Ancient Jewish tunnel complexes in Israel

ARCHAEOLOGY: The True History of Ancient Jewish Underground Hiding Places in Israel. New finds show that the rock-cut shelters, once linked to the Bar Kochba Revolt, originated earlier as a Jewish strategy to resist all foreign encroachment (Ariel David, Haaretz).

Crucially, coins and other finds from the site [of Nesher-Ramla] date from the end of the Hasmonean period, in the first half of the first century B.C.E., to the first century C.E. The almost total lack of finds from the second century C.E. indicates the settlement had already been abandoned by then, possibly as a consequence of the devastation wrought during the First Revolt, Melamed says.

More broadly, only some two dozen coins from the Bar Kochba Revolt have been found in the hundreds of hiding complexes across Israel, [excavator Alexander] Melamed noted in a 2022 study.

This indicates that scholars may have been too quick to link them so closely to this revolt and interpret them as part of a centralized preparation plan ahead of the war, he says.

Not surprisingly, not all archaeologists agree with his conclusions.

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