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DRAWN BY RUHAMA BONFIL

CULTIC COMPLEXITY. Part of the Iron Age public complex at Abel Beth Maacah seems to have been devoted to ritual activity. One of the north rooms in the late 11th- to early 10th-century B.C.E. (late Iron Age I) structure contains benches, a stone offering table, a cult stand, masseboth (standing stones), basins, and a plastered clay installation with a double “sink” on top (see lower middle of the plan). Evidence of ritual activity also appears in the late-tenth- and ninth-century B.C.E. (Iron IIA) stone-paved courtyard, where archaeologists found a jar full of astragali—possibly for a ritual activity (see lower right of the plan). The superimposed plan shows both the Iron Age I and IIA phases in this structure.