Today, Louise Hitchcock and Josephine (Jo) Verducci, from the Univ. of Melbourne team to Safi, came to the lab in BIU.
Louise came to go over (with Alex and yours truly), some of the pottery baskets from the early Iron Age levels in the part of Area A that Louise supervises. We did in fact re-read this pottery and saw a nice amount of LB (including Mycenaean and Cypriote imports), earliest Iron I (including Myc IIIC) and mid-Iron I (including Philistine Bichrome). It seems quite sure that in the next season (or maximum two), they will be excavating levels of the very beginning of the Iron Age with substantial Myc IIIC pottery
Jo on the other hand came to the lab to start looking at the Iron Age jewelry from the site, as part of her PhD on Philistine jewelry. In particular, she was looking at the jewelry from the Iron I tomb that was excavated in Area T a few years ago, which we are now in the midst of preparing a comprehensive, final publication (for a preliminary study of some of the finds from this tomb, see the article mentioned here).
T’was an interesting day!
Aren
The Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project Official (and Unofficial) Weblog 