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(click to enlarge) |
(click to enlarge)
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| Dr. Jeffrey R. Zorn directly supervised the excavation of Area
G at Tel Dor, Israel, from 1987-1999, first as a graduate student at U.C.
Berkeley, then as the director of a Cornell University team. He remains
on the Area G publication team and hopes to return to the field at Dor
in the near future. |
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Tel Dor (Arabic Khirbet el-Burj) is a ca.35 acre
mound located on the Mediterranean coast about 15 miles south of modern
Haifa. The site has a recorded history that extends from the end of the
Egyptian New Kingdom (ca. 1300 BC) through the Crusader period (ca. 1200
AD), though the tel itself was mostly abandoned sometime in the Roman period,
with most occupation being on the periphery of the mound and to a small Crusader
fort. Nonstratified archaeological funds indicate an initial occupation
in the Middle Bronze Age II (ca. 2000 BC).
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| Area G is located in the center of the mount. In the Roman
period (Phases 1-2), it marked the northern edge of the forum. Remains
of a columned stoa were bisected by the decumanus, the city's main north-south
road. In the Hellenistic period (Phase 3), the center of the area seems
to have been open while a residential block was located on the east and
a monumental porticoed public building was on the east. The Persian period
(Phase 4) consists of often very large pits. The late Iron Age period (Phase
5) is badly disturbed by these pits and no coherent plans is possible.
The Iron IIa to Iron I periods (Phases 6-9) respresent the construction
and modification of a large structure over several centuries. Its exact
nature is unclear, but a large central courtyard seems to have been used
for grain processing on a more than domestic level. The early Iron I period
(Phase 10) was a smithy involved in the recasting of copper/bronze material.
The Late Bronze Age/Iron I transition (Phase 11) was more ephemeral, but
also consisted of metallurgical debris. The Late Bronze Age (Phase 12)
may also be industrial waste. |
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Cornell students at Tel Dor participated in all aspects of the excavation,
from digging, to helping with recording data, to assisting with pottery
and bone "reading". Instruction on field methods, lectures on
the ancient Near Eastern world, and field trips to other archaeological
sites were part of the Cornell field school program.
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