Excavations At Rehovot In The Negev

Negev, the southern desert that covers more than two thirds of the Holy Land, is terra incognita to most Christian pilgrims who visit Israel. Some journey as far south as Eilat to visit the traditional site of Mt. Sinai, but even these travellers usually have no idea that the Negev desert is also worthy of their interest. They are unaware that that desert is rich in history and archaeological remains from its Christian period – that is, from the mid-fourth century to the end of the seventh century. The book is divided into eleven chapters. In Chapter One the author discuss the Nabataean history of the Negev and the Roman annexation of the region. The final chapter reviews the Muslim invasion of the southern desert in the seventh century C.E. and how this impacted the Christian population there, finally causing its disappearance. Chapters Two to Ten deal with each of the major Byzantine settlements that have been excavated, offering a full record of the discoveries concerning Christian archaeology together with pertinent references to ancient texts and local inscriptions. A good number of photographs will illustrate the text.

CD-ROM consists of: Interactive site map.

Late antique sites are often excavated badly and are hardly ever published in full, especially in the East. This volume seeks to provide a critique of this situation and exemplars of best practice. It will be an important reference work for scholars engaged in fieldwork and those seeking to use archaeological evidence in historical discussions.

The regions that compose the current state of Israel and the emerging state of Palestine have yielded a wealth of fascinating archaeological evidence, from the Dead Sea Scrolls found in a cave in 1947 by a Bedouin searching for a lost sheep, to the remains of Roman camps and King Herod's luxurious palaces at the besieged city of Masada. The authors begin with introductions to the complicated and turbulent history of the region in which a series of invaders, including Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians conquered and ruled over its people. The long reign of the Romans in the area is given particular attention-a reign that produced the infamous client rulers Herod the Great and Pontius Pilate, as well as two Jewish revolts against their Roman overlords, both of which met with brutal suppression. Lewin also analyzes eighteen ancient city-sites, including the familiar, such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and the less well-known, such as Herodion, with its extravagant palace-fortress, and Scythopolis, with its Roman temples and baths. This book provides an enlightening overview of a region that continues to capture the attention of the world.

The Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel initiated an archaeological salvage project in portions of the central and southern Negev (Israel). As a participant in the Negev Emergency Survey, Mordechai Haiman's field crew surveyed, from 1979-1989, 450 kilometers in the western Negev Highlands, and identified 1,500 sites. He also directed excavations at 33 sites. Funded by a grant from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications, this fieldwork was reanalyzed for publication. The contents of this final report touch upon various aspects of Haiman's excavations and surveys including methodologies, lithic material, pottery, fauna remains, petrographic analysis and more.

In January 2011, the David and Jemima Jeselsohn Epigraphic Center for Jewish History held its second international conference at Bar-Ilan University, dedicated to the memory of Professor Hanan Eshel, the founding academic director of the center who passed away on April 8th, 2010. This collection of articles, traces, when taken together, daily lifein the land of Israel from the First Temple Period through the time of the Talmud, as seen in the various types of inscriptions from those periods that have been discovered and published. Schiffman's summary of Hanan's work serves as an introduction to the book. A?ituv discusses the language and religious outlook of the Kuntilet 'Ajrud inscriptions. Mazar and A?ituv survey the quite large corpus of short inscriptions found in Mazar's excavation of Tel Re?ov, south of Beth-Shean. Maeir and Eshel deal with four very short more-or-less contemporary inscriptions found at Tell es-Safi, identified as the major Philistine city of Gath. Demsky deals with the theoretical aspects of literacy in ancient Israel. Grabbe discusses the functions of the scribe during the Second Temple Period. Zissu, Langford, Ecker and Eshel report on both an Aramaic-language graffito and a Latin one, inscribed on the wall of a first and 2nd century CE oil press from of Khirbet 'Arâk Hâla in the Judean Shephelah. Rappaport's survey of Jewish coins from the Persian Period through the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, focusing on the Hasmonean coins. Amit describes a group of bread stamps and oil seals, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, found in different parts of the country. Klein and Mamalya describe two Byzantine Period Nabatean Christian burial sites and their epitaphs.

This book presents a complementary synthesis of the newest research on the Negev Desert (Israel) in the Byzantine period (363-640 AD) including a holistic analysis of archaeological reports, historical sources, and field surveys with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The contextualization of settlement trends in the region reveals the subjectivity of some of earlier theories, which means that the study uses models developed as part of the French École des Annales discussion on the concept of long duration. Looking at the evolution of settlement from a regional and transregional perspective, through the prism of the cycle of behavioural domains, revealed a positive aspect of the transformation of society and settlement space: that the individual and community are able to resist and get out of difficult circumstances. The study also uses the paradigm of the rise and fall of cultures; in light of this, the long-term changes taking place in late antiquity appear to consist of relatively long periods of settlement expansion and short, sudden breakdowns.