Endnote 4 – The Problem of Ai

Thus, at Khirbet Heiyaµn, on the southern edge of Deir Dibwan, an experimental sounding made in 1964 revealed that the earliest structures there were Byzantine and the earliest sherds on the site Roman (J. A. Callaway and M. B. Nicol, “A Sounding at Khirbet Heiyaµn,” BASOR 183 (1966), pp. 27–29, 12–13, 19).

Excavations at Khirbet Khudriya, approximately 750 meters east of Deir Dibwan, conducted in 1966 and 1968, revealed only a Byzantine church and an industrial area. The earliest material discovered at this site was late Hellenistic (J. A. Callaway, “The 1968–1969 ’Ai [et-Tell] Excavations,” BASOR 198 [1970], pp. 10–12).

Surface exploration of Khirbet el-Hay, approximately four miles southeast of et-Tell, near Biblical Michmash produced sherds only from the Middle Ages and the Ottoman period (Z. Kallai, “The Land of Benjamin and Mt. Ephraim,” in M. Kochavi, ed., Judea, Samaria, and The Golan Archaeological Survey 1967–68 [Jerusalem, 1972], p. 182).

An intensive survey of a fifth site, an unnamed tell located about two miles southwest of Beitin, indicated that there had been no Middle Bronze-Late Bronze occupation. Although there may have been a small Iron Age settlement on the site, its major periods of growth and development were Roman and Byzantine (R. B. Blizzard, “Intensive Systematic Surface Collection at Livingston’s Proposed Site for Biblical Ai,” Westminster Theological Journal 36 [1973–74], pp. 224–225).