With range of dramatic finds in excavations ahead of highway expansion, archaeologists trace 10 millennia of human development
November 25, 2013, 4:24 pm
39
A remarkable archaeological find
in the Judean lowlands southwest of Jerusalem includes a
six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000-year-old house.
The
ancient sites were located in routine archaeological digs conducted
ahead of a planned expansion of Route 38, the main access road to Beit
Shemesh. The building is the oldest ever found in the area, and
constitutes remarkable “evidence of man’s transition to permanent
dwellings,” researchers said Monday.
Labeling it “a fascinating glimpse into
thousands of years of human development,” the Israel Antiquities
Authority, together with the Netivei Israel Company that is carrying out
the highway expansion, invited the public to visit the excavation site
in Eshtaol on Wednesday, November 27.
“Settlement remains were unearthed at the
site, the earliest of which dates to the beginning of the eighth
millennium BCE and latest to the end of the fourth millennium BCE,” the
authority said in a statement Monday.
“We uncovered a multitude of unique finds
during the excavation,” said Amir Golani, one of the excavators for the
Antiquities Authority. “The large excavation affords us a broad picture
of the progression and development of the society in the settlement
throughout the ages. Thus we can clearly see that in the Early Bronze
Age, 5,000 years ago, a rural society made the transition to an urban
society. We can see distinctly a settlement that gradually became
planned, which included [streets] and buildings that were extremely
impressive from the standpoint of their size and the manner of their
construction. We can clearly trace the urban planning and see the
guiding hand of the settlement’s leadership that chose to regulate the
construction in the crowded regions in the center of the settlement and
allowed less planning along its periphery.”
The finds allow the researchers to “trace the development of a society which became increasingly hierarchical,” Golani said.
The oldest building found dates from the time of the earliest known domestication of plants and animals.
“Whoever built the house did something that
was totally innovative because up until this period [local human groups]
migrated from place to place in search of food. Here we have evidence
of man’s transition to permanent dwellings, and that in fact is the
beginning of the domestication of animals and plants; instead of
searching out wild sheep, ancient man started raising them near the
house,” researchers said in a statement.
The researchers included Golani, Ya‘akov
Vardi, Benyamin Storchan and Ron Be’eri, who serve as excavation
directors for the Antiquities Authority.
The house is the oldest structure ever found
in the Judean lowlands, they said, dating back to the period known to
archaeologists as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
“The building, almost all of which was found,
underwent a number of construction and repair phases that allude to its
importance,” they said.
Near the building, excavators found a collection of nine flint and limestone axes placed side by side.
“It is apparent that the axes, some of which
were used as tools and some as cultic objects, were highly valued by
their owners. Just as today we are unable to get along without a
cellular telephone and a computer, they too attributed great importance
to their tools. Based on how it was arranged at the time of its
discovery it seems that the cluster of axes was abandoned by its owner
for some unknown reason,” the researchers concluded.
But the building wasn’t the only find at the
site. A handful of buildings from the end of the Chalcolithic period,
some 6,000 years ago, was found nearby. At the site, excavators found a
six-sided stone column standing some 1.3 meters (51 inches) high and
weighing several hundred kilos.
“The standing stone was smoothed and worked on
all six of its sides,” the archaeologists said, explaining that its
broad face was oriented eastward and concluding that the find ”alludes
to the presence of a cultic temple at the site.”
“In the past, numerous manifestations have
been found of the cultic practice that existed in the Chalcolithic
period. However, from the research, we know of only a few temples”
located at Ein Gedi and Teleilat Ghassul in present-day Jordan.
No comments:
Post a Comment