Underwater excavation reveals lost Levantine village
Underwater excavation reveals lost Levantine village
18 hours ago
A 7,500-year-old underwater water well that has been partially excavated from a site on Israel's Mediterranean coast near Haifa will give important insights into the Neolithic society that once lived there.
Flinders University maritime archaeologist Jonathan Benjamin was part of the team that excavated and recorded the site in October under the leadership of Dr Ehud Galili, a world-renowned expert in submerged prehistory and a senior maritime archaeologist at the Israel Antiques Authority and the University of Haifa.
Submerged under five metres of water due to prehistoric sea-level rise, the excavated structure was an important water well that supplied fresh water to the ancient civilisation dated to the pre-pottery Neolithic period that lived on the Kfar Samir site, near Haifa, Israel.
"Water wells are valuable to Neolithic archaeology because once they stopped serving their intended purpose, people used them as big rubbish bins," Dr Benjamin, a leading expert in prehistoric underwater archaeology, says.
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http://phys.org/news/2014-12-underwater-excavation-reveals-lost-levantine.html#jCp