Huqoq 2023 : preliminary report

Abstract

From 29 May to 4 July 2023, the eleventh season of excavations was conducted at Horbat Huqoq (henceforth Huqoq) in eastern Galilee (License No. G-1/2023; map ref. 24500–50/75430–65; Magness 2012; Magness et al. 2013; 2014; 2016a; 2016b; 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020; 2023). The excavation was undertaken and underwritten by the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, Austin College (Texas), Brigham Young University (Utah), and the University of Toronto (Canada). Additional funding was provided by the Kenan Charitable Trust; the College of Arts and Sciences and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill; and private donors. The excavation was directed by J. Magness, with D. Mizzi (assistant director and finalizing of plans); M. Golan (administration); M. Grey and J. Burney (area supervision); J. Haberman (field photography); M. Robinson-Mohr (registration); D. Schindler (ceramics); C. Swan (glass); K. Britt and R. Boustan (mosaics); M. Wells (architecture); S. O’Connell (painted plaster); R. Mohr (drawing); V. Pirsky (drafting); C. De Brer (site conservation); M. Lavie (small finds conservation); and Griffin Higher Photography (aerial photography). The volunteers consisted of undergraduate and graduate students from the U.S.A., Canada, Germany and Slovakia. Excavations this season continued in Area 3000 (Fig. 1), where there are five main occupation phases: (1) a synagogue and an adjacent courtyard to the east dated to the Late Roman period (late fourth–early fifth centuries CE; Fig. 2); (2) a late Medieval (Mamluk; fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE) public building that we now identify as a synagogue (Mizzi and Magness 2022) and a massive vaulted structure built on top of the Late Roman courtyard (Fig. 3); (3) installations and a few scattered walls built after the late Medieval synagogue and vaulted structure had gone out of use and were pitted and robbed out (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries CE); (4) an open area with numerous tabuns, associated with layers of ash and a few partition walls (eighteenth–nineteenth centuries CE); and (5) houses belonging to the modern village of Yaquq from the late Ottoman–Modern periods (nineteenth century CE up to 1948).