The Jerusalem Post has a follow-up story with photos on the excavation of an apparently Jewish town near Jerusalem. What makes this one remarkable is that it was inhabited between the First and Second Jewish Revolts (70-132 A.D.), at a time when little is known about Jews in Judea archaeologically. One problem with this identification is that no mikva’ot (Jewish ritual baths) have been discovered, but this may be owing to the limited excavation area. In fact, the entire dig is being conducted on a traffic island on the ancient “Road of the Patriarchs” (Watershed Ridge). That makes the excavation six meters wide and 360 meters long. Alas, the site will probably be destroyed when the light rail is constructed in 2007.

Paleojudaica points to a new article in Haaretz on the Pool of Siloam. It’s basically an update of things since the last big reporting in August. There are a few new things of note, which I may or may not have mentioned here before. This includes:

• The discovery of the 1st century street near the pool. For those of you who know, they found this street in the excavations underneath the road/path that runs between the old pool and the garden which covers the new pool. The archaeologist told me that he would like to reveal the entire length of the road from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount. I told him he was crazy. Unless he is thinking of digging a tunnel underneath all of those houses. Then he’s still crazy :-).
• The recovery of “cylinder seals.” This is clarified in a post to the ANE list that the Hebrew original has “seals and bullae.” (Bullae are seal impressions.) The archaeologist told me that these date to the 9th century and do not contain personal names (as do most of the bullae found in Area G, dating to the early 6th century B.C.). The importance of these seals, if they date to anything before the mid-8th century, is that they will give evidence of an administrative center in Jerusalem at that time. Many scholars reject the biblical evidence for that, and there’s not much else evidence for it outside the Bible. The article doesn’t say, but I can tell you that these seals were found around buildings which were constructed inside the Middle Bronze pool, which is just to the north of the Gihon Spring and protected by the Pool Tower. That’s the area shown in this photo.

Boy, here’s a line that I can’t believe. At least it wasn’t true a few weeks ago. “Garbage is being collected on a regular basis.” Or maybe they’re collecting the garbage, but they just can’t get the residents to understand that they have to put it in those large containers.

UPDATE: The Hebrew version of the article has a photo montage which shows some of the seals.