Andrew Stewart
Archaeology of King Solomon's Harbor, Tel Dor, Israel, seventh season,
1992. A welcome influx of volunteers enabled us to re-open excavation in
both the Temple and Forum areas; our season was the most exciting ever.
In the Temple area (F), we opened new squares above the northern entrance
to the sanctuary and on the remains of the temple floor itself, both left
unexplored by John Garstang in1922-23. Ten unpublished photographs of his,
recently located in the archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund in London,
helped us greatly while revealing how much knowledge has now been lost through
his slapdash methods and through subsequent robbing of the site.
The entrance-complex (F2) turned out to be the mirror-image of that in the
south (F1), excavated in 1986-89, though much to our surprise, the earlier
orientation of the city in this area was at a 45° angle to its southern
counterpart. The temple floor yielded lamps and other pottery of the second
century C.E.; together with our earlier seasons' work, this material suggests
a Hadrianic or later date for the entire complex, barely one century before
the tel itself was abandoned and the city moved half a mile or so north.
Further excavation and registration of the temple's architectural fragments
showed that it was the largest pagan temple (ca.18 x 56m) so far discovered
in Israel. It was exceedingly narrow, with an imposing porch at least six
columns wide and three deep; beneath its floor, house-remains dating from
the Iron Age to the early Roman period show that no previous cult-site underlay
its northern end at least.
In the Forum/Agora area (G), we focused our efforts on revealing more of
the Iron-Age town uncovered in 1987-1991. It was here that we made our most
spectacular finds to date: two massive destructions separated in time by
around 100 years. The earlier, a pure Iron I destruction of ca. 1100 B.C.E.,
was extremely violent; one to one-and-a-half meters of burned deposit, including
collapsed floors and many in situ artifacts, testify to a huge fire, perhaps
of human origin. Its date and contemporaneity with similar destructions
in the Gate and Temple areas (B1 and F1) suggest that it may be the Phoenician
destruction of the settlement founded by the Sea-Peoples (Sikels) after
their defeat by the Rames III around 1185 B.C.E.
The later destruction, on the Iron I/IIA borderline around 1000 B.C.E.,
remained an enigma until the very end of the excavation. Although several
rooms full of collapsed mud-brick, in situ pottery, and metalwork had suggested
that we were looking at a single event, it was not until we discovered a
skeleton lying beneath the remains of a collapsed stone wall that our hypothesis
was proven correct. The individual, a woman around 30 years old, was probably
Phoenician. Her position and injuries, together with the Phoenician pottery,
a stag-antler, and food refuse around and under her show that she was taken
by surprise and killed by a catastrophic earthquake while in her pantry.
We must now widen our exposure in order to learn more about this event,
and search the records of other excavations in the area (Megiddo, Beth-She'an,
Hazor, etc.) to see whether similar destructions there, usually attributed
to king David's armies, might not be reassigned to this event. If so, current
theories about the character and chronology of Israelite expansion in the
North may well require considerable re-evaluation.