Investigation in Israel Reveals Wide Range of Artifacts

JAFFA, ISRAEL—Live Science reports that recent archaeological investigations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the ancient port city of Jaffa, which is located on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, have uncovered a middle Bronze Age burial, a pit filled with Hellenistic pottery dated from the fourth to first centuries B.C., coins, and pieces of Roman and medieval glass. Team member Yoav Arbel said the 3,800-year-old skeletal remains of an infant were found in a jar that may have been intended to protect the delicate remains. “But there’s always the interpretation that the jar is almost like a womb, so basically the idea is to return [the] baby back into Mother Earth, or into the symbolic protection of his mother,” Arbel said. The Greek ceramics, many of which were used to transport wine, are evidence of the trade routes that existed between Jaffa and Greece, Arbel added. The coins have been dated to the Hellenistic period; the medieval Crusader period; the late Ottoman period, from the late eighteenth into the early twentieth centuries; and the British Mandate period of the mid-twentieth century. To read about a purple dye industry that thrived for nearly 3,000 years on the Mediterranean coast, go to "Letter from Israel: The Price of Purple."