Uri Davidovich

Hebrew University of Jerusalem | HUJI · Institute of Archaeology

The cereal grass barley was domesticated about 0,000 years before the present in the Fertile Crescent and became a founder crop of Neolithic agriculture. Here we report the genome sequences of five 6,000-year-old barley grains excavated at a cave in the Judean Desert close to the Dead Sea. Comparison to whole-exome sequence data from a diversity pa...

In the deepest section of a large complex cave in the northern Negev desert, Israel, a bi-conical lead object was found logged onto a wooden shaft. Associated material remains and radiocarbon dating of the shaft place the object within the Late Chalcolithic period, at the late 5th millennium BCE. Based on chemical and lead isotope analysis, we show...

Enclosures, single large curvilinear structures, constitute ubiquitous relics of past human societies in marginal environments. Many enclosures suffer from severe scarcity of related artefactual and ecofactual remains, allowing only tentative assessments of their date and function. A case in point comes from the Judean Desert, Southern Levant, wher...

This paper reviews earlier suggestions regarding the date and nature of the Late Chalcolithic (Ghassulian) presence in hardly-accessible caves of the Judean Desert cliffs, and their possible relations to the end of the Ghassulian Culture and the Chalcolithic-Early Bronze transition. In addition, it probes into the material remains and radiometric e...

Dating terraces, the most prominent feature of the agricultural landscape in many parts of the world, is a problem for archaeologists. This study presents an interdisciplinary approach that combines archaeological survey and excavations with direct sediment dating of terrace fill using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL). The study focuses on R...

Barley is an old crop with a complex history. Its evolution and the molecular basis of domestication have been intensely studied. This research has ruled out a single origin of the crop and motivated a model of mosaic genomics ancestry. As more and better genome sequences have become available, this concept can be refined: where do the building blo...

The oasis of En-Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, served during the late Iron Age as a regional hub for the Judahite activity in the Judean Desert. The main Iron Age site in En-Gedi is Tel Goren, a small mound in the oasis plain, excavated in the 1960s by Benjamin Mazar and Immanuel Dunayevsky. The exposed Iron Age remains, attributed to...

The impact of human-driven hunting on large carnivores has been an important factor in altering recent and sub-recent ecosystems. However, comprehending this vital interaction in ancient times is compromised by the scarcity of carnivore remains in archaeological records. To address this, we examined historical human carnivore hunting dynamics in th...

The global distribution of footpaths and their inferred antiquity implies that they are widespread spatial and temporal anthropogenic landscape units. Arid environments are of special interest for investigating historically used footpaths, as older routes may preserve better due to minimal modern impact and slower pedogenic processes. Here we exami...

Two Judean Desert sites excavated in the early 1960s—the En Gedi Shrine and the Cave of the Treasure in Nahal Mishmar—assumed a prominent role in the scholarly discourse of Late Chalcolithic southern Levant. In 1971, David Ussishkin formulated what became a prevailing convention that linked the two sites, suggesting that the Nahal Mishmar hoard was...

This article discusses the results of the excavations conducted in the Iron II site near the En-Gedi Spring in 1961–1962 and 2019. The site, consisting of a prominent stone platform documented as early as the 19th century and other recently discovered structural remains, is interpreted as a Judahite outpost built in a strategic location within the...

The role of marginal areas in the dynamic relations between mobile and sedentary groups in Early Bronze Age Levant is examined through the site cluster of Mitzpe Shalem. This morphologically anomalous cluster was discovered and excavated more than 50 years ago, yet its function has not been subject to rigorous archaeological analysis. A holistic re...

The monastic practice of Lenten retreats in the desert is attested in ancient Palestine by the early fifth century. However, within the large archaeological corpus of desert monasticism, sites that can be positively identified as Lenten hermitages were previously unattested. The hermitage discovered during the recent survey of the Dead Sea Escarpme...

https://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=26158&mag_id=134

In recent years, a well-preserved Roman-period road network was explored in southern Moab, descending the steep topographic gradient from the Moabite plateau to the south-eastern Dead Sea region. This network comprises three paved roads—Kathrabba, Kuniyeh and Zoar Ascents—installed according to Roman principles of road construction, sharing feature...

The present study reports a series of interdisciplinary archaeometrical analyses of objects found in the Christmas Cave, which was discovered by John Allegro and his team in 1960 on the West Bank of the Dead Sea and assumed to be inhabited only in the Chalcolithic era and by Jewish refugees of the second century CE, at the end of the Bar Kokhba Rev...

The Te’omim cave is situated on the western edge of the Jerusalem Hills. The cave consists of the main hall (approximately 50×70 meters with a maximum height of about 10 meters). Several passages lead from the main hall to other small chambers and systems of crevices. The cave detailed description is presented. The Te’omim cave has been researched...

Long temporal records of Holocene wild mammal communities are essential to examine the role of human impacts and climatic fluctuations in the configuration of modern ecosystems. We show that such records can be assembled through extensive radiocarbon dating of faunal remains obtained from biogenic cave deposits. We dated 110 mammalian remains from...

https://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_eng.aspx?print=all&id=26035&mag_id=133

Significance The extent and timing of paleoenvironmental connections between Africa and Eurasia during the last glacial and interglacial periods are key issues in relation to early dispersals of Homo sapiens out of Africa. However, direct evidence of synchronous faunal dispersals is sparse. We report the discovery near the Dead Sea of subfossils be...

The Early Bronze Age (ca. 3700–2500 b.c.) was an era of wide-ranging changes in the Southern and Central Levant, commonly interpreted in the context of the advent of urban structures in this region. Key elements in regional narratives of urbanization are large fortified sites viewed as regional centers, whose local history is often perceived as a p...

Investigating historical anthropogenic impacts on faunal communities is key to understanding present patterns of biodiversity and holds important implications for conservation biology. While several studies have demonstrated the human role in the extinction of large herbivores, effective methods to study human interference on large carnivores in th...

A unique bone object was recently found in Cave 32 in Wadi Seiyal (Nahal Ze’elim) in the Judean Desert region of Israel. It was radiometrically and typologically dated to the Chalcolithic period. The object has a series of three slots on each side, flanking a central elevated area in which a perforation was shaped. Thanks to the extremely dry and r...

In November and December 2014, an excavation was conducted in a cave in Nahal Hever (Permit No. A-7220; map ref. 231605/593519), following an antiquities robbery. The excavation, undertaken on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, was directed by E. Klein (photography and drafting) with A. Ganor of the IAA and U. Davidovich from the Hebrew Un...

Tel Reḥov, identified with Reḥob, was one of the largest Canaanite cities in the southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (15th–13th centuries b.c.e.). Unlike many other Canaanite settlements, the city was founded in the 15th century after a hiatus beginning in Early Bronze Age III. In this article, four major Late Bronze Age occupation strata ar...

Recent environmental processes are studied in ʻA’rak Naʻasane Cave at the northern Judean Desert, Israel. The outer zone of the cave is heavily influenced by the outside environment through a large entrance, facilitating entry of air flow, fauna and humans, with minor cave-forming modifications. Conversely, the inner cave sustains humid and warm co...

The recent success in dating dry farming terraces by Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) enables scholars to evaluate for the first time construction events of terraces in their true social and economic context. Presented here are 36 new ages from two study areas located along the Upper Soreq catchment, highlands of Jerusalem, Israel. Field ope...

The Late Chalcolithic of the southern Levant (ca. 4500–3800 b.c.e.) is known for its extensive use of the subterranean sphere for mortuary practices. Numerous natural and hewn caves, constituting formal extramural cemeteries, were used as secondary burial localities for multiple individuals, refecting and reaffirming social order and/or communal id...

Excavations in the Jordan Valley at the Chalcolithic site Fazael 7, situated about 20 km north of Jericho, and part of the large Chalcolithic cluster of sites on the northern bank of Wadi Fazael, have revealed a new and unknown settlement with unusual architecture, dated to the later phases of the Chalcolithic period. Parts of a residential complex...

We are grateful to Ben-Yosef et al . (above) for their thorough critical evaluation of our recent paper. We identified a group of modified wooden shafts originating in two large complex caves with Late Chalcolithic (Ghassulian) burials in the Negev Desert (Israel) as the earliest Levantine wooden spinning implements (Langgut et al . 2016). Their de...

Archaeological terraces are a prominent feature of the agricultural sphere in the hilly landscape throughout the Mediterranean and dating of these simply built features is of utmost importance. Excavations and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of the soil fill of terraces were carried out on Mt. Eitan, the Judea Highlands, Israel (Gado...

This paper discusses common methodological problems related to multi-period sites in highland regions – the identification of the boundaries of ancient settlements, and the estimation of their size and intensity of occupation during different periods. We tackle these obstacles using an integrated approach based on two complementary sources of data:...

A unique set of circumstances has preserved a group of rare wooden artefacts deep within burial caves in the southern Levant. Identified as spindles and distaffs, they are fashioned from tamarisk wood and date to the Late Chalcolithic period. Analysis suggests that these implements were used to spin flax fibres, and they provide the earliest eviden...

Here we present the first results of a new interdisciplinary research project entitled “The Formation of Terraced Landscapes in the Judean Highlands, Israel”. The research traces the socio-economic and historical contexts in which terraces were constructed in the rural periphery of Jerusalem, a thriving political, economic and religious center for...

The archaeological Tell Ateret (North Israel), constructed on the active Dead Sea Fault, was intermittently settled for over six millennia. Structures on the Tell that have been offset by earthquake ruptures, provide a remarkable record of alternating construction and slip. We excavated the site in order to resolve the geometry and to time the eart...

A small ground stone tool assemblage was among the finds unearthed during the 1960–1962 excavations at the Cave of the Treasure in Naḥal Mishmar, ascribed by the cave's excavator, Pesach Bar-Adon, to the Chalcolithic period. Although the ground stone components were partially presented in the final publication, a comprehensive account of the finds...

The main objective of the present research is to explore patterns of human activity in the Judean desert, from the beginning of the sixth millennium BCE to the first half of the first millennium BCE, as reflecting social, economic, and historical processes in wider cultural contexts, while examining trends of continuity and change over the longue d...

Between 2007 and 2012, a Hebrew University expedition explored the lower course of Nahal Arbel (Wadi al-Hamam), a perennial stream in the northeastern Lower Galilee. The expedition conducted five excavation seasons at the Roman village-site of Khirbat Wadi Hamam (KWH) and three excavation seasons at the Roman fortification on the plateau of Har Nit...

Human occupation of caves located within high sheer cliffs in the remote arid region of the Judean Desert forms a distinct regional phenomenon of the Ghassulian cultural sphere during the Late Chalcolithic period of the Southern Levant. Over the last sixty years scholars have debated the nature of this phenomenon, suggesting that the caves were use...

The Late Chalcolithic (Ghassulian) is the only period in the 6th–4th millennia chronological sequence that has been discussed in relation to the Judean Desert caves since the discovery of proto-historic remains there some 60 years ago. The notion that everything that is proto-historic in the Judean Desert is Chalcolithic was influenced by the major...