Yosef Garfinkel

Hebrew University of Jerusalem | HUJI · Institute of Archaeology

A model of five major chronological phases is suggested for the history of human dance. These phases did not replace one another, but accumulated as successive layers. The earliest phase is associated with courtship, thus explaining the potent role of dance in sexual desire and seduction. The second phase is associated with the appearance of modern...

Late Chalcolithic finds were unearthed at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a site overlooking the Valley of Elah in Israel’s Judean Shephelah. The small assemblage includes pottery, flint, a fenestrated basalt chalice, a hematite mace head, and a limestone seal. These discoveries, as well as fresh data from various neighboring sites, permit us to add this region t...

The City of Hazor is one of the most significant archaeological sites from the biblical period in Israel. Studies on destruction have received much attention in archaeology in recent years. Previous excavations in Hazor have suggested a major conflagration event that destroyed the entire tell site at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The present stud...

From the Upper Palaeolithic to the present, birds constituted a marginal motif in the extensive corpus of human artistic expression. Only one episode of human history stands out as an exception: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A of the Near East (c. 9800–8700 BC). During this time, numerous bird representations occur at many sites across the region: Gilg...

In a recent article published in this journal (Finkelstein 2020, PEQ 152, 85–93), newly published data on Level V at Tel Lachish was criticized. This new data indicates that Level V was a fortified city and that radiometric dating places its construction in the last quarter of the 10th century BCE. This date is in accordance with the biblical tradit...

The earliest fortified sites in the kingdom of Judah in the early 10th century BCE feature a casemate city wall lined with an abutting belt of houses, which incorporate the casemates as rear rooms. This urban plan is clearly recognized in the sites of Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tell en-Naṣbeh, Khirbet ed-Dawwara, and, as discussed in detail, Beth Shemesh. Re...

Burnt structures are well known archaeologically throughout the Near East. This study proposes an integrated interpretational framework for reconstructing fires in mud-brick structures using macro- and micro-archaeological types of evidence employing well-established tools. While previous research often utilized either macroscopic field evidence or...

The Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts describe Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns to the Southern Levant during the 10th to sixth centuries BCE. Indeed, many destruction layers dated to this period have been unearthed in archaeological excavations. Several of these layers are securely linked to specific c...

An inscription in early Canaanite script from Lachish, incised on an ivory comb, is presented. The 17 letters, in early pictographic style, form seven words expressing a plea against lice.

Cave 120 and three adjacent caves at Tel Lachish in southern Israel produced the largest concentration of human crania ever unearthed in the Near East. The conventional interpretation associates this deposit with primary burials of victims of the city’s destruction by King Sennacherib of Assyria in 701 BC. Taking into consideration attitudes to hum...

This study provides one of the earliest examples of fruit tree cultivation worldwide, demonstrating that olive ( Olea europaea ) and fig ( Ficus carica ) horticulture was practiced as early as 7000 years ago in the Central Jordan Valley, Israel. It is based on the anatomical identification of a charcoal assemblage recovered from the Chalcolithic (7...

This research examines the Assyrian siege ramp at Lachish, the only such known from the ancient Near East and the oldest in the world. The combination of different sources (texts, iconography and archaeology) enables us to reconstruct how this monumental war installation was erected. We used photogrammetric analysis, facilitated through small Unman...

The early 10th-century BCE pottery assemblage from Khirbet al-Ra‘I is presented. The assemblage, which came from a few rooms that were suddenly destroyed, offers a large number of complete profiles. This is the second largest pottery assemblage, after that of Khirbet Qeiyafa, of this poorly known ceramic phase.

During the Fourth Expedition to Tel Lachish in the years 2014-2017 a series of fortifications was uncovered in Area CC, in the center of the northern edge of the mound. In addition to the previously known city walls of Levels I–IV, the expedition discovered a new city wall, built in Level V and dated to the late 10th and the first half of the 9th c...

In the Iron Age II, during the 10th to 6th centuries BCE, the local rulers of the Levant developed an elite style of architecture. The aim of this study is to define this phenomenon, summarize the data, and evaluate the appearance and distribution in the Levant of this architectural style. The six prominent characteristics of the royal style are re...

This introduction presents a context for the collection of 15 articles published in the first volume of the new journal: Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology. These publications are the outcome of the conference on state formation processes in the 10th century BCE Levant

This article describes and discusses a stamped sealing found at Middle Chalcolithic Tel Tsaf (5th millennium BCE). This is the earliest stamped sealing found in the southern Levant. The article describes the object, as well as its petrographic composition, find-spot and parallels. Furthermore, the artefact’s implications for the rise of administrat...

A preliminary account in Hebrew on the 2013-2017 excavation seasons

The name Ziklag appears 15 times in the Hebrew Bible, in two different types of documents: city lists and historical narratives. In the narrative it is associated with only one person: David. We suggest three criteria for the identification of biblical Ziklag: the name, the history of the place and its geography. Eleven different suggestions had be...

From 2015-2019 excavations were conducted at the site of Khirbet al-Ra'i, in the Judean Shephelah 4 km west of Lachish. Remains from the 12th-10th centuries BCE have been uncovered. In the late 12th and 11th centuries BCE the site appears to be the main site in the region after the fall of Canaanite Lachish. In the early 10th century it was a small...

The new results concerning Lachish fortification. A new city wall for Level V, and dating the "Iron Age revetment" to the Middle Bronze Age

A detailed account of the flint from Tel Tsaf.

A final excavation report to Ziqim, a pottery Neolithic site in the southern costal plain of Israel

This article presents a Proto-Canaanite inscription written in ink on a jug. It was unearthed in 2019 at Khirbet al-Ra'i, located 4 km west of Tel Lachish, in a level dated to the late twelfth or early eleventh century BCE. Only part of the inscription had survived, with five letters indicating the personal name Yrb'l (Jerubba'al). This name also a...

Ancient Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) in southern Israel is a key site for understanding theCanaanite cultures of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages and the Kingdom of Judah in theIron Age of the Levant. It has been intensively excavated since 1932 by a number of enti-ties. This article presents the excavation results by the Fourth Expedition to Lachish in...

The Parokhet, or sacred curtain, was an important item of cultic paraphernalia in the ancient Near East. It is known from the Sumerian and Akkadian texts, the biblical tradition, the Second Temple in Jerusalem, Greek temples, and synagogues of the Roman and Byzantine eras, and is still in use today. We suggest that such a sacred curtain is depicted...

Despite the investigation of hundreds of ancient temples across the Near East, life-sized statues of divine figures are rare and none have been found in the Canaanite Levant. In this article, contextual and iconographic analyses are used to argue for the interpretation of objects from Canaanite temples at Tel Lachish and Hazor, Israel, as sceptres...

In this study, the shape of socketed bronze arrowheads is analysed and expressed as a series of mathematical trends which are then compared to chemical and lead isotope composition, as well as to the categorization of traditional non-computerized typology. It is shown that while traditional typology has statistical validation, additional important...

Hundreds of epigraphic finds have been uncovered in excavations conducted in the ancient Kingdom of Judah, located in the south Levant and dated to the Iron Age (c.1000–586 BCE). These finds are usually studied from the linguistic and historical points of view, in a basic, descriptive manner. Here we present a new approach, analysing aspects relati...

During the recent excavations at Tel Lachish a previously unknown Canaanite temple of the 12th century BCE was uncovered in the north-eastern corner of the mound. This article describes its possible place in the urban fabric of the city, the plan of the temple and its parallels, and some of the more special finds that were found in it. Based on the...

A large metal assemblage was uncovered at the late 11th–early 10th century b.c.e. fortified town of Khirbet Qeiyafa. At this early date, iron was already used rather extensively for utilitarian purposes at the site, though bronze was not yet restricted to decorative use. The metal assemblage from Khirbet Qeiyafa, therefore, provides a rare glimpse...

The article presents four decorated epigraphic bullae unearthed in the Level III destruction at Lachish during the 2014 season, focusing on the epigraphic, iconographic, and historical aspects of the seal impressions. © 2019 American Schools of Oriental Research. 0003-097X/2019/381-003$10.00. All rights reserved.

When and where the process of state formation took place in the biblical kingdom of Judah is heavily debated. Our regional project in the southwestern part of Judah, carried out from 2007 to the present, includes the excavation of three Iron Age sites: Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tel Lachish, and Khirbet al-Ra’i. New cultural horizons and new fortification sy...

1 Kings preserves a long and detailed description of the construction of a temple and palace in Jerusalem by King Solomon in the 10th century BCE. Previous generations of scholars accepted this description as an authentic account. Accordingly, much literature on this text and the relevant archeological discoveries has accumulated. Since the 1980s,...

Every day millions of people are crossing the threshold of buildings, like Notre-Dame in Paris and the British Museum in London - that are decorated with recessed doorways. None of them is likely to be aware that this style of decoration has been continuously employed for 6,500 years in temples, royal palaces, tombs, synagogues, churches, mosques a...

The origins of religion and ritual in humans have been the focus of centuries of thought in archaeology, anthropology, theology, evolutionary psychology and more. Play and ritual have many aspects in common, and ritual is a key component of the early cult practices that underlie the religious systems of societies in all parts of the world. This boo...

Diana V. Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi (eds): Leadership, Social Memory and Judean Discourse in the Fifth–Second Centuries BCE. (Worlds of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean.) ix, 284 pp. Sheffield: Equinox, 2016. £80. ISBN 978 178179269 8. - Volume 80 Issue 2 - Yosef Garfinkel

The sealing of receptacles and storage facilities is one of the most conspicuous features related to early administration in the protohistoric Near East. It has been known and discussed for decades in the context of the northern Levant and Mesopotamia. Until recently, this phenomenon had not been attested in the southern Levant. However, in this pa...

This is the first book ever written on the site of Socoh, a biblical city in the Valley of Elah. The Socoh Intensive Survey was initiated in 2010 by the Institute of Archaeology, Southern Adventist University, and the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the intent to conduct a large-scale excavation of the site beginning...

The early sixth millennium settlement at Sha'ar Hagolan, in the central Jordan valley, shows evidences for early village planning, including courtyard houses, streets, and a water well, and also a large number of portable symbolic items, notably clay figurines of a corpulent female are dominant. The largest courtyard building in the settlement was...

Update summery of the early 10th century BCE city at Khirbet Qeiyafa.

General Thoughts on Ritual Behaviour Before going into the details of my particular topic, dancing with masks in the proto-historic Near East, I will make a general comment on the main topic of this volume: the importance of play and ritual in religious studies. Definitions of religion, its origin and development and its connection to society and e...

On 10 January 1938, the British archaeologist James Leslie Starkey was murdered on his way from Lachish to Jerusalem. From that time onwards, the murder has been presented as just one more of the insurgency episodes that were so common in those days. There was, however, a conflict at Lachish with the local landowners regarding the excavation of the...

The removal of excavation debris is a major logistic problem for every large-scale archaeological project. In 1886, the Dominican Order of the École Biblique was certainly the first in the southern Levant to use the Decauville light train to remove large amount of debris for the excavations of the Byzantine ruins of the Basilica of St. Etienne in J...

While the studies of Neolithic ceramic assemblages in the Near East have largely focused on the pottery styles and techniques, they have seldom taken the function of ceramic vessels into consideration. Yet, the use of pottery, found in large amounts in the Early Pottery Neolithic settlements, allows us to access to many aspects of daily life of pre...

This article presents three plaque figurines from Level VII (13th century BCE) and one silver pendant from Level VI (1200–1130 BCE), which were uncovered during the renewed excavations at Tel Lachish.

On 10 January 1938, the British archaeologist James Leslie Starkey was murdered on his way from Lachish to Jerusalem. From that time onwards, the murder has been presented as just one more of the insurgency episodes that were so common in those days. There was, however, a conflict at Lachish with the local landowners regarding the excavation of the...

While the studies of Neolithic ceramic assemblages in the Near East have largely focused on the pottery styles and techniques, they have seldom taken the function of ceramic vessels into consideration. Yet, the use of pottery, found in large amounts in the Early Pottery Neolithic settlements, allows us to access to many aspects of daily life of pre...

This article presents three plaque gurines from Level VII (13th century BCE) and one silver pendant from Level VI (1200–1130 BCE), which were uncovered during the renewed excavations at Tel Lachish

In 2007 the name “Khirbet Qeiyafa” was still unknown both to professional archaeologists and to the public. In 2008 Khirbet Qeiyafa became world-famous. This spectacular success is entirely due to the figure of King David, who is so well known from the biblical tradition but is a very elusive figure from the archaeological or historical point of vi...

The book contains an introduction, six chapters and a conclusion. In the introduction we describe the current state of research and the various theories about the beginnings of the Kingdom of Judah. Against this backdrop the contribution of the new finds presented and discussed in the book becomes clear. In Chapter 1 we describe the location of th...

The authors explore aspects of a well uncovered at Tel Tsaf, Israel, dating to the Middle Chalcolithic Period, ca. 4800 cal b.c. The well was uncovered in close proximity to the settlement of Tel Tsaf, shedding light on the hydraulic technology of the community. An exceptionally rich assemblage of complete vessels has been found in situ at the bott...

The article presents a 12th-century b.c. alphabetic inscription unearthed at Lachish, Israel, during the 2014 excavation season.

Seventeen samples of burnt olive pits discovered inside a jar in the destruction layer of the Iron Age city of Khirbet Qeiyafa were analyzed by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating. Of these, four were halved and sent to two different laboratories to minimize laboratory bias. The dating of these samples is ~1000 BC. Khirbet Qeiyaf...

A data set of 18 radiocarbon dates from the domestic quarter and the well at Tel Tsaf provide conclusive evidence for the absolute dating of this Middle Chalcolithic site. Bayesian modeling suggests that the site was occupied in the last quarter of the 6th millennium BC and abandoned in the first quarter of the 5th millennium. The absolute dating o...