Today, we had a visit to the lab by the project’s zooarchaeologists. Liora Horwitz (Hebrew University) and Justin Lev-Tov (adjunct researcher, University of Mainz). Justin, Liora, and myself (Aren) have recently been awarded a research grant from the National Geographic Society to study the food patterns of the Philistines, based on the zooarchaeological evidence from our excavations (and comparing to the finds from other Philistine and non-Philistine sites). This grant has enabled Justin to travel to Israel. He will be here for the next several weeks, and once again in the summer for the entire season. This offers Liora and Justin an opportunity to jointly work on the animal bones from the excavations.
Justin, Aren and Liora reviewing the stratigraphy of the site
This is a topic that is very interesting. As is, we know from previous work that the Philistines has a preference for pig and dog meat, quite different from the local Canaanite and Israelites food patterns. This is particularly seen in the early phases of the Philistine culture, but apparently, continues into the later stages as well. Since at Tell es-Safi/Gath we have excellent, well-stratified, evidence of the various stages of the Philistine cutlure, particularly of the Iron Age IIA (10th-9th cent. BCE), close analysis of the zooarchaeological (and other) finds will give us important clues about the Philistine culture, its transformation, and its relationship to the surrounding cultures. Clearly, additional work will reveal important aspects of the Philistine lifestyles.
In previous seasons we collected quite a large assemblage of animal bones, which serves as the basis for the present analysis. This coming summer we will place a particular emphasis on the collection of very focused contexts for zooarchaeological analysis, combined with the fact that Justin and Liora will be on site, and we should be able to ask, and hopefully answer, interesting questions about the Philistines lifestyle.
In their visit, Justin and Liora went over the stratigraphy of the excavation with lab staff, and familiarized themselves with the project data base and documention. In addition, they looked at various finds, including the “notched scapulae” that were found in the excavations. These are mammal shoulder bones with notches, which are very common in Sea Peoples and Philistine contexts, from many sites. The exact use of these objects is not clear – some suggest that they are musical instruments, some say that they are cultic, etc. Interestingly, the examples from Safi are from the 9th cent. (the “Hazael” destruction), the latest examples known from well-dated, primary Philistine contexts, and, they are both of bovine and goat/sheep bones. As they were examining the scapulae, the noticed that in fact there was a piece of an additional one that we had not noticed!
One of the notched scapulae from Safi
Aren
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June 12, 2006 at 10:29 am
Paula Cohen
I am looking for Liora Horwitz’s email who matriculated from Herzlia School in Cape Town, South Africa in 1975 – If this is the correct person, please may I have her email for the Herzlia Alumni Database. I am also looking for her brother, Allan’s email.
Thanks & kind regards
Paula Cohen – Herzlia Alumni Association
November 21, 2006 at 7:43 am
re: Alex lectures about the Safi scapulae « The Tell es-Safi/Gath Excavations Official (and Unofficial) Weblog
[...] Recently, the Safi staff have been meeting on a regular basis for a lunch/discussion. At Itzik Shai’s suggestion, initiative and coordination, over the last few weeks, the Safi staff has regularly met at the lab for a lunch and discussion meeting. Each time, one of the staff presented a different topic, which was then discussed and debated. Following that, a joint lunch was eaten. Today, Alex Zukerman discussed the recent study that Alex, Liora Horwitz, Justin Lev-Tov and myself conducted on the Iron Age IIA notched scapulae from Tell es-Safi/Gath. In this study, we went back and studied the entire phenomemon of scapulae from early Iron Age Cyprus and the Levant, and discussed the cultural and functional background of these very interesting objects. In the next few days, we should be submitting an article on this topic, so I won’t go into to details, save for the fact that they do appear to be a solely Iron Age phenomemon in Cyprus and the Levant (save for much earlier and later appearances) and that the usual functional explanations are from from sufficient (as musical instruments, divination, etc.). [...]