Today, the special issue of the Israel Journal of Earth Sciences (56 (2-4): 2007) dedicated to “Archaeological Science in Israel” has appeared. This triple issue, which was edited by Elisabetta Boaretto, Ruth Shahack-Gross, Sariel Shalev, Ehud Weiss and Steve Weiner, contains a collection of articles that summarize what’s happening in Israel in some of the main fields of archaeological science (see table of contents here).

As I’ve written before, Archaeological Science is a hot topic in Israel today, particularly with the new BIU/WIS joint program in archaeological science, and the truly innovative field school in archaeological science that we have started as part of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project.

fig_1 Here is a picture of the archaeological science field lab in action in the 2008 season at Tell es-Safi/Gath

If you want to see summaries of some of the most interesting and innovative work that has been conducted in this region, take a look at this special issue.

And by the way, yours truly has a joint paper (with J. Yellin) in this issue as well.

The paper is:
Yellin, J. and Maeir, A.M. 2007. Four decades of Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis and its contribution to the archaeology of the ancient Land of Israel. Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 56: 123-132.

And here is the abstract:
Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) is a nuclear analytic method that has been applied with great success to archaeology for over four decades as a tool for determining the origin of archaeological materials. The diversity of chemical elements whose concentration can be measured with high precision and accuracy makes INAA ideal for determining the provenance of pottery and obsidian. In this paper we first briefly survey the background of the development of INAA, and then present an overview of investigations in which INAA was utilized in the study of archaeological remains from the Land of Israel, from the early Prehistoric periods until the Middle Ages. Special focus is placed on studies that opened up new vistas and understandings on various issues in the archaeological record.

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