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August 26, 2008
Latest City of David Car Park Excavation Report
The latest report on the excavations associated with the Giv‘ati Car Park in Jerusalem is now available in English at Hadashot Arkheologiyot. If you're wondering where in Jerusalem this car park excavation is, the article gives a good indication and an even better aerial (satellite?) view.
The excavation area is located on the northwestern side of the City of David spur, along the eastern fringes of the main valley that delimits the spur on the west (Fig. 1).
And if that isn't good enough for you, how about "map ref. NIG 22234/63128, OIG 17234/13128." The truth is my 1:100,000 OIG map isn't good enough to locate it with accuracy but the aerial photograph sure was.
There were several things in the article that I found abnormally interesting. The whole article is worthy of a careful read and the pictures are also of considerable interest. But nothing was more interesting to me than the near absence of Iron Age I or Late Bronze Age remains in the area excavated.
The early phase of the Iron Age was noted for the use of bedrock the builders had employed for setting the buildings’ walls and incorporating it within their built complex of structures. Thus, ‘habitation pockets’, confined between the buildings’ walls and bedrock outcrops, were discovered. This phase was dated earlier than the eighth century BCE, based on the abundance of ceramic finds. The later phase of this period dated to the seventh–sixth centuries BCE. No building remains from Iron I were discovered.The absence of architectural and ceramic remains from the Bronze Age period is especially conspicuous. With the exception of a small number of potsherds from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, these periods were not present in the excavation area.
Of course, this doesn't mean that there was no Iron I or Late Bronze Age occupation at Jerusalem. There can be no reasonable doubt that there was a Late Bronze Age occupation. From the Late Bronze Age Amarna letters we even know the name of the "soldier of the king," Abdi-Heba, who was responsible for URUú-ru-sa-limKI (Jerusalem).
My guess is that this particular area of Jerusalem was just not occupied before Iron Age II. If so, these new non-finds help delineate, by elimination, the size of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I cities. It is increasingly certain that the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I cities were smaller, perhaps much smaller, than the Iron II city, particularly the Iron Age II city of seventh–sixth century BCE.
An alternative explanation is that those Iron Age II folks who built at this location chose to clear their construction site to bedrock before building. Such a hypothesis would be more tenable if the new construction had been a monumental public building. But the Iron Age II occupation of this area was far from monumental.
This period was mainly characterized in this area by relatively densely built houses of careless and poor construction. The houses, built of one-stone-wide walls, contained a variety of domestic installations. These indicate a residential quarter that existed in the area during this period.
I think it unlikely that the builders of these "houses of careless and poor construction" would systematically clear to bedrock before building them.
Via Jim West Via Yitzhak Sapir
Posted by Duane Smith at August 26, 2008 12:33 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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