Archaeology News Online

An impressively large 2,700-year-old water system was recently exposed at Israel Antiquities Authority excavations near Rosh Ha-Ayin with the help of students majoring in the Education Ministry’s Land of Israel and Archaeology studies. The excavation precedes the construction of a new residential neighborhood initiated by the Ministry of Construction and Housing. Aerial view of the excavation area, with Rosh Ha-Ayin in the background  [Credit: Yitzhak Marmelstein, IAA] According to Gilad Itach, director of excavations for the IAA, “It is difficult not to be impressed by the sight of the immense underground reservoir quarried out so many years ago. In antiquity, rainwater collection and storage was a fundamental necessity. With an annual rainfall of 500 mm, the region’s winter rains would easily have filled the huge reservoir. On its walls, near the entrance, we identified engravings of human figures, crosses, and a vegetal motif that were probably carved by passersby in a later per...

Israeli authorities arrested two antiquities thieves in the West Bank who were attempting to make off with artefacts dating back to the Byzantine era, the IDF’s Civil Administration said on Monday. Columns from a Byzantine-era church confiscated by the Civil Administration from suspected antiquities traffickers  near the West Bank city of Bethlehem on July 10, 2017 [Credit: Times of Israel] A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry agency — which oversees Israeli civilian activity in the West Bank — said that the two Palestinian suspects were arrested between the West Bank city of Bethlehem and the settlement of Tekoa with three columns from a nearby Byzantine church inscribed with pseudo-Greek text in the back of their work truck. The Civil Administration’s archaeological unit said an investigation into the incident has been opened. Deputy head of the Civil Administration’s archaeological unit Benny Har Even said that the recent arrests showed the need for the Civil Administration t...

A  global team of researchers has published the first-ever Wild Emmer wheat genome sequence in Science magazine . Wild Emmer wheat is the original form of nearly all the domesticated wheat in the world, including durum (pasta) and bread wheat. Wild emmer is too low-yielding to be of use to farmers today, but it contains many attractive characteristics that are being used by plant breeders to improve wheat. Wild Emmer wheat [Credit: © Energin.R Technologies 2009 LTD] The study was led by Dr. Assaf Distelfeld of Tel Aviv University's School of Plant Sciences and Food Security and Institute for Cereal Crops Improvement, in collaboration with several dozen scientists from institutions around the world and an Israel-based company, NRGene, which developed the bioinformatics technology that accelerated the research. "This research is a synergistic partnership among public and private entities," said Dr. Daniel Chamovitz, Dean of TAU's George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences,...

A team of specialists and students led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jodi Magness has uncovered additional mosaic scenes in the Late Roman synagogue at Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village in Israel’s Lower Galilee. The new finds provide insight about daily life in the fifth century C.E. and expand the rich repertoire of mosaics already discovered decorating the floors of the building. Huqoq synagogue mosaic: month of Teveth (December-January) with the sign of Capricorn [Credit: Copyright Jim Haberman] Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of religious studies in Carolina’s College of Arts & Sciences, along with Assistant Director Shua Kisilevitz of the Israel Antiquities Authority, focused this seventh season of Huqoq excavations on the southern part of the nave (main hall), where three panels were exposed. A medallion in the center of the uppermost (northern) panel depicts the Greco-Roman sun god Helios in a quadriga (four-horse chariot) surrounded by ...

An impressively large 2,700-year-old water system was recently exposed at Israel Antiquities Authority excavations near Rosh Ha-Ayin with the help of students majoring in the Education Ministry’s Land of Israel and Archaeology studies. The excavation precedes the construction of a new residential neighborhood initiated by the Ministry of Construction and Housing. Aerial view of the excavation area, with Rosh Ha-Ayin in the background  [Credit: Yitzhak Marmelstein, IAA] According to Gilad Itach, director of excavations for the IAA, “It is difficult not to be impressed by the sight of the immense underground reservoir quarried out so many years ago. In antiquity, rainwater collection and storage was a fundamental necessity. With an annual rainfall of 500 mm, the region’s winter rains would easily have filled the huge reservoir. On its walls, near the entrance, we identified engravings of human figures, crosses, and a vegetal motif that were probably carved by passersby in a later per...

Israeli authorities arrested two antiquities thieves in the West Bank who were attempting to make off with artefacts dating back to the Byzantine era, the IDF’s Civil Administration said on Monday. Columns from a Byzantine-era church confiscated by the Civil Administration from suspected antiquities traffickers  near the West Bank city of Bethlehem on July 10, 2017 [Credit: Times of Israel] A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry agency — which oversees Israeli civilian activity in the West Bank — said that the two Palestinian suspects were arrested between the West Bank city of Bethlehem and the settlement of Tekoa with three columns from a nearby Byzantine church inscribed with pseudo-Greek text in the back of their work truck. The Civil Administration’s archaeological unit said an investigation into the incident has been opened. Deputy head of the Civil Administration’s archaeological unit Benny Har Even said that the recent arrests showed the need for the Civil Administration t...