Due to a very poor internet connection that we have been having for the last few days, I have not been able to update the blog on what has been happening since after the first day of excavation. In fact, yesterday, I had a connection for a short time and wrote out a nice entry describing the previous two days of work, and as I was about to send it, the connection was lost and I lost the entire post! Hopefully now, the connection will be more stable, so I’ll be able to update more regularly.
Since I have missed a few days, I will just give a description of some of the main issues and finds that have come up in the last few days, in the different areas.
In Area A, on the eastern side of the tell (for a map of the excavation areas, see here), we are working at full swing. Alex and Cynthia and the Sheffield team have started working in the area of the possible Philistine temple, removing walls from the 9th cent. (Stratum A3) destruction level, and starting to open a larger excavation area – so that they might be able to define whether or not the interesting structure with the two large pillar bases that was discovered in previous seasons is, or is not, a temple. In the meantime, they have a few very interesting finds. This includes a nice faience amulet of the Egyptian god Bastet, a nice concentration of a olive pits from an earlier stage of A3, and today, a context in which many finds were found, including a possible “crucible” – possibly connected with metal production – from what appears to be a nice late Iron I context. If in fact this is a context related to metal production this is quite important, since, to the best of my knowledge, there are no other known metallurgical production contexts known from Iron Age Philistia. We will be working on this very carefully to check this out (needless to say, this reminded me of I Samuel 13: 19-21 – even if this is a later source).
Steve Weiner, Clive Trueman, and Jill Katz and here YU team are working in the A3 destruction level, continuing their very detailed study of the process of destruction and decay related with this destruction event. As in last year, there are carefully excavating these contexts and taking many samples for analysis.
Louise and her team from Melbourne are digging in late Iron I, and have already found quite a few nice finds. This includes several pavements consisting of packed sherds, a nicely preserved juglet, and a almost complete stone grinding stone, which was lying a very nice layer of charred organic materials (seeds and olive pits) and a thick level of phytoliths. This should perhaps give us a nice idea of the activities associated with this item, as well as assist in providing its date.

Here is a picture of the juglet

Here are two “happy campers” (Belle Shapardon & Michelle Barraclough) from the Melbourne team removing the grinding stone!
In Area E, Itzik and his team are digging both EB and LB. While in most of the area they are in the late EB levels, in two corners they have some LB material. This includes a very nice Late Helladic IIIB sherd, a possible imported Egyptian pottery sherd, and fragment of a “Hathor” like plaque figurine. In the EB levels, they are exposing additional portions of the EB III neighborhood that has been exposed in previous years, as well as attempting to dig below this level (in several test pits) to determine if there are substantial earlier levels. In the same area, Haskel Greenfield and his team from Manitoba are busy excavating the well preserved donkey skeleton that was already discovered two years ago.
In Area F, Jeff and his team are working both in Upper and Lower F. In Upper F they are concentrating on trying to delineate the brick collapse discovered in previous seasons which may be evidence of the mid 8th-century BCE earthquake (e.g., Amos 1:1). As mentioned before, we are not yet sure whether in fact this is earthquake collapse and during the season we will have an expert in ancient earthquakes (Amos Agnon, HU) work with us on this issue. In the meantime, we are exposing this feature and have taken some micromorphological “blocks” so that we can study the interface between the 9th century destruction level, the possible abandonment phase above it, then the brick collapse and then the late 8th cent. Levels. This should be very interesting!
In lower F, Jeff and his team are busy with several projects. On the one hand, they are opening two squares which will connect with Upper F – with the objective of producing a stratigraphic sequence that will cover the entire Area F, and hopefully will span the EB through the Persian period (plus the later medieval levels). In addition, further down in Lower F, they are excavating in early Iron I and LB levels. Elisabetta Boarreto and her team are working closely with them – hoping to get a nice sequence of well-stratified 14C samples – so that a close dating of the LB-Iron I transition can be produced.

Here is a nice picture of Jeff, Zach and Eric standing at the entrance of a very nice Roman period tomb that is situated to the south of the tell. Notice the tomb has a “temple like” frieze
In Area D, Joe and Amit have returned to excavated the very impressive remains of the lower city. Despite doubts that some of our colleagues have expressed regarding the settlement in the lower city, as we have demonstrated already in previous seasons, there is clear and very impressive evidence of major building activities in the lower city (to the north of the tell), during various phases of the Iron Age. While the most impressive evidence relates to the late 9th century destruction (which we recovered in previous seasons and is once again “popping up” this season), we now have evidence of a additional Iron Age phases in this area, including, perhaps Iron I phases. Joe and Amit and their team are working closely with Dvory Namdar and her archaeological science team, who have set up an additional field laboratory in Area D. They are closely sampling the squares that are being excavated, with a particular emphasis on an attempt to define vessels that can be sampled for “organic residue analysis”. It is now quite clear that the context of such vessels is very important for the preservations of these organic molecules, and a close study of not only the vessels and their contents, but also their immediate environment (and the various processes related to them) is of much importance.
So far the finds from Area D have been very nice and it is clear that we will have extremely rich finds from this area in the coming days.
Several additional things happened on the dig:
1) Ebenezer Gay from Brown University was on site this week, trying out a pilot attempt on a very interesting, and potentially revolutionary method to record data from the excavation using ongoing still camera photography of the work. If this will work out, this may provide a very versatile, yet easy tool both to record excavation finds and contexts, but also tie it in with the various databases of information coming out of the excavation, and also, producing 3D reconstructions of all the finds. While this is still in a very initial stage of work, it does look very promising – and potentially of much importance in developing new field recording methods and interpretive tools.
2) We had several lectures this week. On Sunday, I have a general lecture about the site; on Monday, Steve and Elisabetta gave a talk on archaeological science methods; on Tuesday, Marc Brettler (Brandeis) have a talk on the biblical narrative of Goliath; While last night, Liora Horwitz (HU) have a general talk on zooarchaeology. Tonite we have the end of the week party – and we will be having Felafel, etc.
3) Yesterday, Prof. Moshe Kaveh, president of Bar-Ilan University came to the excavation with two of his grandchildren. They stayed the entire day at the excavation. Prof. Kaveh was very impressed with the diverse research activities, mixed group and great finds at the site. We can definitely say that we have a strong supporter behind us!

Here is a picture of Prof. Kaveh and his grandkids next to the complete juglet in Area A
4) Unfortunately, we have not yet set up the live internet broadcast from the site, but I do hope this will be in place at the beginning of next week.
All told, the first week, which is almost over, went exceptionally well! Despite the fact that it is such a large group, save for minor glitches, things just flowed perfectly, the team members are extraordinary, and the finds, are already very impressive. If this is the way the entire season will be going, we will have a truly exceptional one!
Aren
