In our second week of excavations we continued to excavate our four active squares, uncovering new architectural features of the Wadi Rabah period, and, most importantly, were happy to retrieve several remarkable finds.
Photo: K.Streit
A particularly well preserved obsidian blade was found during sieving sediment samples from Wadi Rabah contexts associated with architecture in one of our squares and we hope that pXRF analysis will tell us something about the provenance of this exceptional find and reveal some of the Chalcolithic trade routes that were active during this enigmatic period.
Furthermore, a fragment of a so-called ‘horned figurine’ was found, an extremely rare find, not only in the southern Levant, but in the entire Near East. Little more than a dozen of these figurines have been found so far and most of them come from antiquities trade or are surface finds. The whole Ein el-Jarba team is exceptionally happy to add one of the few examples from stratified contexts to the corpus of known figurines.
Photo: K. Streit
Last but not least, a cute little animal figurine was found during sieving Wadi Rabah sediment samples. Albeit only a few centimeters long, the small animal opens a window into Chalcolithic art and how people of that remote period used to depict the living world that surrounded them.
Now, as we embark on our third week of excavation at Ein el-Jarba, we hope for more exciting finds and features, are eager to reach all our excavation goals, and plan for a smooth second half of our season 2016.
Ein el-Jarba Excavation Project 