Mid-Week 3

As usual, week 3 has been the busiest and most productive week of the project – we have interesting finds and architecture in every area. We also have received a number of visitors including Liora Horowitz, Itamar Weissbein, Rona Avissar, members of the Taiwanese embassy, and others. If you are around and would like to come visit while we are in the field – you are most welcome!

Area A1 – Jane and Terry have tons of pottery and soil – but not too much architecture. It seems that they are finally getting down to a Late Bronze layer beneath all of the Iron IIA debris.

Area B2 – There are lots of things going on in different periods – in the upper part of the section – Aharon’s team found some scale armor. They are also exposing inside and outside of the casemate fortification and getting down to Iron IIA destructions.

Area B3 – Marcella and her team have found and beautifully excavated four complete storejars from the LB destruction (which now has burnt mudbrick also)! Very cool.

Area D – Debi’s team has exposed some nice and very large architecture with a figurine.

Area G – Things remain complicated but are slowly becoming more clear. It seems that we now have many elements of the Iron IIA gatehouse which seems to have suffered a destruction in the 9th century BCE as we have discovered several areas of burnt mudbrick. We also excavated some of the gate drainage channel and found a horse figurine. When excavating the drain – we carried out all kinds of analyses including XRF, OSL, and testing for bio markers! Hopefully we will have some nice results.