Palestinian Excavations

Abstract

Recent years have seen the publication of some sumptuous reports of the large scale excavations conducted by American enterprise in the years before the war. The sites of Megiddo and Beth-Shan, which can confidently be referred to by their historical and biblical names, are of outstanding importance, dominating as they do the Plain of Esdraelon and the great road from Egypt to North Syria and Mesopotamia. The publications here considered are the latest (but not, it is hoped, the last) of a series dealing with different aspects of the excavations. Both sites have been partially sounded to bed-rock, and show continuous occupation from thc chalcolithic period to the end of the first millennium B.C., and Beth-Shan beyond it. Tell en-Nasbeh is in a different category. It is possibly to be identified with the Biblical Mizpah, but this is not universally accepted. Like many Palestinian hill-country sites, it was occupied in the Early Bronze Age (the ascription of some groups to the chalcolithic period is unsatisfactory). Its main occupation is, however, confined to the Early Iron Age, from the time of the undivided Israelite Kingdom down to the post-exilic, Hellenistic and Roman periods.