Japan: Cultural Heritage Management
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Jaffa and the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project Aaron Burke1 and Martin Peilsto¨cker2 1 Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Department, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2 Seminar fu¨r Altes Testament und Biblische Archa¨ologie, Johannes Gutenberg Universita¨t Mainz, Mainz, Germany
Introduction Jaffa (Canaanite Yapu; Heb. Yafo; Gk. Joppa; Ar. Yafa) is situated south of the modern city of Tel Aviv on the coast of Israel between Caesarea Maritima and Gaza, about 60 km northwest of Jerusalem. The site consists of an ancient tell of approximately 3 ha built on a kurkar sandstone ridge overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and during various periods also featured a sprawling lower city of as much as 6 ha. As Jaffa is an important site and port along the coast of the southern Levant, its occupation reflects nearly every major period from the Middle Bronze Age to the present, while the lower city experienced intermittent periods of substantial growth from the Hellenistic period onward. The mound’s stratigraphy was accessible following the abandonment of buildings in the center of the town during the British Mandate (1917–1947). The Ottoman period buildings on the upper part of the mound were destroyed or fell into ruins as a result of the British
counterinsurgency in 1936 known as Operation Anchor (Fig. 1). Consequently, the abandonment of structures on the mound of Tel Yafo permitted archaeological exploration, which began in 1948 under the auspices of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and has continued to the present by various research institutions including the University of Leeds (1952), Tel Aviv University (1997, 1999), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) under the auspices of the JCHP (since 2007). Owing to antiquities legislation salvage excavations since 1985 have also been carried out by the IAA (and more recently also by subcontracting Israeli universities) primarily along the mound’s northern, eastern, and southern slopes in what is properly characterized as the lower city. Taken together these excavations reveal a number of important discoveries connecting Jaffa’s cultural heritage with that of the coastal plain, highlands to the east, and the Mediterranean basin as well as Europe. The earliest evidence for occupation at the site is dated to the late fourth millennium or the early Bronze I (c. 3500 to 3000 BCE), which consists of ceramic remains. It is possible that some of these ceramics are also indicative of the transition from the late Chalcolithic. During the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1900 to 1530 BCE), the site was inhabited by a population characterized as Amorite, who constructed the site’s first defenses, an earthen rampart crowned by a mudbrick wall. Following the transition to the Late
C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
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Jaffa and the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project
Jaffa and the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project, Fig. 1 Aer
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