An Avian Connection

Digs & Discoveries May/June 2026

Nahal Ein Gev II site
Photo by Naftali Hilger
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Amid thousands of small clay fragments excavated at the 12,000-year-old village site of Nahal Ein Gev II in northern Israel, around a mile east of the Sea of Galilee, one stood out to archaeologist Laurent Davin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The object was just 1.5 inches tall, but he could see that it had been expertly molded to depict a crouching woman with a bird perched on her back. “When I first looked at this lump of clay, I recognized that there was an anthropomorphic form with

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