Tall El-Hammam Part 2

[dig4fun]

How would one make a contribution to the Tall El-Hammam excavation?

[Brianroy]

Dig4fun asks:

"How would one make a contribution to the Tall El-Hammam excavation?"

Go to www.   tall el hammam  .com and click on the link for donations. 
 
http://www.tallelhammam.com/


Peace.

[wigwam]

i made a contribution to the tall el-hammam excavation project by going to the trinity southwest university online store at www.shop.tsu-edu.us. when you make a donation of any size, you get the daily updates from the excavation which is about ready to start. in fact, i've already gotten three updates. it's all very, very interesting to see a dig unfold from the inside. the updates are written mainly by dr. collins himself. photos are usually included. i can't wait to get seven weeks of these!

wigwam

[turanclancath]

http://www.biblicalresearchbulletin.com/uploads/BRB-2008-1-Byers-Tall_el-Hammam_2008.pdf

I think this is the latest article about the excavation .
I woulds like to reopen the discussion its so fascinating
in the summery on the last page Tall el Hamman has become now :maybe!!!!  it  was Sodom.!!!

( count the maybees in the article )
TEMPORA MUTANTUR !




And I see serious chronological impossibilitys for a 1650/1600 Sodom=Tall el  etc if you look at the time table  ( page 7 ) in the  article of Prof Collins from 2002


http://www.biblicalresearchbulletin.com/uploads/BRB-2002-8-Collins-Chronology_Cities_of_the_Plain.pdf
Prof collins prefers the utmost right colum  with a Exodus circa 1406  and a birth of Isaak ( circa the Sodom destruction time ) of 1811 !!!!

So a Kikkar citys destruction  circa 1650/1600 is an auto self  blow to the Sodom thesis  like to kick the ball in your own goal.

I regret it  !!!because The excavation of prof Collins cum suis is exellent and very important!!! it will learn us a lot .
but I fear that the excavation hypothesis of Tall etc  will end with the same problem as the late Prof Manfred Korfmann had with his Troy  excavation


interesting in the article : the Middle Bronze cities in the Eastern Kikkar including Tall el Hamman were sometimes before 1600 bc destroyed.

That stands thanks to the great work of Prof Collins  and Tall was a big city of more then 40 acre the lowest population esteem is some 10/15.000 inhabitants .
see this conversion table
http://www.onlineconversion.com/area.htm

Gives a lot of  entrances for reflextion/discussion  who when why how etc
Turanclancath

[Dr. Steven Collins]

Hello All:

We've just returned from a highly successful Season Four of the Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project. Those who've supported the excavation financially are already aware of this year's exciting finds and discoveries due to the daily email updates they've received during the 7 weeks of the dig season. But for those who are not a part of that exclusive group of TeHEP Update recipients, I thought I'd give a little overview of our 2009 dig season. And what a fantastic season it was!

First of all, our joint American/Jordanian professional staff was a remarkably balanced and skilled team of experts. These were assisted by a group of about 30 volunteers, and about a dozen local workmen and technicians. Although our numbers were down considerably from previous seasons, we had a very high percentage of alumni volunteers, some with two or three seasons of excavation at Tall el-Hammam under their belts.

In a nutshell, we accomplished the following: (1) completion of sweeping surface surveys over the 40 hectare general settlement area; (2) completion of our topographical survey of both the upper and lower talls, and the general settlement area; (3) addition of significant geographical and surface survey data for surrounding talls and settlement sites within a 3 km radius of Tall el-Hammam; (4) a significant start in the documentation of tombs associated with the site, over 50 thus far; (5) integration of the recent survey of over 220 dolmens within 2 km of the site; (6) re-surveying of the comprehensive site grid with GIS integration; (7) continuation of excavations in select squares on the upper tall, particularly those associated with the Iron and Middle Bronze Age fortification systems; ( continuation of excavations on our monumental Roman/Byzantine building in Field LR; (9) commencement of new excavations on the south side of the lower tall, in Field LA, including five squares comprising Trench LA.28 running 36 m N/S; and (10) continuation of surveys of exposed architectural features across both the upper and lower talls, spreading over 36 hectares, including a Bronze Age monumental building measuring (at least) 20 x 60 meters, plus ancillary structures, at the near-center of the western lower tall.

The Bronze Age urban center at Tall el-Hammam is mammoth at approximately 36 hectares, not including several nearly-contiguous settlements within .25 km from the city walls. The well-preserved stratigraphy in Trench LA.28 reveals a seemingly unbroken sequence of occupation on the lower tall, the latest being MB1/2. Moving upward from a depth of about 3 m were occupations from the EB3, IB1/2, and MB1/2, all following the same basic domestic wall lines through a series of clearly-visible rebuilds of mudbrick walls, floors, and installations. Other walls and foundations became visible below the EB3 phase (likely EB2), but the season ended before any definition was available. Once again, as in the previous three seasons, the massive Bronze Age remains at Tall el-Hammam have continued to reveal a remarkably durable occupation as if defying period-ending calamities that seem to have befallen other sites, particularly at the end of EB3.

One thing has become abundantly clear: Even the latest published interpretations of the EBA, IBA, and MBA in Jordan have all been drawn without the knowledge or understanding of this huge city-state hub. While many scholars have abandoned the city-state concept in discussing the Transjordan socio-political history, due to a paucity of evidence for a major city-state in the region (particularly during the EBA), they have done so without considering the profound implications that Tall el-Hammam will soon inject into the discussion. Indeed, what scholars are about to discover (as we have) is that attempting to interpret the Transjordan Bronze Age without Tall el-Hammam is tantamount to writing a socio-political history of southern California minus Los Angeles. The enormous, fortified EBA/IBA/MBA urban center at Tall el-Hammam is surrounded by an array of smaller towns and villages, most within a distance of .25 to 3 km and all within direct line-of-sight, a few of which have carried the banner as key period-interpreters (such as Tall Iktanu and Tall Kafrein) but now themselves must be interpreted as satellites belonging to the city-state, the center of which was Tall el-Hammam.

That Tall el-Hammam lies at the center of a long-standing, ancient tradition regarding the presence of collectively-formidable cities on the eastern Kikkar of the southern Jordan Valley (manifested biblically as the Cities of the Kikkar of the Jordan) is, to my mind, beyond reasonable refutation. Beginning in the 5th millennium BCE at Tuleilat Ghassul (with a similarly-sized Chalcolithic center at Tall el-Hammam a possibility), the cities of the eastern Jordan Disk (Kikkar), in various configurations, dominated, or at least significantly influenced, both the valley economy and the transient trade economy of the region until MB2.

In short, a heretofore virtually-unknown giant is presently emerging from the soil of the eastern Jordan Disk. And, as I stated in my lecture to the Friends of Archaeology of Jordan in Amman about three weeks ago, our general understanding of the Bronze Age in Jordan is about to get a major facelift as we complete our first major excavation report for journal publication this year.

SC

[Dr. Steven Collins]

Turanclancath:

Don't be so sure about your chronological "certainties." If you continue to take the biblical numbers with "western" literalness, you'll run aground quickly in ever trying to sychronize the biblical history with the ANE history. The patriarchal lifespans are likely honorific and/or formulaic in some way that we as yet do not understand. To complicate the issue, there is absolutely no consensus even amongst conservative scholars as to the actual date of the Exodus, except to say that it occurred sometime between the early 15th century and the end of the 13th century BCE.

The issue of the general chronological placement of the patriarchal stories is far and away one of historical synchronisms rather than simplistic "number crunching," especially when the mathematico-linguistic meaning of the "numbers" is far from straightforward. Such "number crunching" has never (nor ever will, I suspect) produce any kind of consensus about the identity of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, much less a firm date (even century!) for Abraham. Perhaps the excavation of the infamous Cities of the Plain will shed light on the date with more precision!

Thanks for your interest in the Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project.

I will now be heading into a much-needed and guarded time of keeping our noses to the grindstone of publication. Our accumulated data thus far is huge, and it will take some doing to distill it down into a publishable size. We've got a lot of work to do, and now we'll attend to that. But it was fun to do this brief little update (above).

All the best to you and the other Forum participants.

SC

[turanclancath]

Prof Collins wrote in his posting before this one :



Turanclancath:

Don't be so sure about your chronological "certainties." If you continue to take the biblical numbers with "western" literalness, you'll run aground quickly in ever trying to sychronize the biblical history with the ANE history. The patriarchal lifespans are likely honorific and/or formulaic in some way that we as yet do not understand     

____________________________________



Thank you a lot Prof Collins.!!!
That is exactly   the answer I was longing and waiting for.
Exellent and its a good  and acceptable solution.!!!!!
I agree completely with this answer !

The years/numbers in Genesis/Exodus  etc  must be not taken litteraly as Cyrus Gordon long ago remarked already.

I wish you and your team indeed good luck with the proceedings of the Dig  and hope to see a book soon be published.

By the way a strange thing as Jericho is lying so nearby Tall al Hammamm  was it perhaps also a satellite city ( a vassal )
 
Or was hejordan river a good   defendable frontier  ?

I. The circa 40 ha for Bronze Age tall etc makes it a gigantic city  with minimal ( very low guess ) 10.000 inhabitants)

Wouldd it be then a very important Kingdom ?
And isnt there change to find an Archive?

Best Luck.And Please give us sometimes some news.

Turanclancath:)

[turanclancath]

http://www.tallelhammam.com/Home_Page.html


The Official Tall El Hammam Website.

Very vey interesting.

Turanclancath:)

[DThomas]

Season Activity Reports for Tall el-Hammam are (finally!) up on the dig website given in a previous post. As turanclancath says, this IS very interesting stuff. The 2009 report is especially informative. But read them all. A good education.

DThomas

[turanclancath]

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/sodom-and-gomorrah.asp

Slowly     slowly  but steadyly  acceptance  of Prof Collins northern Sodom hypothesis arrives.

It reached now  the BAR .See the link above

A good  and exellent development .!

Dr.Thomas indeed the excavation reports are  a pure delight
in sound non speculative archaelogical science very well
balanced and careful.With both feet on the ground

I wish i wish I wish : this tread could  be reanimated i mis all the scolarly participants  and their postings who once were in this tread .
turanclancath

[Dr. Steven Collins]

In the BAR article “How Lot’s Wife Became a Pillar of Salt” (May/June 2009), Amos Frumkin has given us the kind of nonsensical speculation that exceeds any thread of myth of which the biblical writers might be accused. It seems that the only “text” consulted vis-à-vis the Sodom and Gomorrah story seems to be some Hollywood B-movie version of it, or some modern, urban, colloquial notion. Given the penchant of ANE writers, particularly the biblical ones, to labor meticulously over the geographical details of their stories (no doubt due to their familiarity with the real-world landscapes over which their tales are layered), it’s anybody’s guess why Frumkin would place his etiological (nightmarish) scenario in the southern Dead Sea region, when the Genesis (10, 13, 14, 19) text (the only ancient source for the story and its geography) clearly places the Cities of the Plain above the north end of the Dead Sea, east of the Jordan. With all due respect, Frumkin’s piece is a good (bad!) example of what happens in the minds of scholars when textual, geographical, and archaeological facts are categorically ignored in favor of the (often inaccurate) geographico-etiological musings of writers like Josephus in late antiquity. Non-biblical traditions about biblical geography should never be trusted over a rigorous analysis of geo-indicators embedded in narrative biblical texts. Frumkin’s kind of approach to biblical geography is especially egregious when one considers that most of the more lengthy OT narratives are serial geographies, and must be treated as such. Frumkin’s attempt to wed a quirky geological formation with the history of Bab edh-Dhra with the story of Sodom is weak beyond words. When “text-be-damned,” Frumkin’s article is what you get. Ironically, the same issue of BAR carries a nice little piece by 19th century scholar Henry Baker Tristram titled “Flora and Fauna of Mt. Sedom.” Tristram was principally a geographer, and an excellent on at that. If anyone bothers to read his detailed explorations and comments regarding the location of Sodom and the Cities of the Jordan Plain (= kikkar = circle, disk), they’ll quickly discover that Tristram argues cogently from the Genesis text against the southern Sodom theory (etiologically adopted by Frumkin), and concludes that Sodom and Gomorrah must be NE of the Dead Sea on the Kikkar of the Jordan (kikkar hayarden), where, not so coincidentally, several significant Bronze Age cities/towns exist dating from the EBA, IBA, and MBA (the latter being the time of Abraham and Lot). But excuse me for bringing up the idea of analyzing truly relevant data in the pursuit of biblical archaeology.

Steven Collins
Dean, College of Archaeology,
Trinity Southwest University,
Albuquerque, NM, USA
Director, Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project, Jordan

[turanclancath]

Hear Hear Hear!!!

Bravo  Prof.Collins.

Turanclancath etc

[Brianroy]

In the BAR article “How Lot’s Wife Became a Pillar of Salt” (May/June 2009), Amos Frumkin has given us the kind of nonsensical speculation that exceeds any thread of myth of which the biblical writers might be accused. It seems that the only “text” consulted vis-à-vis the Sodom and Gomorrah story seems to be some Hollywood B-movie version of it, or some modern, urban, colloquial notion. Given the penchant of ANE writers, particularly the biblical ones, to labor meticulously over the geographical details of their stories (no doubt due to their familiarity with the real-world landscapes over which their tales are layered), it’s anybody’s guess why Frumkin would place his etiological (nightmarish) scenario in the southern Dead Sea region, when the Genesis (10, 13, 14, 19) text (the only ancient source for the story and its geography) clearly places the Cities of the Plain above the north end of the Dead Sea, east of the Jordan. With all due respect, Frumkin’s piece is a good (bad!) example of what happens in the minds of scholars when textual, geographical, and archaeological facts are categorically ignored in favor of the (often inaccurate) geographico-etiological musings of writers like Josephus in late antiquity. Non-biblical traditions about biblical geography should never be trusted over a rigorous analysis of geo-indicators embedded in narrative biblical texts. Frumkin’s kind of approach to biblical geography is especially egregious when one considers that most of the more lengthy OT narratives are serial geographies, and must be treated as such. Frumkin’s attempt to wed a quirky geological formation with the history of Bab edh-Dhra with the story of Sodom is weak beyond words. When “text-be-damned,” Frumkin’s article is what you get. Ironically, the same issue of BAR carries a nice little piece by 19th century scholar Henry Baker Tristram titled “Flora and Fauna of Mt. Sedom.” Tristram was principally a geographer, and an excellent on at that. If anyone bothers to read his detailed explorations and comments regarding the location of Sodom and the Cities of the Jordan Plain (= kikkar = circle, disk), they’ll quickly discover that Tristram argues cogently from the Genesis text against the southern Sodom theory (etiologically adopted by Frumkin), and concludes that Sodom and Gomorrah must be NE of the Dead Sea on the Kikkar of the Jordan (kikkar hayarden), where, not so coincidentally, several significant Bronze Age cities/towns exist dating from the EBA, IBA, and MBA (the latter being the time of Abraham and Lot). But excuse me for bringing up the idea of analyzing truly relevant data in the pursuit of biblical archaeology.

Steven Collins
Dean, College of Archaeology,
Trinity Southwest University,
Albuquerque, NM, USA
Director, Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project, Jordan

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Precise Dating Technique Designed for Ceramics
May 21, 2009
Recently, scientists from Edinburgh and Manchester universities have developed a new method for dating ceramics called rehydroxylation, a technique they believe will allow them to identify a precise date when brick, tile or pottery found at an archaeological site was made. Once an object is fired inside a kiln and removed, chemicals in the ceramic material immediately begin to react with atmospheric moisture, effectively “recombining” with water in the air. By measuring the amount of water that the material has recombined with, the process of rehydroxylation will allow scientists to date pottery in a more precise manner.

After exposing the ceramic material to extreme heat, the “internal clocks” of the material release the water that it has combined with it over its lifetime. This is then measured, with the result that a more precise date for the object can be obtained. This new process provides a way in which scientists can date piece of pottery, while previously only bone and wood could be dated using chemical dating techniques such as radio carbon measurements.

BBC News reports on a new method of dating ancient ceramics."   
----------------------------------------------------------------
(above is part of the BAS daily E-news reports)



My challenge is for Dr. Collins to contact the Edinburgh and Manchester Universities and push them for the first on-site use of  the  REHYDROXYLATION PROCESS at or from his site, at each level on the Tall el-Hammam site (which I still believe is somehow related to ancient Hamon-gog, and NOT SODOM).   And to also have BAR do a video and magazine article  on the whole deal.   

 National Geographic, History Channel, or Discovery might be good prospects for co-production of a video as well.   

[notalent]

My challenge is for Dr. Collins to contact the Edinburgh and Manchester Universities and push them for the first on-site use of  the  REHYDROXYLATION PROCESS at or from his site, at each level on the Tall el-Hammam site (which I still believe is somehow related to ancient Hamon-gog, and NOT SODOM).   And to also have BAR do a video and magazine article  on the whole deal.   

 National Geographic, History Channel, or Discovery might be good prospects for co-production of a video as well.

Google scholars do well to apply a principle inspired by the Psalms:

They the newspapers
And they the encyclopedias
But we by the professor are instructed

[Dr. Steven Collins]

I fail to see how pottery embedded for millennia in moisture-laden soils could be dated by a process measuring moisture content derived from the air. It at least seem counter-intuitive. And, obviously, none of the networks mentioned are very interested in doing much of anything of real scientific value when it comes to the Bible. If they are ever interested, they know where to find us. They should also plan to bring their checkbook to the table!

Thanks, all.

SC