Author Description

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).