Archaeology - 21st Century Style
by Daniella Ashkenazy
Advanced infra-red aerial photography - otherwise used to
check water sources, in intelligence surveys and more - is today being
employed in archeological
excavations in a variety of ways.
Leviah, a nine-hectare site from the early bronze period in
the southern Golan Heights, was
photographed from a helicopter by members of the TAU Geography Department at 3
AM in mid-winter. The camera picked up heat stored by rocks close to the
surface that cooled slower than the surrounding soil, and revealed the
outlines of walls close to the surface. The following summer, an untouched 100
square meter section of Leviah was excavated and compared with the aerial
photograph.
The excavation showed that remote sensory infra-red
photography had revealed the presence of 80% of the basalt walls close to the
surface. The sections of the walls that were "missed" by the
sensitive camera were sections that had collapsed or been buried under debris.
When the walls were exposed, it became apparent that the whole excavated area
had been entirely built up, and had contained multi-roomed buildings and
courtyards. The archeological team, headed by Professors Pirhyia Beck and
Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archeology, thus
concluded that the site was a densely-settled Canaanite town, not a
sparsely-populated agrarian settlement with shelters for animals, as many had
previously postulated. This discovery, along with the fact that there are some
twenty similar sites on the Golan Heights, indicates that the Golan may have
been one of the more prosperous and populous areas in the Land of Israel in
ancient times.
DNA testing - another modern procedure - was employed
during an excavation in Ashkelon on the coast, when a Hebrew University
archeological team headed by Professors Ariella Oppenheim and Patricia Smith
came upon 100 skeletons of infants in an ancient sewer leading from a
bathhouse from the late Roman or Byzantine periods. The team found a Greek inscription in the bathhouse, reading "Enter, enjoy and..."
indicating that the establishment might also have served as a brothel, a
common feature of the times. At the same excavation site, vessels containing
infant remains who had received far more respectful treatment were also
unearthed. The bones of the infants at the bathhouse, though, were found mixed
with animal bones, pottery shards and coins without any sign of orderly
burial. Examination of the size and dental development of the skeletons by
Professor Charles Greenblatt of the University's medical and dentistry school
confirmed that all were newborn infants. Both findings strengthened
assumptions they had been victims of infanticide. Killing of female offspring
was widespread practice of the Romans. Male infanticide was, however, a
rarity. Thus, when researchers sent 19 left femoral bones for DNA testing,
they were surprised to find that 14 of the infants were male and only five
female. This anomaly led researchers to postulate that what they had found
were the remains of offspring born to courtesans working at the bathhouse,
rather than the "unwanted" female offspring of residents of the busy
port city.
It has been suggested that DNA testing could also be
applied to double-check whether the Dead Sea
Scrolls on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem were pieced together
correctly. Since the scrolls are written on parchment, it would be possible to
see if fragments matched together indeed came from the same piece of
parchment.
In another case of modern archeology, researchers using a
portable infra-red spectrometer discovered what may possibly be one of the
oldest "garbage dumps" in the history of mankind. The archeologists
believed that the piles of deer, gazelle and wild cattle bones found in areas
of the Keraba cave on Mount Carmel were the leftovers of Stone Age dinners.
This seemed to indicate that prehistoric man divided his
living space into different areas for particular activities - building fires
at the entrance, with living quarters at the back. But, no one knew for
certain whether these bone concentrations were intentional or whether animal
bones were absent from other areas because they had been dissolved by
groundwater over the ages.
To solve this question, Professors Paul Goldberg of the
University of Texas and Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard mobilized an expert in
biomineralization - Professor Stephen Weiner of the Weizmann Institute's
Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research. Weiner used his
knowledge of biomineralization - the process by which bones, teeth and other
inorganic structures form in living organisms - as a basis for determining
what had happened tens of thousands of years ago. Armed with a computer
equipped with special software for mineral identification and a portable
infrared spectrometer, Weiner was able to look for traces of minerals
associated with the presence of bones in other areas of the cave. The
examination found that the other areas never contained bones.
The logical conclusion: Prehistoric man had yet to be
harnessed into "taking out the garbage" after dinner. Cavewomen
maintained a clean hearth by prevailing standards content to throw the remains
of dinner into designated piles in the corners of their caves....
Sources: Israel Magazine-On-Web, May 1998,: Israeli
Foreign Ministry |