Excavation reports by staff members

Mount Zion Excavations - Week Three (16th - 21st March 2008)

Having established the Byzantine date for the stone-line basin and the surrounding rubble fill in Field H, we decided to record the various features in drawing and photography and then to remove them. This meant the dismantling of the wall foundation (W176) and three of the external walls of the basin and its cobbled floor. We were hoping for a nice cache of coins under the cobbled floor, but none was found. The surrounding rubble fill did provide us however with a variety of finds, including part of a lock mechanism and a number of coins. Immediately below the wall foundation we exposed the top of another wall (W190) and began descending on both sides, clarifying robbed out areas as separate loci. One large pit beneath the stone-lined basin was packed with Second-Temple period pottery, animal bones and a fragment of a stone jar. Rafi has been working hard clarifying the stratigraphy of this area.  

In the northernmost part of the area we had high hopes of finding a medieval surface but none was found. Eventually we got down to a level with clear signs of the "scoops" in the ground created by a mechanical back-hoe probably in the early 1980s. Hence, we decided to leave everything below for excavation next Summer.

In Area B Egon has been removing the distinguishable layers one-by-one, finding post-Abbasid medieval fills. On the other side of the area we have been clearing enormous amounts of modern garbage/rubbish which has accumulated there since the early 1980s.  

The site was entered one afternoon by a man who began digging holes in the ground until he was spotted by one of the team members who just happened to be passing by. Luckily he didn't do too much damage. 

Mount Zion Excavations - Week Two (9th - 14th March 2008)

During the second week a different tactic was adopted in the upper Field B. Instead of digging the tops of the baulks stratigraphically we felt compelled to take safety considerations first and to remove the top portions drastically so that the lower portions could be excavated carefully but without fear of collapse. A number of interesting artifacts emerged including an iron catapult head and a bone inlay segment decorated with floral motifs.

In Field H a rubble fill emerged below the brown fill with a concentration of crushed amphorae and other pottery vessels in the center and with a fragmentary plastered channel along one side extending down to a cistern opening in Square P17. A sunken stone-lined basin was also found within the rubble base and it was full of pottery and other artifacts, including a few coins. A sample of soil was taken for flotation. Many coins were found in the adjacent fills, and the finding of coins became almost a regular feature of the excavation as it progressed.

One of the main logistical problems of the excavation is the removal of the soil and rubble dug out of the site. On average we have been removing 14 cubic metre bags (balot) of material every day, all of which has to be hauled out of the site by crane and then taken away by truck to a municipal dump.

Mount Zion Excavations - Week One (2nd - 7th March 2008)

We began the first week of digging with many expectations, but getting the dig organized in the first place was exhausting and we spent a number of frantic days running around buying tools and equipment, sorting out the paperwork and the excavation registration system, and having a barrel-vaulted temporary structure with plastic sheeting set up over part of the area just in case it rained during the dig. Licenses had been received from the Israel Antiquities Authority (G-12/2008) and the Parks Authority (1615/08). The team consists of Shimon Gibson and James Tabor (Project Directors), Rafi Lewis (Field Director Fields E, H) and Egon H.E. Lass (Field Director Field B), Mareike Grosser (Site Manager) and Yusuf as our foreman. The excavation is conducted on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. There are a number of sponsors including the Guttman Foundation and Sheila Bishop and The Foundation for Biblical Archaeology. Dov Porotsky set up the measurements of the surrounding excavation lines, baulks and fences, and established a series of Fields of excavation (A-H).

The first day was spent cleaning the areas where we wanted to dig, removing baulks between the squares in Field H, and drawing the baulks that were to be removed in Field B. The first few days of an excavation are always the most difficult and after that a certain routine sets in. In Field H our objective was to remove the collapsed stone debris in Square Q18 which we did, bringing to light a jamb-stone, a threshold fragment and a column shaft.  We thought that the underlying surface might be the original early 14th century ground surface, but it rapidly became clear that this was a modern surface, probably from the early 1980s. Having removed this hard surface and the fill within a pit extending along the side of the squares which was also modern in date, we began digging down through a brown rubble fill which appeared to be ancient. In addition to these activities we also cleared away the topsoil and rubble piles along the south-eastern side of Squares N17 to O18 bringing to light a rubble pile under a layer of soil which was apparently created by workers in the original excavations at the site in the 1970s. Up in Field B on the west side of the excavation area a cobble surface was uncovered which may have been contemporary with the foundations of the mid-sixteenth century city wall. Samples of soil were taken for flotation.

There was not much real archaeology during the first week of excavations, but there was a lot of enthusiasm from the team workers and it was greatly appreciated.