Today, we had in the field a team of 90 people, working in the various areas on the site. It was quite impressive, both the size of team and in particular, the easy manner in which all the various people managed to get into the work and got along so well and worked so smoothly.

This is one of the largest groups we have had on the site for a few years, and it was quite enjoyable to see, even if it meant that the supervisors and I had a lot of “running around”….

We started the day with a tour for the new team members, and I showed them around the excavation areas on the tell.

Here I am, in a rather dramatic picture taken by Richard, explaining the view from the top of the tell

After that, all the team started in the excavation.

In Area A, we are continuing to work in the various areas noted last week, but today we added to this several squares which had been excavated in previous seasons and are now being cleaned so that they can be excavated once again.

Here is a nice picture of Amit and some of his team members removing a large stone weight, exposed several seasons ago, from the squares.

In addition, the archaeological science field school has commenced, and groups of the students participating in this field school, along with their instructors (Steve, Elisabetta, Ruthi Shachak Gross, Udi Weiss, and Clive Trueman) were situated in various parts of the excavations, working on the analysis of various features in the excavation.

Several nice founds can be mentioned: a few tabuns (ovens) that were found in Amit’s area, a stone spindle whorl in Louise’s areas, an almost complete 8th cent. juglet in Cynthia’s area (and a complete grinding stone from the early stage of the possibly cultic-related building (where the group of cultic vessels were found two years ago), and in Jill’s area, we are on the top of the 9th cent. destruction level.

In Area F, Jeff and his team are working in a few squares and among other things are exposing a very interesting Iron I surface which has a feature that looks as if it is a “mosaic” of small chalk pieces.

In Area E, Naama and Adi have started excavating the portion of the LB building with the possible evidence of metallurgical activities. Unfortunately, from the initial analysis of the slag pieces found last week, they don’t appear to be metal-related.

Finally, here is a nice picture of the complete late Iron Age I Philistine bell-shaped bowl that was found last week in Louise’s area

Aren