour’s participants were dwarfed by a series of huge steel beams that had been set up to prevent the walls from caving in. "To those who say that our work here is causing structural instability, the exact opposite is true," Cohen asserted.
The rest of the story is here.
