In late July, archaeologists and students from four universities in three countries - Israel, Germany and Canada - converged on a remote, blisteringly hot hilltop in the northern Negev. Their goal was to perform the first ever archaeological excavation of a Philistine agricultural village, as compared to an urban area or a tel.

Beneath the mostly-destroyed Philistine village was something the group hadn't expected - a massive late Bronze Age settlement.
Photo: Courtesy

"We had a surprise," says co-director Prof. Steve Rosen of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). "Based on prior surveys and test excavations of the site, Qubur al-Walaydah, we believed we'd find a Philistine farming village - an early Iron Age, transitional Bronze Age, farming community. Well, it was there and we found it - with evidence of lots of Philistines. Unfortunately, not much of it was left. It was situated very high up and most of it had been destroyed long ago by plowing."

That was the bad news. The good news was that beneath the mostly-destroyed Philistine village was something the group hadn't expected - a massive late Bronze Age settlement. "In terms of construction, the Bronze Age settlement was huge," Rosen says. "We have mud brick walls two meters thick and structures 10-15 meters across preserved more than a meter high, all underneath the ground. It's amazing - mud brick doesn't last, so finding this kind of thing is very exciting."

That said, it turned out to be a different dig than what they'd expected. "It was great for Gunnar," Rosen says, referring to the project's co-director, Dr. Gunner Lehmann, also of BGU. "Gunnar is a world-class expert in near eastern archaeology, so for him this was great. My specialty is in prehistoric archaeology, small scale societies, so for me it isn't quite as good."

For the 60-or-so multinational students on the site, it didn't seem to matter. "This was a study dig, designed to educate students," Rosen explains. "All the supervisors are students studying for their first degree. Eleven are from BGU and two are from Canada. It was designed to give them technical management experience, so for them, it was still great."

Four universities worked together on the project: BGU in Israel, the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and two German universities, the University of Rostock and the University of Leipzig.

Once the mental transition had been made and expectations adjusted to the new reality, the surprise find proved very valuable. "The site had been explored in the 1970s," Lehmann expounds. "Located as it is on the eastern bank of Nahal Besor, it appeared to be very rich. The surface was full of flint and pottery, some of it painted. It was clear there was something extraordinary here, something not common. So when BGU asked me to do this site, I was excited. I wanted Steve [Rosen] to join me because of his expertise in rural sites. All of the archaeological urban sites between Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod have either been excavated or are in the process, so we were looking forward to this rural site."

The group expected to learn more about rural communities in the Iron Age, circa 1200 BCE. "In an agricultural village, you'd expect to find a different kind of architecture, something more modest than in an urban area," Lehmann notes. "Cities would have big institutions, places where the king would conduct the government, several public buildings and a temple. In a rural, farming community, the culture would be different. Since the Philistine conquest took place mainly in the cities, we were curious about what we'd find in a rural area."

During the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BCE), for reasons that aren't precisely known, both the Egyptian and Hittite kingdoms collapsed, issuing an open invitation to invaders. Peoples from areas along the Mediterranean coast - Greece, Asia Minor and the Aegean area - perceived the weakness and invaded. Called "Philistines" by the Egyptians, these invading 'sea peoples' failed in their attempt to conquer the Egyptians, but instead of returning to their original lands, they stayed, settling outside the Egyptian borders in and among the local Canaanite peoples, which included the Israelites. In the Bible, the saga of Samson is the story of the Israelites' battles with the incoming Philistines, much of which took place in nearby Gaza.

Information about the Philistines was being sought, Lehmann says. "They were the immigrating population. But how many were there? What was their place in the power structure? There's a marked contrast between a Philistine village and an Israelite village. The Hebrews, Israelites, were different from the other Canaanites in both language and cultural practices. So we were looking for transitional issues: how the neighboring villages expressed their individual cultures, and how they straddled the transition from farmland to desert, city to village, coastal plain to the inner country. The coast would have been dominated by the Philistines, while the inland would be dominated by Canaanites. So what was on that interstate line?"

Lehman describes the first day of the dig: "As soon as we opened the site, it was very clear that we had the remains of an Iron Age village, dating from the 12th and 11th centuries BCE. Most of the floors and walls were on the level of the topsoil. There were undisturbed grain silos that had been re-used as refuse pits, full of pottery and other artifacts. We found the remains of a wine press and a domed oven for baking bread. It was clearly rural. The walls were narrow, and a large quantity of flint blades once used as sickle implements were found. We found examples of painted pottery characteristic of a Philistine village, plus dishes and a cooking pot. We didn't find even one shard from the sort of pottery the Israelites would have used, or even what would be used by the other Canaanites."

Speculating, Lehmann adds, "The Philistines apparently prepared food differently than other local populations. They cooked differently. They ate different things. There is a discussion underway - not yet resolved - that the Philistines ate pork, as compared to the Hebrews who would have banned it by that time. The bones must be analyzed, but cooking and eating styles were very different."