Ancient History Faculty of Arts MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 (0) 2 9850 8833 Fax +61 (0) 2 9850 8240 Email [email protected] Tel Azekah 2012 Excavation report detailing the activities of the Australian team By Mr Andrew Pleffer – PhD candidate & Area Assistant Supervisor, and Dr Gil Davis – Program Director Picture: Entrance to Tel Azekah Summary: Macquarie University has joined Tel Aviv University, Heidelberg University and a consortium of other institutions in the joint scientific inquiry of Tel Azekah - one of the great archaeological sites of ancient Israel. The project is designed to integrate archaeological fieldwork and historical knowledge derived from the Bible and inscriptions. It will shed light on this important fortress city in the Judahite Lowland Region (Shephelah) in the second and first millennia BCE. In July-August, 2012, the team of students from Macquarie University travelled to Israel to participate in the opening season of excavations. They were led by Andrew Pleffer (doctoral candidate and Area Assistant Supervisor on the excavation staff team), doctoral candidate Gareth Wearne, masters candidate Catrina Henderson, honours 1 Ancient History Faculty of Arts MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 (0) 2 9850 8833 Fax +61 (0) 2 9850 8240 Email [email protected] student Lydia Gore-Jones, and undergraduate students Blake Wassell, Peter Dean, Naomi Bouskila, Rachael Downey, Anna Krautbauer, Natasha Langley, Naomi Simmons, Alexandra Starling, Alexandra Wrathall, and Matthew Williams. Volunteers Dr David and Jill Saffron also participated. The 2012 season was an amazing success with many rare and important finds. The Macquarie students were highly praised by the Directors of the excavation for their dedication, enthusiasm, and hard work. Cooperating with a diverse team of volunteers from a range of ages and backgrounds, they learnt cutting-edge excavation techniques and artifact preservation. While participating in the discovery of the past, they also learnt about the cultural heritage of Israel through academic lectures and tours to important cultural and archaeological sites. Macquarie University will continue to play a key role as the excavation and its related projects develop in the seasons to come. Picture: Tel Azekah - a looming presence on the horizon 2 Ancient History Faculty of Arts MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 (0) 2 9850 8833 Fax +61 (0) 2 9850 8240 Email [email protected] The importance of the site and why we are participating: Tel Azekah was a strategically and politically important city in the Shephelah region. It was situated on the cross-roads of international trade routes, and on the southern border of Judah. The Shephelah region was the ‘breadbasket’ of the Levantine coast and control of it was essential for power and economic growth throughout the ages. Azekah was primarily the border city which guarded the entrance to the Elah valley and the western Hill regions. Results from the excavation will contribute immensely to our understanding of the entire Shephelah region which has been hotly-disputed in recent scholarship. Preliminary surveys revealed that Azekah was occupied from the Early Bronze Age (3300-2100 BCE) through to the Ottoman period (1516-1917CE). The largest settlement periods were during the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BCE) when Canaan was frequently dominated by the Egyptian New Kingdom, and during the Iron Age II (1000-586 BCE) when it was an important regional centre for the Kingdom of Judah. During the latter period, Azekah was the border fortress between Philistine and Judean territories, guarding the entrance to the Elah valley. Location map kindly provided by Prof Oded Lipschits 3 Ancient History Faculty of Arts MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 (0) 2 9850 8833 Fax +61 (0) 2 9850 8240 Email [email protected] Azekah features in many ancient literary sources, providing us with interesting historical data and cross references from different cultures. In the Bible, it is mentioned as: the fabled site of the battle between David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17); a fortified city in the city list of King Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 11); the inheritance of Judah (Joshua 15); and as the last remaining fortified city of Judah as the King of Babylon assaulted Jerusalem (Jeremiah 34). In the ‘Azekah inscription', it is mentioned as a politically and strategically important site for the Assyrian King Sennacherib in his control of the region. A collection of letters found at the nearby site of Lachish contains an anguished Judean report that the signal-fires of Azekah can no longer be seen, implying that the city has fallen (most likely to Sennacherib during his invasion of Judah in 701 BCE). The Azekah excavations will contribute to our understanding of the region, its border zones and periphery settlements, trade and economy, strategic development, history and politics, as well as informing current debates about detecting ethnicity in material culture. Macquarie University is dedicated to excellence in research, teaching and global citizenship; the Azekah project is important for developing and promoting this vision. Students learn excavation techniques and theory in the field, and are introduced to Israeli culture through organised tours and academic lectures by world experts. It is a launch-pad for future Macquarie University projects that will broaden students' cultural and historical knowledge, and promote academically rigorous understanding of Israel’s history in its Near Eastern context. The university has agreed to undertake collaborative research with Tel Aviv University, and the Excavation Director Professor Oded Lipschits is co-supervising Andrew Pleffer's doctoral dissertation. Tel Aviv University has provisionally accepted one of the Macquarie excavation team into its world-renowned international Masters Program and offered him a study grant. We expect he will be the first of many. What we did in 2012: Over 120 participants from 16 institutions around the globe attended the excavation, making it one of Israel's largest and most international excavation projects. With so many volunteers, the staff did extremely well to keep the excavations at the 4 Ancient History Faculty of Arts MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 (0) 2 9850 8833 Fax +61 (0) 2 9850 8240 Email [email protected] highest professional standard, with the season's results providing proof of the hard work. Six areas were opened across the Tel: two on the southern slope; one on the western slope; one on the eastern slope; and two on the top. This was done to gain an overall picture of the site, and to answer specific questions generated by earlier geophysical and trial surveys, and analysis of surface finds. Australian students participated in each area. - We opened the first area on the southern side of the Tel believing this to have been the most likely approach to the city in ancient times. We hoped to find evidence of a city gate or defences. - We opened the second southern section on the flat-terraced area below the slope to better understand the terrace feature at the bottom of the slope, which we thought was built to support a lower city. Ground Penetrating Radar Surveys had shown many architectural features below the surface and we suspected it would be well-preserved. (Andrew Pleffer assisted in the supervision of this trench). - We excavated on the steep western slope in order to gain a better understanding of the chronology of the site and its periods of habitation by cutting through the stratigraphical layers. The slope also had strategic importance because it faced away from the Elah valley towards the coast and, in the Judahite periods, the enemy territory of Philistia with its chief city of Gath (known as Tel Es-Safi in modern times) clearly visible below. - For similar reasons, we opened the eastern slope which faced towards the Elah valley and, during different periods, would have overlooked and guarded the road to Jerusalem. Surveys revealed architectural features here and, possibly a fortified tower at the base of the slope. - Finally, we opened two areas on the top of the Tel which had been partially excavated more than a hundred years ago in the only previous exploration of the site by Bliss and Macalister in 1898/9. This was the first excavation done in Israel and used very different techniques to modern projects. We suspected the top of the Tel would have been significantly degraded in the earlier excavation, but the field diaries of the two directors revealed that much might be untouched. The sections we opened were an attempt to isolate undisturbed areas for more careful analysis. 5 Ancient History Faculty of Arts MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 (0) 2 9850 8833 Fax +61 (0) 2 9850 8240 Email [email protected] What we found: The results of this season were astounding and moved Azekah into the league of great archaeological sites in Israel. Apart from the many amazing individual finds, we were also able at this early stage to provide preliminary answers to many of our questions (although some of this interpretation may change as area summaries and data collation are processed). The top of the Tel had the most unexpected and impressive results as both areas revealed rooms full of complete jars, some with contents still in them. The rooms and their jars probably date to three different periods: Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Hellenistic-Persian. The extent of preservation was impressive, and the collection of jars provided us with a huge corpus of pottery to study and publish, contributing to our understanding of pottery types, dating and function. But, as if to bring the team down to earth after such impressive discoveries, they realised that in one section of the square they were excavating a soldiers' latrine from 40 years ago.