As I had mentioned on Saturday night, yesterday I went for a quick visit to the excavations in Faynan. Along with a small group of archaeologists from Israel (including Debbi Cassuto from the Safi team), we drove down to the Eilat-Aqaba border in the middle of the night on Saturday, crossed over to Jordan, drove up by bus to Faynan, met some 4X4 cars and then were given the “royal tour” of the excavations at the site, by the directors, Tom Levy and Mohammad Najjar. After a 5 hour visit to the site, we turned around and returned to Israel. I got home at 11:15 pm on Sunday.
Since this was my first visit to Faynan, I was particularly interested in going, even though it was quite an intensive trip with little sleep. There is no doubt that the site is quite a fantastic site and that it is without a doubt one of the most interesting sites in the Levant.
Without going into the details, I am very convinced with Tom and Mohammad’s interpretation of the Iron Age sequence at the site, meaning that there is a substantial stratigraphic, artifactual and 14C evidence for substantial evidence for 10th cent. BCE intensive metallurgical activities at the site (despite, e.g., a recent article by Israel Finkelstien claiming the opposite).
This clearly has important implications regarding the understanding of the formations of polities in the southern Levant during the Iron Age IIA.

Here are some pictures from our visit:

Here is Tom explaining the site of Khirbet Nahas to the group.

And here Mohammad explaining at Khirbet Nahas

Here is Tom explaining next to the giant (6 meter deep) pile of copper slag at the site.


Here Tom and Neil Smith are explaining about the excavations at Kh. Ifdan, where there were both Iron IIA and Iron IIC remains. Notice the camels on the left and our convoy of cars on the right.

Aren