Sacred stones, carefully arranged on a 10-foot-square mudbrick platform, may have been the focus of cultic rituals in the lower city of Rehov during the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E. Such Israelite open-air sanctuaries are often identified with
bamot (singular
bamah), or “high places”—cultic installations mentioned more than a hundred times in the Bible. The excavators identify the two standing stones on the platform as sacred stones, Biblical
massebot.
Surrounding the platform were numerous cultic artifacts and animal bones—the remains of sacrificial offerings.