SCITECH JULY 19, 2015

UNCC archaeology team in Jerusalemunearths 1st-century mansion

UNC Charlotte team unearths lavish, lower-level rooms from the time of Jesus

Remains of early Roman mansion ‘extraordinarily well preserved,’ says dig director ShimonGibson

This summer’s find: a complete vaulted room

HIGHLIGHTS

The 2015 excavations at Mount Zion, as seen from Jerusalem's city wall. | Rachel Ward - UNCC

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BY REID CREAGER

Correspondent

Shimon Gibson marvels at a depth of irony that’s borderline mythological: While digging upJerusalem’s past, he’s also digging up his own.

The UNC Charlotte adjunct professor of archaeology has been co-directing an annual digon Jerusalem’s Mount Zion that returns him to the historic, mysterious region he firstexplored as an 8-year-old. The UNCC team is using maps Gibson made in 1975 – at age17 – as it uncovers unprecedented findings that provide important clues about life in first-century Jerusalem.

“This dig is the only academic archaeological expedition currently working in Jerusalem,”said Gibson, 57, an English native. “UNCC did some probes in the early 2000s, but it wasin 2006 and 2007 that we really started excavating.”

This summer his crew has continued to investigate a finished bathroom it discovered in2013, on the lower levels of what it believes to be an early Roman mansion. The team alsofound another complete vaulted room, again easing decades of concerns by archaeologiststhat remains from first-century Jerusalem were poorly preserved.

“These remains are extraordinarily well preserved,” Gibson said, “such that not only do wehave the complete basements of houses with their rooms intact, but also the first story ofthese houses are also very well preserved. This is truly amazing.”

Reasons for the buildings’ condition are twofold, he said: Occupying Romans destroyed theJerusalem of Jesus’ era in AD 70. The city was deserted for 65 years, until the Romanemperor Hadrian rebuilt a city on the ruins. “Then, in the Byzantine period (AD 330-1453), the buildings were filled in so the area could be flattened in order to build housesand structures on the top.”

Because of the elaborate nature of objects found in these buildings and their proximity toan excavated mansion in the nearby Jewish Quarter, “we surmise that the houses eitherbelong to aristocrats, or probably to well-to-do priestly families,” Gibson said. If this can beverified – ideally via an inscription or document – the find may provide details about thelives of those who ruled Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.

One UNCC discovery underscoring this opulence was the largest number of murex shellsever found in the ruins of Jerusalem during that period. Murex – a Mediterranean sea snail– was coveted due to a rich purple dye that could be extracted.

Gibson said many of the tools used in digs haven’t changed over the years – pickaxes, hoes,trowels, brushes used for cleaning, buckets for carrying. He credited technologicaladvances and a more sophisticated approach to digs as primary factors in the team’s finds.

An example: “In the 1970s, they excavated on the southern side of Jerusalem the remainsof a medieval gate that dated to the beginning of the 13th century. Nothing was knownabout the area outside the gate.

“Well, this season, we know because of new scientific techniques of microarchaeology,”which involves taking soil samples. “We were able to determine once and for all that thisarea was a marketplace. So outside of the gate of the city was a marketplace where theyspecialized in the selling of chicken eggs and fish.”

Another newer approach is counting pot shards. “By charting these millions, billions of potshards statistically, we can trace the movement of different types of vessels that date backthousands of years. This is a main way of dating for archaeologists.… Also, there’s all kindsof technology that can record and visualize remains that didn’t exist 40 years ago.”

Gibson says the mindset of archaeologists has evolved as well: “Forty years ago, it was allabout getting down to the bottom as quickly as possible and unearthing the earlier remainsas quickly as possible. Now we’re much more sensitive to the academic questions that arebeing asked about certain periods of time.”

James Tabor, a professor in UNCC’s department of religious studies, met Gibson during anexcavation after the archaeologist had been studying agricultural landscapes in the area ofEin Karem, the traditional hometown of John the Baptist. Tabor said their collaboration ispart of an unusually large community effort.

“Eighty percent of funding for these digs comes from the Charlotte community,” Taborsaid. “These people aren’t just writing checks. We get people of all ages and faiths who joinus on these digs,” which he said typically last about four weeks and cost $100,000 a week.

He’s excited about future possibilities. Gibson, who has lived in Jerusalem and conducteddigs there most of his life, will teach a UNCC course on the history of Jerusalem this fall.Tabor hopes public tours will be available at some of the dig sites several years down the

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road – and that thanks to UNCC’s strong ties with Jerusalem, “maybe there will even be aday when UNCC will be able to design an archaeological site there after having done theexcavations.”

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Sarah Esther · Top Commenter

The murex snails were used to dye their tzitzit blue...

Hope this English archeologist now understands that 2000 years ago Jerusalem was JEWISH.

None of the current British rubbish that Jews stole Jerusalem and Israel from the much later Arab invaders.

Jews had a kingdom and were there first.

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James Daniel Tabor · Top Commenter · Professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Thanks Esther, surely you don't think we fail to recognize Jewish Herodian Jerusalem! And you

obviously don't know much about the sterling reputation of Dr. Gibson. As for the murex snails, we

have published numerous articles on this topic, as well as the stone vessels. This is clearly a

priestly mansion. See the cover story in Popular Archaeology for starters. http://popular-

archaeology.com/issue/june-2013/article/archaeologists-return-to-dig-key-area-near-temple-mount

Reply · Like · Unfollow Post · 2 seconds ago