Abstract
The Lanier Center for Archaeology Tel Gezer excavations has recently concluded 10 seasons of excavations at Tel Gezer, Israel. This project has excavated five major destructions from the Late Bronze III to Iron Age IIB (thirteenth–eighth centuries BCE). These destructions have been associated with military campaigns from outside (e.g. Egyptian, Assyrian). This paper will present an overview of the nature of these destructions, the preservation of the archaeological record, and possible historical reconstructions. Discussion of the Gezer destructions in light of recent methodological and theoretical approaches to defining destruction layers in the archaeological record will be presented. Emphasis will be placed on a contextual approach to the identification of destructions in the archaeological record.
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Notes
- 1.
Now called the American Society of Overseas Research.
- 2.
Adopted from Driessen who defines crisis architecture as specific and sudden short term architectural changes to come as a response to situations of social crisis (Driessen, 1995: 66).
- 3.
R.A.S. Macalister’s ‘Maccabean Castle’, Hebrew Union College’s Field III.
- 4.
A noticeable difference is that they have evidence for destruction in certain areas of the site while in another field, they might not have evidence. This suggests that either there was destruction due to military attacks/human invaders only in particular sections of the city, or the evidence was only preserved in particular contexts. We will discuss this below.
- 5.
See Ortiz and Wolff (2021) for discussion of dating.
- 6.
Stratum 9 represents an ephemeral phase constructed on top of stratum 10. It consists of foundation remnants of a single domestic structure.
- 7.
Note that Dever (1985) found parts of this building, which he identified as Palace 10,000. He recognized that this was a large administrative/elite building based on the construction (e.g. ashlar masonry) and partial plan, he did not know that it was one of these typical Bit Hilani-type structures.
- 8.
This destruction was also defined by the HUC excavations.
- 9.
Kreimerman (2017b).
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Ortiz, S.M. (2023). Gezer Destructions: A Case Study of a Border City. In: Ben-Yosef, E., Jones, I.W.N. (eds) “And in Length of Days Understanding” (Job 12:12). Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27330-8_31
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