Word has come that a number of excavations in the north of Israel have had to be evacuated on safety grounds, owing to the ongoing rocket attacks by Hezbollah. Sites evacuated include Megiddo, Hazor and Tell Dan.
Somewhat belatedly, attention should be given to the announcement of the Official and Unofficial Weblog of the Tell es-Safi / Gath Archaeological Project by dig director Aren Maeir, a well respected colleague…. Definitely worth a read! I agree with Aren: blogging is emerging as a particularly effective way to document and publicise an excavation…
Further to the announcement last Friday week of the exciting discovery of a new (probably non-royal) tomb in the Valley of the Kings (to be designated KV 63), the excavation team from the University of Memphis, Tennessee, has started construction of a new website, KV-63.com, to document the discovery as details emerge.
The front page currently features photographs from the previous week’s media event and includes details for monetary donations towards the team’s efforts (a very worthy cause indeed!)
From Professor Ami Mazar comes news that four (4) new publications regarding the Tel Rehov excavations, radiocarbon dating and Iron Age chronology in the southern Levant are now to be found online (PDF format), having recently been published in the proceedings of the September 2004 Oxford conference on radiocarbon, Levantine archaeology and chronology:
Levy, T.E. & Higham, T., The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating - Archaeology, Text and Science, Equinox, 2005.
*Amihai Mazar, “The Debate over the Chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant - Its History, the Current Situation and a Suggested Resolution”
*Mazar, A., Bruins, H.J., Panitz-Cohen, N. and van der Plicht, J., “Ladder of Time at Tel Rehov: Stratigraphy, Archaeological Context, Pottery and Radiocarbon Dating”
*Van der Plicht, J. and Bruins, H.J., “Quality Control of Groningen 14C Results from Tel Rehov: Repeatability and Intercomparison of Proportional Gas Counting and AMS”
*Bruins, H.J., van der Plicht, J., Mazar, A. Bronk Ramsey, C. and Manning, S. W., “The Groningen Radiocarbon Series from Tel Rehov: OxCal Bayesian computations for the Iron IB-IIA Boundary and the Iron IIA Destruction Events”
Although the last two items are admittedly quite technical, each article makes highly interesting reading. Professor Mazar, the authors and the editors are to be thanked for making these papers, from what was a very stimulating conference indeed, widely available.