In March an international team of archaeologists launched a ten-year effort to excavate ancient Tiberias, on the southwest shores of the Sea of Galilee. Headed by Yizhar Hirschfeld, of the Hebrew University, and Katharina Galor, from Brown University, the excavation has already borne fruit, and given the city’s historical significance, much more can be expected.
Tiberias was an important cultural center during the Roman and Byzantine periods. In the third century A.D., Tiberias became the seat of Jewish political, religious and cultural activity in ancient Israel. The Palestinian Talmud was compiled and edited in Tiberias, and Jewish institutions there thrived until the tenth century. Though inhabited predominately by Jews, the city also hosted sizable Christian and Muslim communities.
The team began by reexposing parts of the ancient city that had been excavated in the 1950s by Bezalel Rabani, who died before publishing his results. Among the buildings uncovered so far is a large bathhouse with a polychromatic mosaic floor from the sixth century A.D. Hirschfeld and Galor’s team also uncovered an 18-foot bronze chain from the Fatimid period (969–1069 A.D.) next to colored glass fragments, suggesting that they had been used to decorate a monumental building. Hirschfeld and Galor also unearthed an Abbasid-period (650–868 A.D.) installation for making pigments; chemicals from the site are being examined by scientists at the Weizmann Institute. —M.S.
ASOR Reacts to BAR’s Proposal on Looting
We recently proposed that the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) amend its policy on looting.a The policy forbids the publication of a scholarly study of an unprovenanced (perhaps looted) artifact in ASOR’s scholarly journal and likewise forbids the presentation of a scholarly paper on such an artifact at its annual meeting.
We proposed instead that objects of significant scholarly or artistic merit should be purchased with the aim of making them available for study and eventual public view. The information they contain should not be lost. Our proposal also stressed the need to explore ways to reduce looting other than by harrying antiquities dealers and collectors.
Our proposal was taken up at ASOR’s annual meeting last November in Atlanta. The proposal, insofar as it dealt with the publication of unprovenanced artifacts, was rejected. However, the ASOR policy was changed to stress the need to explore innovative ways of reducing, if not eliminating, looting.
The following is the text of the two additions to the policy that were adopted in response to BAR’s proposal:
“ASOR supports all efforts—that are in accordance with international law—to prohibit and prevent the looting of archaeological sites and to disrupt the illicit trade of antiquities … ASOR will continue to explore innovative strategies and support legislation designed to eliminate the illicit trade of antiquities and enhance the protection of the world’s archaeological and cultural heritage.”
Not all scholarly organizations prohibit the publication of unprovenanced finds. The Israel Exploration Journal, the journal of the Israel Exploration Society, regularly publishes articles on important unprovenanced finds. In the latest issue (vol. 53, no. 2, 2003), for example, epigrapher (a specialist in inscriptions) Esther Eshel publishes an important new ostracon (a writing on a pottery sherd) that may have recorded a payment to the Solomonic Temple.
All Near Eastern epigraphers study unprovenanced finds. All numismatists study unprovenanced coins. All art historians study unprovenanced works of art. In these circumstances it is difficult to understand ASOR’s blanket prohibition of the publication of all unprovenanced finds, no matter how significant or important. But its willingness to modify its policy in a direction suggested by our proposal perhaps suggests a willingness to compromise.
In March an international team of archaeologists launched a ten-year effort to excavate ancient Tiberias, on the southwest shores of the Sea of Galilee. Headed by Yizhar Hirschfeld, of the Hebrew University, and Katharina Galor, from Brown University, the excavation has already borne fruit, and given the city’s historical significance, much more can be expected.
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