ARCHAEOLOGY:
Byzantine Basilica With Graves of Female Ministers and Baffling Mass Burials Found in Israel. The 1,600-year-old church gave rare prominence to clergywomen — and the later mass graves at the site may be evidence of a pandemic that crippled the Byzantine Empire, archaeologists say (Ariel David, Haaretz).
This is a long article about a fascinating excavation. The site also has impressive mosaics that did not make it into the headline. I noted an article about an earlier stage of the same excavation in 2017.
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