A Cemetery from the Persian Period at Tell el-Ḥesi

Abstract

During the 1970 and 1971 seasons of the Joint Expedition to Tell el-Hesi more than forty burials were excavated in Field III, which is situated at the base of the tell's southeastern slope (see fig. 1).' Dug into all three phases of the massive lower wall complex,2 this cemetery is the latest major stratigraphic phase in Field III and thus provides a terminus ante quem for the walls. As the plan of the better preserved burials (fig. 2) indicates, the graves were clustered at the eastern edge of the field, and it is likely that a number of burials have washed into the wadi. Evidence for this conjecture is found in 5A.009,3 in which only the lower leg bones were recovered. The location of the cemetery also explains the poor preservation of most of the bones, which lay in shallow graves often just a few centimeters below the modern ground level, and which were thus exposed to considerable water run-off from the upper slopes of the tell. Fig. 3 illustrates one of the better preserved skeletons; in general, when present at all, the bones were extremely friable. Furthermore, erosion and recent plowing have often obliterated the original contours of the burial cists and have caused some dislocation of their contents; an example of such dislocation is 16.003, where a skull was found upside down in the balk without any associated bones (see fig. 4). Nearly half of the graves were situated in a large pit dug into the brickwork, which filled most of Area 13 and the eastern half of Area 14. This pit may have been the result of clay mining; the mud bricks of the walls would have been an obvious and accessible source of clay for the inhabitants of the acropolis. Before the burials were dug the pit had filled with over a meter of water-sorted clay and sand, run-off from the slopes above. No sherds in the pit (whose principal locus is 13.018) were later than the Persian period. The cemetery is thus the latest phase of human activity in Field III during the Persian period, having been preceded in that era by the construction of and the digging of the pit after the walls had fallen into disuse. The large number of graves in the pit can be attributed to the ease of digging in the relatively soft water-sorted deposit, as compared with the mud brick walls.4 The remaining graves were dug either into the walls themselves or outside them into the basal sand dune. Apart from some pits (in Area 3) and a circular mud-plaster lined installation (in Area 5), all from the late Chalcolithic period, there was no evidence of significant occupation south of Zone C. The matrices into which the cemetery was dug-natural sand, mud brick walls, and water deposition--explain the scarcity of artifacts and the consequent chronological uncertainty. The stratigraphy of the cemetery itself is fairly simple. For the most part the graves do not overlap horizontally. There are, however, at least two examples of one grave lying directly over another: 13.016 is above 13.028, and 13.020 is over 13.022. In addition, the skeleton of 13.014 was above the stones associated with 13.021, and the cist of 2.003 was cut by that of 2.004 (see fig. 5). The cemetery was thus in use for some time. The disruption of many of the graves due to the causes mentioned above made the identification of multiple burials difficult; both 5.008 and 13.013 contained I G. Ernest Wright was instrumental in beginning the expedition and was its Principal Overseer until his death. During the 1970 and 1971 seasons Lawrence E. Stager was Field Supervisor of Field III, and I have used his preliminary field reports in preparing this article. Supervisors of the areas discussed here were: in 1970, D. Brooks, M. Coogan, R. Doermann, and D. M. Freedman; in 1971, M. Coogan, R. Doermann, and D. Saltz. During January 1974, Carol Redmount was my research assistant and provided invaluable help in the preparation of this report. A complete list of staff is found in Toombs (1974). 2 See Toombs (1974) 28-31, but note that the wall system in its entirety is now tentatively dated to the Persian period. 3 Graves are identified by areas and locus numbers; thus, 5A.009 in locus 009 in Area 5A. 4Further excavation of the foundations of the walls is planned. The sherds from the bricks themselves are consistently Early Bronze indicating merely that the builders of the walls mined the clay for their bricks from the Early Bronze fortifications (not excavated by the present expedition, but see Toombs [1974] 21).