From the Iron Age to the Iron Dome: News from the 2014 Season at Tell es-Safi/Gath

The 2014 season at Tell es-Safi/Gath was conducted during June/July of this past summer. Despite the fact that the hostilities between Israel and the Hamas broke out in the midst of the season, the excavation team managed to keep on digging until the planned end of the season – and had some excellent finds. Even though some missiles landed quite near to us — and they saw many more being intercepted by the “Iron Dome” (a nightly “display of fireworks”) — the dedicated and highly motivated team persevered to uncover great finds from the Iron, Late Bronze and the Early Bronze Ages. This includes evidence of an earlier phase of the fortification of the site during the Early Bronze Age, cultic finds from various periods, and one of the few metallurgical production contexts known from Philistia (the only other one, which is slightly earlier, is from Tell es-Safi/Gath as well…). In this lecture, Professor Maeir will present the main finds from the 2014 season and see how they elucidate important issues relating both to the history of ancient Gath and the land of Israel in general.

This was part of the Unearthing Israel DVD.