TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: An article in today's Ha'aretz by Danny Rubenstein (about whom I know nothing except that he's a Ha'aretz correspondent) claims that the Temple Mount rubble heap contains no (or negligible) ancient Jewish material:

Remnants of the Temple? Not in this garbage
By Danny Rubinstein

The removal of refuse from the Temple Mount is being criticized by some experts, but does the dirt really hold any archaeological treasures?

[...]

Beneath the courts were - and to some extent still are - spaces, cisterns and arches, of which the Marwani Hall (or, as the Crusaders called it, Solomon's Stables) is the most famous and the largest. When the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, large portions of these courts were also destroyed. The arches that supported them collapsed, many stones were removed from the mountain, and the site stood deserted for hundreds of years. The Byzantines sought to perpetuate the ruination in order to prove that Jesus was right when he predicted the destruction of the Temple. Only about 600 years after the destruction, the new Muslim rulers of Jerusalem began to restore the esplanade. They rebuilt the large retaining walls on the foundations of the Herodian walls, and recreated the underground spaces and the arches of Solomon's Stables. But the new level created by the Muslims in constructing the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque was not the same as the Herodian level - it was lower. How do we know this?

The archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov gives a few examples: The golden Dome of the Rock stands over a large piece of bedrock, which is without a doubt the highest point on the mountain. All scholars agree that the Temple was built above this level. Therefore, if we dig beneath the rock and around it, there is no chance that we will find remains from the days of the Temple. Robinson's Arch, the large stone protruding from the southern part of the Western Wall, provides additional proof. This was the spring of an arch that supported a bridge that led into the Temple Mount. If the arch is reconstructed, it comes out at a point approximately three meters higher than the present esplanade around the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The conclusion is that there is no chance today of finding any remnant of the structures that once stood in the Temple courts. All scholars agree on this point. They also all agree that the arches of Solomon's Stables, in their present form, date from the Early Muslim period or later.

[...]

For a quite different evaluation, see the online article "What can we learn from this destructive dig?" by Zachi Zweig (whom, again, I don't know - and his web page isn't too informative) at har-habayit.org.

If any archaeologists out there have comments, please drop me a note.