Great day in the field today, with lots of new and interesting finds! It was a scorcher today (around 35 degrees C), but it looks like we all made it!
Jeff and his team in Area D East are working on revealing a long section of the city wall next to the gate, and various rooms that are adjacent to it. It’s looking very impressive!
In the IAA excavation on the other side of the parking lot from Area D East, they also have some great finds, including some very impressive architecture (I would say it looks like a public building), two phases of Iron IIA (not common on the tell) and a nice amount of nice restorable pottery. We took one of the jugs for analyis – and perhaps will get an idea about its contents in the future.
In Area M, Maria and her team are, as usual, starting to find a lot of finds, both in the old squares and in the new ones. This includes several vessels (including a complete chalice), loomweights, beads, and a lot of very nice architecture.
In Area Y, Jill and her team are working away! They’ve fully opened the 3 new squares and another of the “hotspots” that appeared in the magnetometry is beginning to appear. Hopefully, this, along with a fresh analysis of the ones from last year, will enable us to understand what exactly was the function of these features.
In Area K2, Brent and the Aussies are working in the squares near the city wall, and appear to come on to some very impressive architecture, with associated pottery. This is important, as it indicates that the preservation in this area is good!
In Area K, Eric and his team had a couple of cool finds today. The first was a very well-preserved scarab (dating to the Ramesside period by Prof. S. Muenger), and small piece of a bimetallic knife, very typical of the Philistine culture. They both were found very close to surface, in a concentrations of stones, perhaps part of some architectural feature.
In addition, we tried out for the first time on site the new handheld LIDAR scanner that we recently purchased. Noam scanned Area M and part of Area Y, and we’ll if can get nice results from this! You can see a shot of Noam working with the scanner in the clip below.
Very nice day!
Here’s the daily clip:
The Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project Official (and Unofficial) Weblog 