With up to 65 people on site during much of the seven-week season, the 2009 excavations mark a significant expansion in the scope and the chronological range of the Tel Bet Yerah archaeological project. If the Egyptian palette fragment (see Area SA-S, below) comprised the most exciting single discovery of the season, the cumulative knowledge gained through excavation of Early Bronze, Hellenistic and Umayyad strata, as well as the insights achieved by our experimental potter, certainly contributed as much or more to our overall appreciation of the complex story of the great mound.

Staff and Volunteers
A small international group of volunteers from the USA, Norway, the Netherlands and Israel was joined this year by 16 Tel Aviv University field school participants and by a 35-person strong contingent from University College, London, headed by Dr David Wengrow. This marks the beginning of what we expect will be a long and fruitful collaboration. The postgraduate excavation staff was supplemented this year by our resident potter, Andrew Chanania, by our office manager Shimrit Salem, and by the camp manager Beja. We were warmly hosted by the Sha‘ar Hagolan guest-house and hostel staff, headed by Nurit Katziri.
As in previous seasons, Nissim Asaban and youth volunteers from the Society for the Protection of Nature helped with cleanup operations ahead of the excavations. We also thank Ohalo Manor and Kibbutz Kinneret for technical help in the field

Area SA-M (Mark Iserlis)
In a final effort to glean some more evidence for the history of construction and for the function of the Circles Building (a.k.a. the Granary), we returned to the northeastern-most circle (Circle VII), where excavations in 2003 had revealed two successive stone-paved floors. After dismantling a meter-wide segment of the late bath-house wall in the northeast quadrant of the circle (the wall had massive foundations set in a deep trench), we were able to establish that the original slab floor of the circle sloped down sharply to the north. Apparently, the floor subsided during or shortly after its construction, and this necessitated the laying of a second stone floor, partly placed on fill, in order to make the space usable. Whether this repair was carried out by the original builders or by squatters who entered the building after it was abandoned remains unclear; there is, however, no doubt that the last phase of use of the circle involved the construction of a narrow mudbrick wall, based on the original stone partitions of Circle VII. The wall bisected the circle from east to west and created a rectangular space along with the walls built in the nearby courtyard (excavated in 2007). This was part of the complete makeover of the building by the Khirbet Kerak Ware users, who entered it after it was abandoned. As in previous seasons, we found no evidence for the intended function of the circles, and it is increasingly likely that the building was never completed as originally planned.           
North of the building we began to clear away recent debris, looking for the paved street that was supposed to run along the northern façade, according to the earlier excavators. On the far side of the street there was a small unexcavated sector, jutting out above the excavated structures that surrounded it on all sides.

This ‘island’ provided a unique opportunity to retrieve a complete stratigraphic sequence, from the surface of the mound down to the presumed street. So we first cut away the eroded face of the ‘island’, creating a vertical section, then began to dig away from the top. First there were very poor levels belonging to the Early Islamic complex (see Area GB-T), then some more substantial remains of houses from the Hellenistic period remains (2nd century C.E.). Beneath those, we began to excavate a broad open area composed of soft lenses of ash and decomposed mudbrick, alternating with harder earth surfaces. These deposits ran right up to stepped stone platforms built against the north face of the Circle Building, where the street should have been (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 The northern façade of the Circles Building and the stepped stone platforms abutting it.

Fig 2. A Khirbet Kerak Ware andiron fragment with anthropomorphic decoration

The façade of the building itself seemed to be built in alternating wide and narrow courses of stone (we only excavated a short stretch of it). Thus, rather than a street, we seem to have a broad area of communal activity fronting a well-designed building façade. The contents of these deposits were characterized by heavy concentrations of Khirbet Kerak Ware in a very broad range of types and forms, including several that we had never seen before (Fig. 2) Area GB-H (Hai Ashkenazi) Around the other side of the ‘island’, north-east of the Circles Building, we opened a new excavation area within the confines of the late fortified structure excavated previously by P. Bar-Adon. Here, beneath a series of Hellenistic period structures, we hoped to find more houses or streets related to the Circles Building. As things turned out, we had to put a good deal of effort into the excavation of some well-preserved Hellenistic structures. They had at least two clear construction phases, and yielded a wealth of pottery (Fig. 3), including many imported wine amphorae with

stamped handles (the amphorae were made in Rhodes or in nearby islands, and the producers stamped the jar-handles with a seal). These amphorae should give us very precise dates for the use of the houses. In the eastern part of the excavation area we did reach part of an Early Bronze III structure that extended beyond the edge of the trench. It had a long façade on the west side, against which were piled a series of midden-like deposits full of ash, animal bones, large numbers of Khirbet Kerak Ware sherds and more than a dozen fragments of limestone maceheads (the small maces would have been either weapons or symbols of power). These deposits look a lot like those in Area SA-M,

Fig. 3 A complete Hellenistic jug found in an ancient pit

Fig. 4 - General plan of EBA houses in Area SA-S

Area SA-S (Alina Getzel; Ian Cipin) One of our most complicated excavation areas is on the western side of the Circles Building, where we initially intended to uncover more of the houses bordering Alina’s Alley and the paved north-south street. A lot of our time here was spent on carefully recording and then partly removing walls and floors belonging to two phases of the Early Islamic fortified structure and to layers of ancient trash and traces of walls belonging to the Hellenistic period. Eventually we reached the Early Bronze in a fairly wide area, so that we now have a nice plan of a domestic complex composed of 3 conjoined houses bounded by the paved streets on the east and south (Fig. 4). On the north side of the complex there was a packed gravel pavement that must originally have sloped down to the main paved street. It looks as though this was some kind of shared courtyard. It was here that we made the most exciting single discovery of the season: near the edge of the

pavement where it was partly washed away, there was—among the sherds of local pottery and Khirbet Kerak Ware—a fragment of a ceremonial Egyptian palette (a flat stone object used for grinding cosmetics) (Fig. 5). The fragment—the first of its kind ever discovered outside Egypt—shows part of a well-executed scene depicting an arm and hand grasping an archaic, double-tailed ‘ankh and a was scepter. Although nothing quite like it has ever been found, the style of the object places it in the late predynastic period or in the time of Egypt’s First Dynasty, that is, about 3000 BCE. This is a little bit earlier than the probable date of the houses, so there’s a good chance that the object, which is now broken, came from an earlier phase of the same houses or perhaps from a nearby structure. We are still studying the object, but it does seem to suggest that the relations between bet Yerah and the Egyptian court were more developed than we thought.

Fig. 5 - The palette

Area GB-T (Taufik De'adle)
A new aspect of the 2009 excavations was our attempt to re-excavate and re-interpret the huge (4000 sq m) fortified basilical complex cleared by Bar-Adon and Guy in the early 1950s but never fully published.  

Originally identified as a synagogue and then as a Roman or Byzantine fort, the most recent suggestion has been to identify the complex with the Umayyad palace of al-Sinnabra. Because the structure was largely dismantled in antiquity, leaving only wall and floor foundations intact, and due to the summary excavation methods used in the original excavations, our principal aim was to identify sealed or otherwise datable contexts such as foundation trenches and subfloor deposits. Additionally, the surviving parts of the superstructure—including some beautiful mosaic floors (Fig. 6)—had to be revisited and recorded.This is, of course, more than one season’s-worth of work, but in the limited

Fig. 6 - Restored mosaic floor fragment excavated by Bar-Adon, cleaned and recorded in 2009

area cleared and in the small soundings already made, we gained much new information: 1. The original foundations of the external fortifications, the adjoining bath-house, and the central structure are all equally massive and deep, indicating a high level of investment, similar building concepts in all parts of the complex, and the likelihood that the superstructure was quite substantial. 2. There is multiple evidence for the existence of at least two building phases in the main structure. The later phase involved wall demolition and replacement, as well as repairs in the mosaic pavements.

Fig 7 - Evidence of earthquake damage in the wall of the central Umayyad structure

3. We have begun to see evidence of earthquake damage; this could eventually help date the structure (Fig. 7).

4. A second fortified enclosure was built over part of the main enclosure. This later enclosure was recorded but never described by the excavators.

All in all, evidence is gradually accumulating that the building does indeed date to the Early Islamic period, and could be one of the earliest of all Umayyad palaces.

Andrew Potter
The Tel Bet Yerah excavations are a testing-ground for all kinds of theories and hypotheses. One of these has to do with our signature pottery, Khirbet Kerak Ware. Part of our wide-ranging comparative project on the technology of Kuro-Araxes ceramics (pottery that comes from the region of the Kura and Araxes Rivers in eastern Anatolia and the southern Caucasus) and their derivatives (similar industries that extend from Israel to Iran) has been Mark’s attempt to recreate on paper the sequence of operations required to produce a Khirbet Kerak Ware pot. This year we had a chance to test his theories in the field. Andrew Chanania, our resident potter, brought his expertise in traditional formation and firing methods to bear on the raw materials that make up the ancient pots as identified by Mark under the microscope. With everyone on site taking part, the local soil was worked and refined until a paste resembling that of the original pots was obtained.