How To See Palestine: An ABC of Occupation

T is for Tel es Sultan

A ‘tel’ is the name for an archaeological mound created by an abandoned human occupation. In Tel es Sultan, just outside Jericho, the British architect Kathleen M. Kenyon excavated human settlements reaching back to 10,000 BCE. That’s the very beginning of the Holocene, the now concluded window in which stable climatic conditions allowed for settled agriculture and what we call civilisation.

Kenyon’s signature “stratigraphic” style allows us to see the unfolding of human possibility from that early period, via the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages to the Romans. Her vertical method emphasizes these changes over time, rather than allowing for a horizontal exploration of how people lived in any one epoch. Everything changes. An urban civilization fell c. 2530 BCE. It was not restored until 1900 BCE. The big white tourist buses arrive and take a look at what they believe to be the fallen walls of Jericho and leave. Look up at the mountains above and you realize what a mote in the eye of geological time these little ripples have been. 
 

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