Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel

124 Pages·2015·43.92 MB·English

Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel
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Volume 15
1996-7

Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 1996-97 Volume 15
Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel
Archaeological Society
Volume 15
1996-7
The Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society
3 St John's Wood Road
London NW8 8RB
Editorial Board
Editor: Shimon Gibson
Associate Editors: Eliot Braun
Roberta L. Harris
Publishing Editors: Jeremy Schonfield
Ashley Jones
Editorial Assistant: Carole Murray
Editorial Advisory Board: Magen Broshi, Rupert Chapman,
Shimon Dar, Claudine Dauphin, Yosef Garfinkle, Martin Good
man, Ram Gophna, Amos Kloner, Tessa Rajak, Joan Taylor,
Dan Urman, Fanny Vitto, G. J. Wightman.
Please send correspondence, papers for publication and books for
review to:
In the UK - Carole Murray
The Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society
3 St John's Wood Road
London NW8 8RB
England
In Israel - Shimon Gibson
Israel Antiquities Authority
P.O. Box 586
Jerusalem 91004
Israel
The Editors are not responsible for opinions expressed by contrib
utors.
Subscription Rates
The Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society is pub
lished annually. Subscription for 1998 is £10.00 (including postage
and packing), or £15.00 overseas, payable to the Anglo-Israel
Archaeological Society. Those wishing to become members of the
Society and to receive details of the annual lecture programme,
should apply for details to the Secretary of the Society (see
application form on page 119 of this publication).
Honorary Officers and Committee Members
Honorary President
Rt Hon. The Viscount Allenby of Megiddo
Honorary Vice-President
Professor J. B. Segal MC, D.Phil., F.B.A.
Chairman
Professor H. G. M. Williamson D.D., F.B.A.
Vice-Chairmen
I I
Leon Shalit (Israel)
Ashley Jones (England)
Dr John Kane (England)
Honorary Treasurer
Ashley Jones
Honorary Secretary
Stephen Rosenberg
Committee
Barbara Barnett
Dr Adrian H. Curtis
Dr Shimon Gibson
Professor Martin Goodman F.B.A.
Roberta L. Harris
Sean Kingsley
Pamela Magrill
Jeremy Schonfield
Nick Slope
Secretary
Carole Murray
Israel Representative
Eliot Braun
This periodical is indexed in Religion Index One:
Periodicals, Index to Book Reviews in Religion, Religion
Indexes: RIOIRITIIBRR 1975- on CD-ROM and ATLA
Religion Database on CD-ROM. Published by American
Theological Library Association, 820 Church Street,
Evanston IL 60201-5613, E-mail: [email protected].
WWW:http://atla.library.vanderbilt.edu.atlalhome.html.
On the cover: an 18th-century map of
the Holy Land, by Eman. Bowen.
© 1997 The Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society
3 St John's Wood Road, London NW8 8RB
ISSN Series 0266 2442
Typeset by Wyvern 21 Ltd, Bristol
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Bristol
Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 1996-97 Volume 15
Editorial
In recent years archaeological signposts in Israel have shifted in new directions
with the diversification of academic research programmes and with new methodo
logies taking root. Regional Archaeology, which, among other things, deals with
the study of ancient settlement patterns and demography, has become a popular
line of research well represented in the studies of Magen Broshi, Ram Gophna,
Adam Zertal and Israel Finkelstein, among others. The first article of this issue,
by Ianir Milevski of the Israel Antiquities Authority and a doctoral candidate in Tel
Aviv University, follows this methodological approach and examines settlement
patterns in the territory of·Judah during the Persian period.
The second article attempts to unravel the story behind the strange and horrific
crime that the inhabitants of the town called Gibeah (identified with the archaeolo
gical remains at the site of Tel el Ful, north of Jerusalem) perpetrated against
a Levite's concubine, as related in chapters 19-21 of the Book of Judges. The
contradictions in this complex biblical story led Simha Brookes, a doctoral candid
ate in the University of London, to make an in-depth study of the text and to
suggest reinterpreting the entire episode against the harsh reality of power
struggles between the houses of Saul and David.
Archaeological excavations in Israel like everywhere else are becoming much
more expensive, unpublished reports on digs are mounting up, and Contract
Archaeology, with archaeologists hiring out their services to building contractors
for the primary purpose of making money, is looming on the horizon of the discip
line like a brewing storm. But in the midst of all this confusion, Egon Lass, who
has excavated at some of the most important sites in the country since the late
1960s, including the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Tel Qasile, Masada, Jericho,
Herodium and, more recently, Ashqelon, brings us back to earth in the third
article of this issue by focusing our attention on an alternative method of designing
matrix diagrams which help in elucidating extremely complex stratigraphical
sequences in excavations, based on the enormous amount of experience he has
clocked up over the years. Lass, currently working for the Israel Antiquities
Authority as the co-director of the Modi'in Project, rightly points out that for an
analysis of the stratigraphy of tells to be made smoothly and efficiently, a modifica
tion of the matrix diagram, first developed by Edward Harris in the mid-1970s, is
necessary and vital.
In the late 1970s a Syrian soldier was wandering around Quneitra in the Golan
Heights and chanced upon an inscribed silver signet ring which mentions Shimon
Bar Kokhba, leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against the Romans. The story
5
EDITORIAL
of the signet ring is given by Dr Dan Urman, an expert on the Golan in the Roman
and Byzantine periods and a lecturer in the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
in the fourth article of this issue. If this ring is not a forgery then its discovery is
truly of great significance.
The fifth article is written by a frequent contributor to the Bulletin, Professor
Claudine Dauphin, based on a lecture given to the Society in March 1996, which
deals with a subject which most scholars have hitherto found distasteful and worthy
of being brushed as quickly as possible under the proverbial carpet: health and
hygiene in Byzantine Palestine. In an indomitable style, Dauphin presents a well
written scholarly discussion of such matters as leprosy, skin diseases, lice, refuse
and excrement, and deals as well with hygiene and water sources, baths and sewage
systems. This article makes a worthy companion-piece to her excellent article
'Brothels, Baths and Babes: Prostitution in the Byzantine Holy Land' which was
published in Classics Ireland in 1996.
An obituary of Leon Shalit (1905-1996), a remarkable man with a passion for
archaeology, who was one of the three founding members of the Anglo-Israel
Archaeological Society (together with Richard Barnett and Yigael Yadin), is writ
ten by Barbara Barnett, an energetic Committee Member of the Society and a
close friend of the late Leon Shalit and his family.
In line with the special interest that members of the Society expressed in Pro
fessor Alan Crown's fascinating lecture on the Samaritans and on their literature
and the codicology of their manuscripts, it was decided to reproduce the text of
his lecture in its entirety.
This issue ends with six lecture summaries and two reports on grants given by
the Society.
During the last year I have taken up the post of Head of the Research Division
of the Excavations and Surveys Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority, so
authors should now submit research articles and reviews intended for publication in
the Bulletin to my address in Jerusalem.
Shimon Gibson
6
Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 1996-97 Volume 15
Settlement Patterns in Northern Judah
during the Achaemenid Period, According
to the Hill Country of Benjamin and
Jerusalem Surveys
IANIR MILEVSKI
To the memory of Abraham Platkin, who taught me Biblical Hebrew
This paper examines settlement patterns in the northern part of Judah during the
Persian period (538-332 Be).l The territory in question is the area defined as the
'Land of Benjamin', which comprises the northern part of the plJwh (province) of
yhd (Judah in epigraphic and biblical sources).
The methodological approach used in this work is based on that used in the
earlier studies of Broshi and Gophna (1984, 1986), Gophna and Portugali (1988),
and Broshi and Finkelstein (1992). For the archaeological use of rank-size distribu
tion, and for the subject of the archaeology of place in general, we refer the reader
to the works by Hodder and Orton (1976, especially 1-10, 17-29), and Renfrew
and Bahn (1991: 158-162).
The data used in this study are derived mainly from the recently published
Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin, based on work conducted
in the 1980s (Finkelstein 1993a), and from the northeastern map of the Survey of
Jerusalem which is still unpublished (Kloner n.d.: Map 1, Gibson 1995: 229-301;
see Fig. 1).2 These surveys were chosen because they contain the most accurate
data on northern Judahite settlements of the Achaemenid period.3
The survey was undertaken by teams working in five different areas (see Fig. 2):
the northern parts of the Beit Sira (15-14), Ramallah (16-14) and el-Bireh (17-14)
maps (Finkelstein 1993b); the southern part of the Beit Sira map (15-14) (Hizmi
1993); the southern parts of the Ramallah (16-14) and el-Bireh maps (17-14), and
the northern part of the Ein Karem (16-13) map (Feldstein et al. 1993); the Judean
Desert (map of Wadi el-Makukh, 18-14) (Goldfus and Golani 1993); and the eastern
part of the map of Jerusalem (17-13) (Dinur and Feig 1993, Gibson 1995: 229-301,
Kloner n.d.: Map 1). Each team faced different problems and adopted different
methodologies, and a different policy was used in editing each map.
While completing the first draft of this paper, the author came across two works
published by Carter (1992; 1994) which juxtapose and include some of the data
and discussions presented in this paper. Nevertheless, both our approach and
7
IANIR MILEVSKI
EE
D 10xlO km
survey map
Fig. 1. Location map of the surveyed area. Drawing by Michael Smelansky.
conclusions are expressed differently. While the works by Carter (1992: 93-165,
1994) focused on demographic and social matters regarding the entire province of
Judah, this paper will concentrate solely on settlement patterns in the Land of
Benjamin.
Methods and Problems
The data used in this study were processed in the following manner: Tables 1-4
represent the list of sites and related basic information (i.e. map reference, size,
8