Kefar Ḥananya

IDENTIFICATION AND EXPLORATION

Remains of the ancient village of Kefar Ḥananya are located on the lower slope of a hill at the eastern edge of the Ḥananya Valley, in northern Lower Galilee, along the route from Acco to the eastern Galilee, about 9 km southwest of Safed. The identification of ancient Kefar Ḥananya with modern Kafr ‘Inan (Kufr ‘Anan) is based on geographic references in tannaitic literature, including mention of Kefar Ḥananya as a boundary point between Upper and Lower Galilee (Mishnah Shev. 9.2); on archaeological and archaeometric evidence showing that the site was a pottery-production center during the Roman and early Byzantine periods; on the mention in a twelfth-century CE text of a rock-cut synagogue at Kefar Ḥananya; and on the phonetic similarity of Kafr ‘Inan to Kefar Ḥananya.

Rabbinic sources dating to the first/second–fourth centuries CE refer to Kefar Ḥananya as a well-known pottery-production center, mentioning several of its products and attesting to their durability under conditions of thermal stress. Rabbi Ḥalafta of Kefar Ḥananya (second century ce) is quoted several times in tannaitic texts. The medieval settlement is mentioned in Geniza manuscripts and in travelers’ accounts. The description by Jacob ben Nathanel, a twelfth-century (prior to 1187) traveler, of a synagogue at Kefar Ḥananya “quarried from the hill with only one built wall,” seems to refer to more substantial remains, then visible, of the rock-cut structure at the site (see below). Menachem ha-Ḥevroni (c. 1215) mentions a synagogue in use by the residents of Kefar Ḥananya. In two manuscripts from about the sixteenth century, and apparently also in a fragmentary third text (probably late fifteenth century), two synagogues are mentioned.

J. Braslavsky identified remains of a rectangular rock-cut public structure (similar to that at Meiron) located east of the village of Kufr ‘Anan as an ancient synagogue. In the early 1980s, Z. Ilan published a plan of that building, found remains of another public building he suggested was a second synagogue, and traced remains of an aqueduct to the site, suggesting an early date for its construction (it is apparently medieval, however; see below). Parts of several installations for olive-oil production have been studied by R. Frankel. A bronze polycandelon, bearing an Aramaic dedicatory inscription mentioning the “holy place of Kefar Ḥananya” and inscribed with two seven-branched menorahs, each flanked by a lulav and shofar, was found at el-Makr in the western Galilee and published by J. -B. Frey and subsequently by J. Naveh.

ARCHAEOMETRIC STUDY

The pottery-production center at Kefar Ḥananya was studied as part of an interdisciplinary regional project investigating the production and local trade of common pottery in the Galilee and Golan in the Late Hellenistic, Roman, and early Byzantine periods. The ongoing project, directed by D. Adan-Bayewitz, was begun in 1981 by him and the late I. Perlman at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has continued at Bar-Ilan University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with F. Asaro and R. D. Giauque of the latter institution, and M. Wieder of the former. This work has shown that Kefar Ḥananya supplied most of the kitchen pottery of the Galilee, and a significant minority of the cooking vessels of the Golan, from the Early Roman through the early Byzantine periods (second half of the first century BCE–early fifth century ce). The evidence for this site-specific production provenance assignment and the distribution of the Kefar Ḥananya pottery was provided by chemical analysis (instrumental neutron activation and high-precision X-ray fluorescence analyses) of about 250 examples of the cooking vessel types most prevalent in Roman Galilee, from 22 excavation sites in the Galilee and Golan; of soil samples from the Ḥananya Valley, adjacent to Kefar Ḥananya; and of waste from pottery production recovered in archaeological excavations at the site. Data from comparative micromorphological analysis of pottery and soil materials and evidence from archaeological excavations, as well as the information provided by the Rabbinic texts of Roman date on pottery production at the settlement, were also consistent with this site-specific Kefar Ḥananya production provenance. The main vessel forms made at Kefar Ḥananya have been identified and dated, and their geographic and quantitative distribution described.

EXCAVATION RESULTS

In the wake of the initial provenance study, conducted between 1981 and 1985, Adan-Bayewitz directed three seasons of excavations at Kefar Ḥananya (1986, 1987, 1989), on behalf of Bar-Ilan University. Unearthed were remains of a Late Roman pottery kiln with a stone-paved approach, and remains of a contiguous outer structure supported by ashlar pillars, possibly a fuel store. All three components were built in a trench (3–3.5 m wide, culminating with the round kiln) cut into the bedrock slope. A wall built of one row of hammer-dressed stones and fieldstones with some roof-tile fragments in the interstices separated this rock-cut trench from the slope to the east. Two successive plaster-lined structures that perhaps served as clay wetting tanks, each with a wall one course high and a sloping, thick plaster floor, were found about 10.5 m west of the kiln. A Tyrian coin dating to 41–42 CE was found below the lower floor.

The kiln is a common Roman type, circular in plan (about 2.9 m in diameter) with a round central pillar (1 m in diameter). North (rear) and east of the furnace chamber, one or two courses of cut stones line the bedrock; other lining stones had apparently been robbed. The entrance to the furnace chamber is about 0.9 m wide, and its jambs are built of ashlars. Following the destruction in the fourth century CE of the apparently disused kiln and outer structure, the recessed area served as a dump for discarded vessels. The dump contained an estimated 9,500 to 13,000 whole vessel equivalents (based on a count and measurement by A. Sasson of the vessel fragments from a 1-cu-m sample of the dump). About 98 percent of these fragments belonged to two Kefar Ḥananya cooking vessel subtypes (forms 1E and 4C, a cooking bowl and cooking pot, respectively), but virtually no examples showed signs of use. Recovered in the excavations was waste from production of Kefar Ḥananya vessel forms dating to the Early, Middle, and Late Roman–early Byzantine periods. The wasters include examples of unfired fragments, partially vitrified pieces, warped examples, vessels fused to one another, and pottery cracked during firing. Wasters from ceramic production were also found in a second excavation field, located several hundred meters northeast of the main settlement site, adjacent to Naḥal Tsalmon.

The trench cut into the bedrock slope, in which the kiln and associated structures were built, also cut through an earlier roof-tile layer, above an Early Roman accumulation. A number of the tiles bore the impression of the Legio VI Ferrata (LEGVIF). No architectural remains associated with the roof-tile layer have been found.

In addition to the conventional excavations conducted at three locations on the site, 68 squares of 2 by 2 m, 20 cm in depth, were excavated in all areas of the site of Kefar Ḥananya, with the goal of diachronically investigating settlement distribution and ceramic production. Ceramic waste from pottery production was found in 11 of these “shovel test” squares, located at different areas on the lower part of the slope of the site. This ceramic waste included examples of the same vessel subtypes from more than one location at the site, suggesting the presence of more than one workshop operating during the same period. The evidence from the excavations and shovel test showed that the settlement at Kefar Ḥananya was founded in the Early Roman period and was inhabited during the Roman, Byzantine, medieval, and modern periods.

Probes excavated against and below the final in-situ section of the Kefar Ḥananya aqueduct demonstrated that this part of the aqueduct, as visible today, was not built prior to the medieval period.

DAVID ADAN-BAYEWITZ

Rabbinic Sources, the Polycandelon Inscription, and the Medieval Texts

Other Studies

IDENTIFICATION AND EXPLORATION

Remains of the ancient village of Kefar Ḥananya are located on the lower slope of a hill at the eastern edge of the Ḥananya Valley, in northern Lower Galilee, along the route from Acco to the eastern Galilee, about 9 km southwest of Safed. The identification of ancient Kefar Ḥananya with modern Kafr ‘Inan (Kufr ‘Anan) is based on geographic references in tannaitic literature, including mention of Kefar Ḥananya as a boundary point between Upper and Lower Galilee (Mishnah Shev. 9.2); on archaeological and archaeometric evidence showing that the site was a pottery-production center during the Roman and early Byzantine periods; on the mention in a twelfth-century CE text of a rock-cut synagogue at Kefar Ḥananya; and on the phonetic similarity of Kafr ‘Inan to Kefar Ḥananya.

Rabbinic sources dating to the first/second–fourth centuries CE refer to Kefar Ḥananya as a well-known pottery-production center, mentioning several of its products and attesting to their durability under conditions of thermal stress. Rabbi Ḥalafta of Kefar Ḥananya (second century ce) is quoted several times in tannaitic texts. The medieval settlement is mentioned in Geniza manuscripts and in travelers’ accounts. The description by Jacob ben Nathanel, a twelfth-century (prior to 1187) traveler, of a synagogue at Kefar Ḥananya “quarried from the hill with only one built wall,” seems to refer to more substantial remains, then visible, of the rock-cut structure at the site (see below). Menachem ha-Ḥevroni (c. 1215) mentions a synagogue in use by the residents of Kefar Ḥananya. In two manuscripts from about the sixteenth century, and apparently also in a fragmentary third text (probably late fifteenth century), two synagogues are mentioned.