Archaeology
Giant moat found separating the City of David from Temple Mount
Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Tel Aviv University have discovered a large 30 metre wide moat that separated the City of David from Temple Mount.
Excavations in the Jerusalem Walls National Park revealed a massive impassable channel up to 9 metres deep by 30 metres wide.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the moat was cut when Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. At this time, the moat would have separated the southern residential part of Jerusalem from the upper city, where the palace and temple were located.
According to a press statement by the IAA: “The creation of the moat was a large-scale, monumental operation, designed to change and modify the natural topography to demonstrate the power of Jerusalem’s rulers.”
Prof. Yuval Gadot from Tel Aviv University, said: “Following the dramatic discovery, we re-examined the past excavation reports written by the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated in the City of David in the 1960s, in an area located slightly east of today’s Givati Parking Lot.”
Image Credit : Eliyahu Yanai, Eric Marmur, and Meir Ganon
“It became clear to us that Kenyon noticed that the natural rock slopes towards the north, in a place where it should naturally have risen. She thought it was a natural valley, but now it turns out that she had uncovered the continuation of the moat, carved to the west,” added Prof. Gadot.
The connection of the two uncovered sections creates a deep and wide moat that extends across at least 70 meters, from west to east.
The exact date the moat was cut is inconclusive, however, most significant construction plans and quarrying in Jerusalem date from the Middle Bronze Age, around 3,800 years ago.
Dr. Yiftah Shalev from the IAA, said: “If the moat was cut during this period, then it was intended to protect the city from the north – the only weak point of the City of David slope. Either way, we are confident that it was used at the time of the First Temple and the Kingdom of Judah (9th century BC), so it created a clear buffer between the residential city in the south, and the upper city in the north”.
Header Image Credit : Eliyahu Yanai, Eric Marmur, and Meir Ganon
Sources : Gadot, Y., Bocher, E., Freud, L., & Shalev, Y. (2023). An Early Iron Age Moat in Jerusalem between the Ophel and the Southeastern Ridge/City of David. Tel Aviv, 50(2), 147–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2023.2246811
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
Archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences have been excavating a burial ground associated with the Finnic Muromians.
The Finnic Muromians were groups of settlers that lived within the vicinity of the Volga and Oka rivers. They spoke Muromian, an Uralic language that became extinct following their assimilation by the Slavs.
The burial ground, which dates from the early 10th century AD, was discovered on the eastern bank of the Oka river, located in the Nizhny Novgorod Region of Russia.
A total of seventeen burial pits have been identified, nine of which have been severely damaged through looting.
The surviving 8 burials contain the remains of four children, two women, and two men.
The men were accompanied with an ornate collection of grave goods, including arrowheads, knives, bronze bracelets, iron plates, a bronze buckle, and a whetstone.
At the bottom of one of the pits is a heavily corroded axe, along with a flint that has traces of iron-coated embossed leather and textile threads.
The burials containing women were also accompanied with high status funerary goods, such as a necklace of red-brown prismatic and dark blue berry-shaped beads of Byzantine origin, signet ring-shaped pendants, plate bracelets, a bronze spiral, and a silver ring.
Traces of wood within the pit fillings suggest that they originally contained a wooden structure, similar to a log house made of thin beams and covered with birch bark.
According to the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “The culmination of the discoveries at the site were two clay vessels, testifying to direct and close contacts between the right-bank Muromians and the Old Russian population.”
Header Image Credit : Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Sources : Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
Archaeologists from the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt are currently excavating the site of a former gallows in Quedlinburg, Germany.
Gallows are usually wooden structures made of two vertical posts, a horizontal crossbeam, and a hanging noose. They have been used for executing criminals by hanging, a prevalent form of capital punishment in Europe since the Middle Ages.
Archaeologists are currently excavating a gallows site on Galgenberg, or ‘Gallows Hill,’ which was used for public executions by the courts in Quedlinburg from 1662 to 1809.
Excavations have revealed complete and partial burials in the area, along with bone pits containing multiple bundled burials, likely the result of mass executions carried out in a short period.
Image Credit : LDA
According to the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt, “these discoveries provide unique insights into penal practices from the Middle Ages and early modern times.”
A burial unrelated to the gallows has also been unearthed, featuring a wooden coffin containing the skeletal remains of an individual buried with a rosary chain.
Archaeologists propose that the burial’s characteristics suggest that the individual was likely a suicide victim, denied burial in consecrated ground so was placed in the cemetery near the gallows.
Also discovered is a so-called ‘revenant grave’, where the skeletal remains of a man was found placed on his back with several large stones placed across his chest.
According to the researchers, the stones were likely placed to prevent the individual from rising as a revenant, which are described as animated corpses in the verbal traditions and lore of many European ethnic groups.
In medieval times, those inflicted with the revenant condition were generally suicide victims, witches, corpses possessed by a malevolent spirit, or the victim of a vampiric attack.
Header Image Credit : LDA
Sources : State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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