Area A


Area A

This area is located in highest part of the tel, from which large tracts of land can be seen. The area was selected for excavations because of its topographical prominence, and since many walls were visible prior to the excavations, suggesting the likelihood of good preservation.
So far, the excavations exposed three strata, the lower of which is further sub-divided into at least two phases. The upper stratum included remains of a very massive building, the heads of most of its walls were visible prior to the excavations. The structure is square and symmetrical (app. 20 X 20 m), although some rooms (or other spaces) abutted the building from the outside. The structure was divided by inner walls into several internal spaces. The size of the building, its massiveness and its location at the highest part of the tel, in a location that clearly enabled observation over large areas, seems to hint that the structure served for control or for military purposes, and was probably a fort of some kind.
Below the fort we uncovered limited evidence for a resettlement phase above the massive destruction layer which we date to the late 8th century BCE (below). Only a few installations were built during this phase, and they abutted and reused some of the older walls. The pottery that is associated with this activity seems to be identical to the pottery in the destruction layer below.
Below this phase of reoccupation, we unearthed well-preserved walls, some still standing to a height of more than 1.5 m. Between the walls we discovered a massive destruction layer and collapse that included stones, bricks, and many finds, including grinding stones, a few bullae, loom-weights, metal artifacts, worked bones, and quite a few arrowheads. It seems that the building was destroyed in the late 8th century BCE, most likely by the Assyrian army.
In the course of the excavations we found out that the discussed walls were part of a number of buildings. Most of the excavated area was occupied by one large building (building 101), whose corner stones were nicely curved, and whose area (ground floor only) can be now roughly estimated as more than 250 sq.m. (so far we uncovered about half of the building). On the basis of the excavated rooms, and in light of the similarity of the plan to other houses, e.g., the Western Tower at Tell Beit Mirsim, we reconstruct the structure as a large four room house.
It appears that the courtyard was not roofed The rest of the building was roofed and a second floor was apparently built above it. Four of the rooms were excavated almost in their entirety. The findings from the rooms included dozens of vessels, incorporating the entire Iron Age IIB corpus, along with bullae and additional finds. The finds also included many smashed storage jars, unearthed in-situ. Especially worthy of mentioning are the finds that were unearthed inside many of these vessels – many of the jars were uncovered with the remains of their contents intact, including various botanical finds (excavated and identified by E. Weiss, with the assistance of A. Hartman, Y. Mahler-Slasky and C. Auman) – olive pits, grape stones, lentils and more. Also discovered were two concentrations of garlic, which were probably hanging on the walls and fell when the structure collapsed.
All in all, the location of structure 101 at the highest point of the tel, its size, its plan and the quality of its construction, along with the many finds unearthed in it, including the small assemblage of bullae, indicate that this was a building of no small importance. Cautiously, we interpret the structure as a governor's residency.
Airal view 2009


Botanic finds


In work


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