Israeli archaeologists on Thursday presented new details of what they said were the first tiny artifacts, unearthed in situ on the Temple Mount, ever conclusively dated to the time of the First Temple over 2,600 years ago. The discoveries were made during limited scientific excavations carried out atop the flashpoint Temple Mount in the past decade, the first of their kind since the British Mandate.As the article notes, the Temple Mount Sifting Project has been doing great work for many years sifting ancient artifacts out of the rubble that was illicitly excavated and dumped by the Waqf. I have posted on its discoveries many times.The highly sensitive Israeli excavations were conducted with minimum publicity in cooperation with the Islamic Waqf which manages the incendiary holy site. The artifacts excavated from the mount, detailed in a paper and presentations at a conference at Hebrew University, are said to include olive pits, animal bones and pottery fragments dating to the time of the First Temple, between the 8th and 6th Centuries BCE.
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But this article is about actual scientific archaeological excavations quietly undertaken on the Temple Mount since 2007. Given the nature of the site, the original strata would likely have been very mixed up anyway, but archaeological excavation can at least recover whatever stratigraphic information there is.
I know that I have said many times, No excavation on the Temple Mount until we have non-invasive and non-destructive technologies to do it. But in this case the Waqf was undertaking authorized infrastructive maintenance that required some digging. It was quite right for the IAA to use the opportunity to do some archaeology in the process.
I am pleased, but not surprised, to learn that the archaeologists have recovered material from the First Temple period in these excavations.
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