Israeli teens and their Byzantine church: Community archaeology at the Church of the Glorious Martyr

ABSTRACT

The excavations at the Church of the Glorious Martyr, located in central Israel, were an extraordinary archaeological project undertaken by the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Beginning in 2017, three excavations seasons took place at the site and the vast majority of the excavators were groups of young adults. The motivation to involve teenagers as the excavation's main workforce was part of a larger nationwide Israeli initiative known as Hanchala (Hebrew for endowment). The movement was developed to increase public awareness, involvement and access to archaeology. During the Church of the Glorious Martyr excavation project, thousands of high-school and post graduate students were employed and more importantly exposed to archaeology. The culmination of the project led to a museum exhibition dedicated to the site that reached the public well beyond the field. This paper will discuss the field setup, logistics, problems and ad hoc solutions implemented for community involvement at the site.

KEYWORDS:

• Public archaeology
• community archaeology
• Bet Shemesh
• Byzantine church
• mosaics
• conservation

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all the teens, counsellors and IAA staff who made the Church of the Glorious Martyr excavations a success. Your constant energy and positive encouragement allowed for the project to become a successes and model which will hopefully be replicated time and time again. Additional thanks are owed to Oree Meiri, Yehuda Kaplan, Dr. Yigal Bloch, Leora Berry, Amanda Weiss and the staff at the Bible Lands Museum for their help in organizing and running ‘The Glorious Martyr’ exhibition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Many preliminary and final publications of IAA excavations can be found at: http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/default_eng.aspx.

2 For a corpus of archaeological sites in the immediate area see Dagan (2010).

3 During the 2019 ASOR meeting, lectures were given by Gilad Cinamon, Yair Amitzur and Einat Ambar of the IAA presenting general aspects of this new national initiative and the ‘The Sanhedrin Trail’ programme, conducted in northern Israel. The abstract booklet can be found online: http://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-ASOR-Program-and-Abstract-Book.pdf.

4 The excavations of the Church of the Glorious Martyr (Permit Nos. A-8028, A-8203 and A-8503) were conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and directed by B. Storchan with the assistance of T. Golumbinof, J. Tiano (area supervisors), E. Gerber (registrar), Y. Baruch, A. Shadman and Y. Zelinger (management), N. Nehama (administration) M. Kahan, A. Hajian, M. Kunin and Y. Shmidov (surveying and drafting), A. Ganor (glass restoration), C. Amit (artefact photography), S. Freireich. A. Van-Zuiden (site conservation), Hagit Neugeborn, Cohava Peterman Lipschutz and Hadar Shalev (IAA education department) and A. Peretz (field photography). For additional information about the site see Storchan and Albag (2019).

5 The inhabitants of these monasteries make up for the majority of the Christian population in the region of the site.

6 For more information on the site and excavations, see Mackenzie (1913) and Bunimovits and Lederman (2016) with extensive references inside.

7 Planning the future development of the site did not include church representatives as the remains are protected by antiquity law and are not considered a religious site without declaration by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The discovery of the church remains was reported during the excavations to the various major Christian denominations in Israel including the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and clergy of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.

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Benyamin Storchan

Benyamin Storchan is a PhD student at Ben Gurion University and recently completed an MA degree at Bar-Ilan University. His MA thesis was focused on Beit Nattif Lamps and Moulds and their Implications Regarding Lamp Production in Eretz-Israel during the Late Roman Period. Benyamin has been a Research Excavation Archaeologist for the Jerusalem Region at the Israel Antiquities Authority since 2008. Beginning in 2017, Benyamin has directed the Church of the Glorious Martyr excavations.