Week 3 – Day 2

It was another nice day in the field – the visibility was really exceptional. We could see four of the five Philistine cities from the summit and much of the Shephelah and hills around Hebron.

A1 – Jane, Andrew, and Keegan continue to work through more and more layers of the Iron IIA.

A2 – Debi, Rebekah, Terry, Micheala, Sophia, etc. confined to excavate in an Iron IIA layer below the silos. The phytholith layer is also quite extensive. Micheala also found a Philistine Monochrome (aka Mycenaean IIIC/Philistine 1) sherd – a rarity at Burna thus far.

B2 – Aharon and co. with the help of the wall/large rock removal squad (Jerry & Terry Inc. 🙂 removed the remaining 7th cent. wall and exposed the earlier wall that seems to relate to the inner part of the casemate. They also continued to work in the destruction outside of the fortification.

B3 – Marcella, Reilly, Micheala, and Jerry have already a nice segment of a bedrock surface in the new square and also what appears to be a “lamp-bowl” deposit. The above-mentioned squad also removed three enormous boulders from the other square – now we can really see the wall.

G – In my area, Shawn, Hyun, and John continue to get deeper into the Late Iron IIA layer and it is looking more and more like this layer was destroyed by fire. Hopefully tomorrow we will reach the surface. Ornali (long-time dig team member!), Guy, and Reina worked in a square we opened last season and it seems that we may have a very nice water channel that runs beneath the gate of the fortress. Natasha, Ian, Yael, Lauren, and Jacob worked hard at exposing a large collapse near the outer fortification and we might finally have an idea about its orientation. Benjamin has exposed a very high segment of the massive city wall that will be very impressive to see in the final photos.

This evening – Debi will be giving a lecture on textile production in the Iron Age.