Gath of the Philistines

Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske

Chapter 2 begins a series of case studies that are devoted to exploring what knowledge was drawn on by the biblical scribes to develop stories about the early Iron Age period. This chapter’s investigation is devoted to the Philistine city of Gath, one of the largest cities of its time and a site that was destroyed ca. 830 BCE. Significant about Gath, consequently, is that it flourished as an inhabited location before the emergence of a mature Hebrew prose writing tradition, meaning that the information recounted about the city was predicated primarily on older cultural memories of the location. Comparing the biblical references to the site with Gath’s archaeological remains reveals moments of resonance between these stories and the material culture unearthed from the location. Accordingly, what comes to light through this chapter’s analysis is one mode of remembering that informed the creation of these biblical stories: that of resilience.

Author(s):  
YU. V. BOLTRIK ◽  
E. E. FIALKO

This chapter focuses on Trakhtemirov, one of the most important ancient settlements of the Early Iron Age in the Ukraine. During the ancient period, the trade routes and caravans met at Trakhtemirov which was situated over the three crossing points of the Dneiper. Its location on the steep heights assured residents of Trakhtemirov security of settlement. On three sides it was protected by the course of the Dnieper while on the other side it was defended by the plateau of the pre-Dneiper elevation. The ancient Trakhtemirov city is located around 100 km below Kiev, on a peninsula which is jutted into the river from the west. Trakhtemirov in the Early Iron Age was important as it was the site of the Cossack capital of Ukraine. It was also the site of the most prestigious artefacts of the Scythian period and a site for various items of jewellery, tools and weaponry. The abundance of artefacts in Trakhtemirov suggests that the city is a central place among the scattered sites of the middle course of the Dneiper.


1940 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-244
Author(s):  
Frederick G. Gurney ◽  
C. F. C. Hawkes ◽  
A. J. E. Cave

The village of Egginton (now officially spelt Eggington to distinguish it from Egginton in Derbyshire) lies some three miles east of Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire. By the courtesy of the former owner of the manor, Mr. Harry Sear, and more lately by that of his son, Mr. Gains Sear, I have for some years been able to watch the more or less incidental disclosure of archaeological remains in the excavation of sand on a site near Egginton Manor Farm. This site, where the large Sand Pit is marked on the map, 1 fig. (after 6-in. O.S. Beds. XXVIII SE.), lies upon the top of the Gault hill which rises along the north side of the village. The summit is here just above the 400-ft. contour-line, and the Gault has a thick capping of glacial sand, which dies out westward within about 200 yards, but extends for some distance to the east. This sand consists of redeposited and current-bedded material, derived mainly from the escarpment of the Lower Greensand two miles or so to the north, but of course including many stones and fossils from the Gault of the intervening valley. The bed has been superficially worked from medieval times, no doubt chiefly for building purposes, but it is only of recent years that it has been systematically and deeply dug.


1961 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 20-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Ward-Perkins

The roads and gates described in the previous section are of very varied dates, and many of them were in use over a long period. They have been described first because they constitute the essential framework for any serious topographical study of Veii. Within this framework the city developed, and in this and the following sections will be found described, period by period, the evidence for that development, from the first establishment of Veii in Villanovan times down to its final abandonment in late antiquity.Whatever the precise relationship of the Villanovan to the succeeding phases of the Early Iron Age in central Italy in terms of politics, race or language, it is abundantly clear that it was within the Villanovan period that the main lines of the social and topographical framework of historical Etruria first took shape. Veii is no exception. Apart from sporadic material that may have been dropped by Neolithic or Bronze Age hunters, there is nothing from the Ager Veientanus to suggest that it was the scene of any substantial settlement before the occupation of Veii itself by groups of Early Iron Age farmers, a part of whose material equipment relates them unequivocally to the Villanovan peoples of coastal and central Etruria.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske

Over the past twenty years our understanding of Philistine Gath's history (Tell es-Safl) has been transformed by what has been revealed through the site's early Iron Age remains. But what has received much less attention is the effect these ruins have on how we read references to the location within the Hebrew Bible. The intent of this study is to draw on the archaeological evidence produced from Tell es-Safl as an interpretive lens by which to consider the biblical portrayal of the site rendered in the book of Samuel, where the material traces of more amicable associations between Gath and highland populations invite us to reconsider the city's depiction in this ancient literary work.


Author(s):  
Conor P. Trainor

The remains of an exceptionally well-preserved Hellenistic wine press were uncovered during a rescue excavation at Knossos in 1977. The architecture, stratigraphy and faunal remains from this campaign were published in BSA 89 (1994) by J. Carington Smith (the excavator) and S. Wall. The artefact assemblages from this excavation, however, have remained unstudied and unpublished until now. The current article presents the artefact assemblages from the wine press excavation and considers them within their urban context at Knossos. The key findings from this excavation relate to the Late Hellenistic wine press and its associated material, which enables us to consider both the ancient winemaking process at Knossos and the economic topography of the city in the decades around the Roman conquest of the island in 67 bc. In addition to the Late Hellenistic phase, material of Minoan, Early Iron Age–Early Archaic, earlier Hellenistic and Early Roman dates is also presented and discussed.


Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (369) ◽  
pp. 811-813
Author(s):  
Adil Hashim Ali

Located in the Fertile Crescent and at the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the city of Basra is steeped in history. Close to the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the territory of modern Iraq was occupied variously by Achaemenids and Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sassanids, before the arrival of Islam in the early middle ages. In more recent history, the city's strategic position near the Gulf coast has made Basra a site of contestation and conflict. This exposure to so many different cultures and civilisations has contributed to the rich identity of Basra, a wealth of history that demands a cultural museum able to present all of the historical periods together in one place. The original Basra Museum was looted and destroyed in 1991, during the first Gulf War. The destruction and loss of so much of Iraq's history and material culture prompted official collaboration to build a new museum that would represent the city of Basrah and showcase its significance in the history of Iraq. The culmination of an eight-year collaborative project between the Iraq Ministry of Culture, the State Board of Antiquities and the Friends of Basrah Museum, the new museum was opened initially in September 2016. Already established as a cultural landmark in the city, with up to 200 visitors a day and rising, the museum was officially opened on 20 March 2019. The author was fortunate to be present for this event and able to explore the new galleries (Figure 1).


2015 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Pioske

In den wenigen Jahren seitdem Ausgrabungen in Khirbet Qeiyafa durchgeführt wurden, haben sich schon einige wichtige Studien mit seiner beeindruckenden Hinterlassenschaft aus der frühen Eisenzeit beschäftigt. Was bislang unberücksichtigt blieb, sind die Folgerungen der Befunde für die Schriftkultur, die für das Bild dieser Periode in der Hebräischen Bibel verantwortlich ist. Die Absicht dieser Studie besteht darin, das literarische Schicksal von Khirbet Qeiyafa mit dem des frühen und späten eisenzeitlichen Jerusalem zu vergleichen und zu ermitteln, was das Nichtvorkommen bzw. Vorkommen dieser Standorte in der Hebräischen Bibel über die Quellen der biblischen Verfasser aussagt, über die sie im 11. und 10. Jh. v. Chr. verfügten. Zugleich wird gefragt, welchen Beitrag Ort und Erinnerung bei der Überlieferung dieser Geschichten im antiken Israel und Juda hatten.In the few short years since excavations were first carried out at Khirbet Qeiyafa a number of important studies have been devoted to its impressive early Iron Age remains. Yet what has not been pursued within these discussions are the implications of the settlement’s material culture for our understanding of the scribal cultures responsible for the portrayal of this time period in the Hebrew Bible. In comparing the literary fate of Khirbet Qeiyafa with that of the contemporaneous site of late Iron I/early Iron IIA Jerusalem, the intent of this study is to examine what the absence and presence of these two sites in the Hebrew Bible indicates about the sources biblical scribes possessed about the 11th–10th centuries BCE, and how place and memory contributed to the transmission of these stories over time in ancient Israel and Judah.Dans les quelques années qui ont suivi les fouilles à Khirbet Qeiyafa, un bon nombre d’études conséquentes ont été consacrées à ses impressionnants vestiges du début de l’âge de Fer. Cependant, ce qui n’a pas été développé dans ces discussions, ce sont les implications de la culture matérielle de ce site pour notre compréhension milieux de scribes responsables de la description de cette période dans la Bible hébraïque. En comparant le destin littéraire de Khirbet Qeiyafa avec celui de Jérusalem, site contemporain de la fin du Fer I et du début du Fer IIA, cette étude cherche à examiner ce que la présence et l’absence de ces deux sites dans la Bible hébraïque indiquent au sujet des sources que les scribes bibliques possédaient sur les 11–10


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F Osborne

Monuments have been a staple of archaeology since the beginning of the discipline and have been used as case-studies for a diverse range of topics. In recent years, monuments have been considered particularly often in studies of social memory. By materializing memorial ambitions, however, the creation of monuments provides a venue for collective memories to be challenged. Despite their outward appearance of strength and permanence, monuments additionally render the memory of their creators vulnerable and open to contestation. In particular, the practice of counter-monumentality, or active and deliberate interventions in traditional monuments, illustrates how the erection of monuments exposes the inherent fragility of memory. Examples from the present and the past demonstrate these points: a statue of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in Baltimore, Maryland, and a corpus of monumental statues from southeastern Anatolian and northern Syria during the Iron Age.


2000 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary M. Voigt ◽  
Robert C. Henrickson

A brief history of archaeological research at Gordion Piecing together documentary sources from areas to the east and west of Anatolia, historians agree that in the eighth century BC, central Anatolia was dominated by people who spoke an Indo-European language, Phrygian (Mellink 1991: 621; Muscarella 1995: 92 with refs). From historical sources we also know the location of the Phrygians' capital, Gordion: Quintus Curtius (Hist Alex III.1–2) states that the city lay on the Sangarios River ‘equally distant from the Pontic and Cilician Seas’. Using this description, Gustav and Augustus Körte travelled across Turkey more than a century ago looking for the physical remains of Gordion and Phrygia. They eventually focused on a mound lying adjacent to the Sangarios or modern Sakarya. The mound, now called Yassıhöyük, is large relative to others in the region, and lies in the proper geographical setting for ancient Gordion; a series of artificial mounds or tumuli scattered across nearby slopes provides additional evidence of the settlement's importance.


1924 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Cyril Fox

It is remarkable that so few attempts have been made to illustrate continuity of settlement on a given site through successive culture phases in East Anglia. No more valuable study could be undertaken by any field archæologist, than the careful examination of successive deposits on such a site. Especially useful would be the analysis of the transitional phases, showing the extent to which the art and craft-workers of one period influenced the technique and style of their successors and descendants; such a study should also throw light on the material, social and economic effects on the peasantry of the district of invasion and conquest, an evil from which East Anglia seems to have suffered every 500 years or so from about 1000 B.C. onwards. I cannot offer you, first hand, such a study; but it may be worth while, as an approach to the ideal, to illustrate a collection of objects from a settlement which seems to have been occupied during three (or four) culture phases for a total period of some 2,000 years.


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