This last monday, Amit Dagan, one of the regular Safi staff, and graduate student at Bar-Ilan University, gave a talk about his MA thesis research, one of the regular bi-weekly talks at the lab.
Amit is researching and will publish the finds from a small site that is located about 1.6 km to the east of Tell es-Safi/Gath, which was excavated about 5 years ago by Yigal Yisraeli of the Israel Antiquities Authority. This site is apparently a small rural site dating to the Iron IIB (ca. 8th cent. BCE).
There are several things of interest at this site:
1) Its relationship to Tell es-Safi/Gath. In particular, since it dates to the 8th cent., AFTER the late 9th cent. BCE destruction of the site (when Gath loses much of its importance), what the character of this relationship is very interesting.
2) What activities were carried out at the site. The excavator, Yisraeli, suggested that there was evidence of pottery production. From Amit’s current analysis this is questionable, although without a doubt some very interesting production activities (currently un-identified) were carried out here.
3) The pottery is quite different from the 8th century BCE assemblage at Safi.
Amit presented a very initial overview of the architecture, pottery and other finds (including some very interesting small finds), as well as some of this initial thoughts on chronology, function, etc.
Eventually, the publication of this small, yet very interesting site, will provide some important insights on the rural surroundings of Tell es-Safi/Gath during the Iron Age II.
Aren
Posted in Finds, Lab, Miscellaneous, Theory
