Ḥorvat Rosh Zayit
From ArchaeoWiki
Ḥorvat Rosh Zayit (also spelt Hurvat Rosh Zayit, Arabic: Khirbat Ras el-Zeitun) is a compact archaeological site located some 15 km (8 miles) east of Akko in the western Lower Galilee region of Israel. It was excavated under the direction of Zvi Gal under the auspices of several institutions in the years between 1983 and 1992, the site yielding up several intriguing results. The excavator has subsequently identified the site with that of biblical Cabul (Joshua 19:27; see also I Kings 9:13 and 2 Chronicles 8:2).
The site as excavated has been divided into two primary designated units: 1. a remarkable "fort" or, perhaps better, fortified storage area or 'keep'; and 2. the surrounding village houses and buildings.
The so-called "fort" was found upon excavation to have consisted essentially of a typical four-room house stregthened by added external walls and limited glaces structures. Some of the building's internal rooms proved to have functioned as basement storage magazines for hundreds of storage jars (many of these the so-called 'hippo' jars [Alexandre 1995]).
Around the fortified keep were found a small number of surrounding and subsidiary buildings, unfortunately only partially excavated, in three field areas:
Area A - featured what may be a three-room house and other ephemeral remains.
Area B - featured a four-room house with a spacious external yard, including a total of seven olive presses. The complex existed until the 8th century BCE. After the destruction of the fortress, a small village was seemingly established on the site which continued the production of olive oil.
Area C - featured the remains of two partially overlapping structures that together provide the only evidence beyond the fortified keep for multi-period occupation at the site. A third structure in the vicinity contained a small censer and two fragmentary figurines that hinted at some low-level cultic activity.
The excavator Zvi Gal has dated the strata within the fortified structure to the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE, with some of the surrounding structures possessing terminal dates in the 8th century BCE.
Ḥorvat Rosh Zayit remains only partially excavated: any future efforts should be directed towards the buildings surrounding the fortified keep and to exploring the possibility of a fortified wall surrounding the entire village [hinted at in Gal 2000:201, n.?].
Bibliography
- Alexandre, Yardenna [1995], "The 'Hippo' Jar and Other Storage Jars at Hurvat Rosh Zayit", TA 22.1 (1995), pp.
- Gal, Zvi [1993], "Cabul: A Royal Gift Found", BAR 19.2 (1993), pp.39-44, 84.
- Gal, Zvi and Alexandre, Yardenna [2000], Ḥorbat Rosh Zayit: An Iron Age Storage Fort and Village, [Israel Antiquities Authority Reports 8], Jerusalem: IAA, 2000.
- Kislev, M.E. and Melamed, Y. [2000], "Ancient Infested Wheat and Horsebean from Horbat Rosh Zayit", in Gal & Alexandre 2000, pp.206-220.
- Zorn, Jeffrey R. [2003], Review of Gal, Z. & Alexandre, Y., Ḥorbat Rosh Zayit: An Iron Age Storage Fort and Village, (2000), BASOR 330 (2003), pp.93-94.
