35th archaeological congress in Jerusalem

Today, I had the pleasure of participating in the 35th Annual Archaeological Conference in Israel, which was held at the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The conference was held all day, and during the 2nd part of the day, there were parallel meetings (on early and later periods).

As usual in such meetings, there were good talks and “less-good” talks.

Among that that I heard that were VERY interesting:
1) Haggai Misgav spoke about the Kh. Qeiyafa inscription, which still is for the most part undeciphered, but he showed some good slides of the 5 lines, 50 letters, and showed nicely the reading of, e.g., eved (slave), melek (king), al t’as (don’t do in biblical hebrew), etc. Inter alia, the so-called “Goliath inscription” from Tell es-Safi/Gath was mentioned.

2) A fascinating lecture on an archaeological excavation project being carried out at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, carried out by I. Gilad and Y. Haimi from Ben-Gurion University. Absolutely chilling, but important work with some very fascinating results.

3) Ezra Marcus et al. discussed the early MB II finds from Tel Ifshar, and in particular, the early Egyptian imports in the earliest stages of this very early MB II site.

4) Erez Ben-Yosef et al, who discussed some interesting results of Tom Levi’s project in the Edom lowlands, including details on some new sites at which there is evidence for early Iron Age and Iron IIA smelting activities.

5) Norma Franklin who discussed the so-called “Proto-Aeolic capitals” of the Iron Age, claiming, very logically, that none of them were actually capitals!”

6) Elisabetta Boaretto et al., discussed some of the results of a very detailed program of Carbon 14 datings, and the practical, methodological and technical issues that derive from this. They concentrated on dates from 4 sites: Tell es-Safi/Gath, Rehov, Megiddo, and Dor.

All told – an interesting day with some very interesting talks.

Aren