JUST LIKE THAT:
1,400-Year-Old Wine Press Mysteriously Appears in Jerusalem (Michael Zeff, Tazpit News Agency/Jewish Press).
The mystery kept bothering IAA officials, until the IAA team who took over maintenance of the site discovered that the ancient wine press had been discovered and excavated by local children.
The neighborhood kids, it appears, are avid archaeology fans and at first were simply “playing pretend” in the forest surrounding the neighborhood, until their game turned into reality.
There are additional details in this premium
Haaretz article by Ruth Schuster:
Boy digs up 1,400-year old wine press in Jerusalem. A jogger stumbled upon an unmarked dig and smelled a rat – which turned out to be an unkosher archaeological dig of wine press from the 6-7 century ADE (sic).Keeping a close eye on the site paid off: lo and behold, shortly the inspectors noticed a Haredi boy of "bat mitzvah age" – around 13 – loitering by the site. Not just loitering: he was watching closely.
"Before we could even ask what he was doing there, the boy ran up and openly and proudly told us that he and his friends were archaeology buffs and had done this excavation," says Amit Ram, the IAA archaeologist in charge of the Jerusalem district.
So the "children" were teenagers and apparenly had at least some idea what they were doing. The IAA is in a rather awkward spot, but is handling the situation sensitively:
It bears saying that unauthorized digs are against the law in Israel, pure and simple. "On the one hand it's a crime," Ram told Haaretz. "On the other hand I realized it was done in innocence, and I was touched to the core by the boy's story – which reminded me of my boyhood, at age 12 or 13. We suggested that the boy and their friends channel their energies to works for the community," he said.
The IAA does beg to point out however that unprofessional archaeological mucking about can lead to the loss of precious information and citizens uncovering some historic find should contact it.
As for teenagers with archaeological interests, they can indeed participate in digs – coordinated with the IAA, which suggests they get in touch through its website.
