Two Bronze Age Cemeteries in the Qirya Quarter of Tel Aviv

The excavation report is devoted to two Bronze Age cemeteries in Tel Aviv, which allows for a very significant contribution to an understanding of ancient activity in the Qirya quarter prior to the development of the modern city of Tel Aviv. The excavations revealed two distinct chronoculturally complexes of tombs, one a burial ground of the Early Bronze Age, the other a cemetery of the Intermediate Bronze and Middle Bronze Ages. Their excavation and associated finds, as well as objects from nearby tombs from earlier excavations, are the subjects of this report.

The Early Bronze Age cemetery of the Qirya Quarter in Tel Aviv was a burial ground of uncertain size that indubitably covered a much larger area than has been excavated. Definitively included within its precincts are several quarried cave tombs used for multiple burials and a single, barely-preserved cavity. The evidence clearly indicates these tombs, once quarried, were used for the repose of individuals over a period of at least several generations. Thus, that part of the ridge devoted to mortuary functions may be deemed a formalized cemetery to which numerous people repaired when in need of disposing remains of departed members of their society.

Fifty tombs are assigned to the Intermediate Bronze Age. The paucity of excavated settlements of the IB period in the coastal plain means that our understanding of this period is derived almost exclusively from cemeteries. The excavation of this IB cemetery adds somewhat to the picture of what is believed to have been a rather dispersed IB settlement system. 

The presentation of the tombs (chs. 1–8) is followed by reports on the anthropological finds (ch. 9), Hellenistic and Roman finds (ch. 10), metal finds (ch. 11), lithic assemblage (ch. 12), beads and pendants (ch. 13), scarabs (ch. 14), shells (ch. 15).

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1: DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE AND NOTES ON THE EXCAVATION

     Eliot Braun and Edwin C.M. van den Brink

CHAPTER 2: THE EARLY BRONZE AGE SEPULCHERS—2002 SEASON

     Eliot Braun

CHAPTER 3: THE INTERMEDIATE BRONZE AGE – MIDDLE BRONZE AGE CEMETERY

     Edwin C.M. van den Brink

CHAPTER 4: ADDITIONAL EB AND IB BURIALS IN THE CEMETERIES

     Eliot Braun and Edwin C.M. van den Brink with a contribution by Diego Barkan

CHAPTER 5: THE EARLY BRONZE AGE CERAMIC ASSEMBLAGE

     Eliot Braun

CHAPTER 6: THE GROUNDSTONE ASSEMBLAGE

     Eliot Braun

CHAPTER 7: THE INTERMEDIATE BRONZE AGE POTTERY ASSEMBLAGE 

     Edwin C.M. van den Brink

CHAPTER 8: DISCUSSION—THE CEMETERIES AND THEIR CONTEXTS

     Eliot Braun and Edwin C.M. van den Brink

REFERENCES CHAPTERS 1-8

CHAPTER 9: ANTHROPOLOGICAL REPORT

     Yossi Nagar

CHAPTER 10: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN  PERIODS

     Eliot Braun, Edwin C.M. van den Brink, Varda Sussman and Donald T. Ariel

CHAPTER 11: METALS FROM THE ANCIENT CEMETERIES

     Sariel Shalev and Sana Shilstein

CHAPTER 12: THE LITHIC ASSEMBLAGE

     Omry Barzilai

CHAPTER 13: BEADS AND PENDANTS 

     Naomi Porat

CHAPTER 14: TWO SCARABS FROM AN EARLY MIDDLE BRONZE AGE TOMB

     Daphna Ben-Tor

CHAPTER 15: THE SHELL FINDS

     Henk K. Mienis

APPENDICES 1–2: LOCI AND BASKET INFORMATION

     Appendix 1: Locus List

     Appendix 2: Basket List by Cave and Locus with Principal Finds