The Biblical Archaeologist - Vol.29, N.4

24 Pages·1966·2.98 MB·English

by  American Schools of Oriental Research

The
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST
&F-
Published by
THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
Jerusalem and Bagdad
Room 102, 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Mass.
VOL. XXIX December,1 966 No. 4
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106 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXIX
The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (February, May, September, December)
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Contents
Dolmen Studies in Palestine, by James L. Swauger
...............................................106
Science and Archaeology, by Henry O. Thompson ..........................................114
A New Book on Masada and a Publication Notice ............................................125
Dolmen Studies in Palestine
JAMESL . SWAUGER
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh
Among the classes of archaeological phenomena in Palestine that cry
for explanation are dolmens, hut-like structures built of large slabs of stone.
We need to know (following the journalism class directive of my high school
days) the who, what, where, when, why and how of these structures. So
far only the what, where, and how seem clear enough. The who, when and
why may engage our efforts for a long time to come.
What is easy. A dolmen is a megalithic building, a usually rectangular
structure consisting of a single massive horizontal "roof" stone resting on
two or more equally massive vertical "wall" stones, or some variation on
this theme. What can be called a "classic"d olmen is essentially a stone box
made up of six slabs: one roof, two sides, two ends (one of which can be
called a "door"s lab), and one floor (fig. 1).
Variations occur. Some dolmens have more than one roof slab; some
more than one slab making up a wall; some more than one slab serving as a
floor; some slabs as inner partition walls. Door slabs often have "portholes"
carved in them. Two-decker dolmens (fig. 2), dolmens with "trailers"
1966, 4) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 107
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Fig. 2. A "double-decker" dolmen at Damiyeh.
hitched on behind them (fig. 3), and even dolmens that partially use
bedrock occur (fig. 4).1
Where is also easy. In Palestine, dolmens are found from the Syrian
and Lebanon borders south to about the latitude of Kerak, from the Medi-
terranean foothills of the central mountain ridge of Palestine east to the
1. Swauger, J. L., Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, X (1965), 5-36.
108 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXIX
desert. For all practical purposes, one can say that dolmens are not found
south of the Kerak area, and this is an intriguing problem in itself.
There are several thousand individual dolmens. Usually, they are found
clustered in fields as at Damiyeh, Irbid, and Kefr Yuba in Jordan; Shamir,
Meron, and Khorazim in Israel. Occasionally, they are found singly, and
such single dolmens conceivably are the only remaining evidence of a
former field of dolmens, but cursory examination of the area around one
single dolmen standing above the Salt-JordanV alley road in Jordan revealed
no sister structures. There are dozens of dolmen sites, some with as many
as the more than two hundred structures that occur at Damiyeh or the per-
haps one hundred at Meron, and some with as few as the six at Tell Umm
el-Quttein (fig. 5).
How is not difficult of explanation. The slabs are ordinarily massive
and weigh several hundred pounds each. My experience in close study of
three fields leads me to believe slabs were not moved for great distances,2
an opinion shared by another student of these phenomena, Moshe Stekelis.3
Having helped shift great blocks of stone containing dinosaur bones in
Carnegie Museums storerooms,I know that men accustomed to using brute
strength assisted by levers and rollers can move very heavy objects. I see no
reason to postulate elaborate machinery or great engineering knowledge.
At Shamir in Israel, dolmens were made by rounded boulders that could
have been rolled into place easily enough. At Damiyeh in Jordan, slabs
could have been slid downhill to position for the building of many of the
dolmens without great effort. The stones were picked up, levered up, slid,
rolled, depending on the dolmen and the location. Given time and the ex-
perience of team application of human or animal muscle, those who built
the dolmens probably looked on their construction only as hard work, not
as an enormous task. Like the people who raised the giant statues of Easter
Island,4 the dolmen builders had a secret weapon, time, which coupled
with the team application of muscle, had enabled them to use heavy stone
units with relative ease.
Now the why. Common sense tells us dolmens were tombs. But to
have common sense say they are tombs does not make them tombs. It is
opinion, not proof. We know they have been used as tombs within even
our own times, but we have no conclusive proof that those who built them
did so in order to use them as tombs. In company with most other students
of the subject, I believe dolmens were built as tombs, but I wouldn't like to
be hanged on the basis of the evidence I can muster to support my belief.
Nor do we know who built them. It is usually said that they were built
2. Ibid., p. 8.
3. Stekelis, M., Archives de I'Institut de Paldontologie Humaine, Memoire 15 (1935), 37.
4. Heyerdahl, T., Aku-Aku (1958), pp. 143-149.
1966, 4) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 109
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Fig. 3. Dolmen with a "trailer" at el-Matabi.
somewhere between about 7000 and 3000 B.C. by Neolithic, even Chal-
colithic, peoples in Palestine. But saying so is one thing, proof another.
Artifacts have not been found in such reliable association with dolmens
as to permit us to say, "Aha!T his tool was dropped here by one of the people
who built this thing." Once we have such evidence, and only this kind
of proof can be called conclusive, we will be in a position to say when, for
who and when are intimately linked. But as of now we know neither who
nor when.
The who and when factors have been the subject of much speculation.
Most of it hinged on attempts to equate dolmens with biblical and speci-
fically Old Testament passages, places, and people, such as G. Ernest
Wright's suggestion that dolmens were the basis for belief in giants, the
Rephaim, Anakim, Emim, Zamzumin, and the like.5 Edwin C. Broome
points out how natural this assumption would have been for the ancient
Hebrews, especially if they believed the dolmens to be pagan altars.6 But
5. Wright, G. E., Journal of Biblical Literature, LVII (1938), 305-309.
6. Broome, E. C., Jr., The Dolmens of Palestine and Transjordania, doctoral dissertation, Brown
University, 1940, II, 215.
110 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXIX
no satisfactory connection of dolmens with biblical peoples or chronology
has yet come forth.
Archaeological techniques have been of little help. W. F. Albright
suggested7 that the circular huts made of great standing stones discovered
by J. d'A. Waechter and V. M. Seton-Williams in the Wadi Dhobai south-
east of Amman8 had served as models for dolmens. Those who made the
Wadi Dhobai stone huts had a stone industry like that of the Tahunian
of pre-pottery Jericho, and Albright's suggestion if proved would date the
dolmens as early as about 7000 B.C. No traces of such a stone industry
have been associated with dolmens, however, and the dolmen builders are
not proved to be as early as the Wadi Dhobai folk.
At el-'Adeimeh, Stekelis excavated stone cists with artifacts and associa-
tions identified by the excavator as Chalcolithic.9 Dolmens are found nearby.
Stekelis held that the cists were degenerate forms of the dolmens and that
both were of about the same age, the latter part of the Stone Age in Pales-
tine. C. C. McCown pointed out that the el-'Adeimeh cists are not in them-
selves megaliths, are not necessarily inspired by dolmens, and are not neces-
sarily related to them.10 Structures we recorded at Tel lel-Matabi in 1962"
very much resembled Stekelis' el-'Adeimeh cists. They were in the same
field with numerous dolmens, and at first glance I was inclined to agree
with Stekelis that the cists are associated with the dolmens and may be
related to them as chronological and degenerate successors. But McCown
cautioned that French megalithic stone cists of later times are much like
the el-'Adeimeh cists12 and from my own experience I can testify that they
are much like Middle Woodland stone cist burials of Indians of the north-
eastern United States; neither of these can be readily viewed as related to
Palestinian dolmens.
My interest in the dolmen problem in Palestine was spurred by Dr.
James L. Kelso of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. In 1959 he sug-
gested the possibility of my undertaking a dolmen study in Palestine. His
thought was that persons like myself at home in American Indian arch-
aeology, in which one works without literary guides, might make some
sense out of Palestinian dolmens, to which literature has furnished so few
guides.
Kelso warned me that while there are many references to dolmens in
literature, nothing significant had been proved regarding their chronological
or cultural position. This situation is true for Syria and Lebanon, as well
7. Albright, W. F., The Archaeology of Palestine (4th ed., 1960), p. 64.
8. Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, XVIII (1938), 172-185, 297, 298.
9. Stekelis, pp. 77-79.
10. McCown, C. C., The Ladder of Progress in Palestine (1934), pp. 292f.
11. Swauger, pp. 30-34.
12. McCown, p. 292.
1966, 4) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 111
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Fig. 4. Dolmen adapted from a natural rock fissure at Damiyeh.
as Jordan and Israel (Palestine proper) which engaged my attention. The
bibliography now accumulated has dozens of titles, and their contents sup-
port Kelso's opinion. Some of the publications are based on field observa-
tion, but many of them are not, and speculation is their meat. In large
measure reports on megalith sites in Palestine have been ancillary to reports
concerning other phenomena. Sporadic interest seldom results in reliable
conclusions. What the dolmens have needed was someone to make them
his special study.
112 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXIX
The crux of the matter is that until we have acceptable datable arti-
fact association with typical dolmens or have found some method of tying
dolmens into established chronological or cultural niches we are where we
were in 1961 when I discussed the matter in correspondencew ith Albright,
and he wrote (April 19, 1961) saying he had not seen a report of a really
scientific investigation of the dolmens and that he doubted one had been
made.
Many investigators, Albright, Nelson Glueck, G. L. Harding, and C.
R. Conder, to name but four of the more prominent, have noted, described,
and speculated concerning some of them. Stekelis and others excavated
dolmens and dolmen-like structures. Broome made them a major part of
his doctoral dissertation submitted at Brown University in May 1940, and
published concerning them in The Journal of Biblical Literature.13Y et to
none of them but Stekelis and Broome-who had not seen a dolmen in the
field-were megaliths of primaryi nterest.
In 1959 and 1960, I first looked at Palestinian dolmens, those all in
Jordan. From March 15 to April 15, 1962, I led a small party in searching
for and visiting dolmen fields on both banks of the Jordan River in Jordan.
After looking at fields for the first ten days of this period from the northern
border of the Dead Sea to Irbid, we concentrated on three fields, Damiyeh,
Tell Umm el-Quttein and Tell el-Matabi, the first a bit east of north from
Jericho, the other two almost due east (fig. 5). In Israel I have spent time
at the great sites of Meron, Shamir, and Khorazim.
A detailed report on the three fields east of Jericho was recently pub-
lished in the Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. There
is no point in repeating all details here, but a review of some tangible re-
sults of a few weeks work concentrating on three sites might be interesting:
1. Three general types of dolmen construction, each peculiar to one of
the three sites, were identified.
2. Four distinct architecturals tyles were identified at Damiyeh.
3. Three distinct architecturals tyles were identified at el-Matabi.
4. Surface collecting at the sites gave no clue as to their age or the
culture of their builders.
5. The only relationship between the orientation of dolmens and any
pattern in construction is that at Damiyeh doors are in the north slabs of
north-to-south oriented dolmens, in the east slabs of east-to-west oriented
dolmens.
6. At Damiyeh there is a change in architectural styles from north-to-
south but I have no evidence yet to suggest that the northern section of
the area studied is either older or younger than the southern.
13. Broome, Journal of Biblical Literature, LIX (1940), 479-497.
1966, 4) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 113
SIDON
) AMASCUS
r (cid:127)D/
TYRE /-
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ACRE KHORAZIM
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CAESAREA \ I
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PADEIMEH
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0 5 10 15 20 25
SCAILNEM ILES
Fig. 5. Map showing in heavy letters the locations of dolmen fields in Jordan and Israel.
By going patiently from one dolmen to the next in field after field
after field, determining their individual characteristics and charting them,
learning whether or not there are patterns of construction and orientation
within fields, which fields are like other fields, excavating when such ex-
114 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXIX
cavation bids fair to provide acceptable artifact-dolmen association or to
reveal architectural details impossible to learn otherwise, we may eventually
answer the who, when and why of our problem. Unless we are lucky enough
to find a dolmen under an earth or rock cover (for they may have been so
covered originally) and to find it unvandalized, I know no other procedure
that can result in solving the mysteryo f the dolmens.
Science And Archaeology
HENRYO . THOMPSON
Syracuse University
One of the most fascinating developments in the archaeological world
over the past several decades has been the astounding increase in the number
of ways in which science has been contributing to the discipline. Now, of
course, archaeology has claim as a science in its own right. But new and
old theories and techniques of other sciences are now being applied in
archaeologyi n ways and to a degree that is really astonishing.
All will have heard of Carbon-14 and most persons interested in arch-
aeology know something about tree ring dating (dendrochronology), al-
though it is normally related to the American Southwest. Apart from these,
my own introduction to this rapidly expanding field came in an address by
Dr. Froelich Rainey of the Pennsylvania University Museum in the spring
of 1963. Among other things, he described the use of the proton magne-
tometer in the Museum's hunt for the lost city of Sybaris, and the testing
of a newly opened tomb in Mexico for bacteria. Dr. Rainey is the Director
of the Applied Science Center for Archaeology. The Center both develops
and experiments with new techniques in archaeological research. These in-
clude new methods of exploration, dating, identification, and interpretation.
The Center publishes the MASCA (Museum Applied Science Center for
Archaeology) Newsletter (1:1 dated February, 1965; 1:2 dated Dec., 1965)
which is itself a mine of information. It is preparedb y Miss Jeannette Flamm,
and is designed to cover current literature on the subject and to be a clearing
house for developments in this area.
In Great Britain, the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the
History of Art at Oxford University publishes a bulletin called Archaeo-
metry. Volume 7 (1964) is still available but volumes 1-6 are out of print.
A glance at the table of contents of this small annual is a dizzying record
of the vastness and complex character of this area of archaeological re-
search. Volume 7 includes articles on X-ray analysis, magnetic surveying,
fission-track dating of glasses, thermoluminescent dating of pottery, spec-
trographic analysis of stamped jar handles, stereoscopic photography, etc.