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Horbat Rosh Zayit: An Iron Age Storage Fort and Village, by Zvi Gal and Yardenna Alexandre. Israel Antiquities Authority Reports 8. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2000. vi + 247 pp., 210 figures, 23 tables, 10 plans, 1 color plate. Paper. $36.00.
Horbat Rosh Zayit (Arabic: Khirbat Ras ez-Zeitun) is a small site located 15 km east of Akko in the western Lower Galilee. It was excavated between 1983 and 1992 by Zvi Gal on behalf of several institutions. The volume under review is the final report of these excavations.
The report is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction covering the discovery, identification, and investigation of the site which the author equates with biblical Cabul. Chapter 2 is a stratigraphic report of the main fort area. The pottery and other objects from the fort are treated in chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents general functional and chronologic considerations relating to the fort. Chapters 5-7 cover the stratigraphy and artifacts from non-fort Areas A-C. General conclusions are presented in chapter 8.
The fort area contained three main strata (III-I), with two subphases (a-b) for the two earliest strata. Stratum III was exposed only in small areas, mostly below the central room of the fort, and consisted of rather flimsy walls and food processing installations. The fort itself was basically a four-room house, reinforced by additional external walls and modest glaces. A number of the internal rooms functioned as basement magazines for hundreds of store jars. The main differences between phases a and b were the raising of several floor levels after a minor destruction and the construction of an additional fortification wall which blocked direct access into the fort. Phase b was destroyed in a fierce conflagration fueled by the stores of grain and olive oil. Post-Stratum II occupation was limited to squatters eking out an existence among the ruined walls of the fort.
The pottery assemblages and other artifacts were studied in a straightforward typological manner. However, since the entire area of the fort was excavated...