General Monthly Meeting
Excavating Pella's Bronze Age Migdol Temple:
The 2001 Field Season
Dr Stephen Bourke, School of Archaeology, University of Sydney
Date: Wednesday, 3rd October, 2001
Time: 6:00 for 6:30 pm
Venue: Search & Discover Room, Australian Museum,
Collins St., Sydney (William St. entrance)
The 2001 field season at Pella in Jordan has completed the excavation of the largest Bronze Age Migdol temple ever discovered. First detected in 1994, and under intensive excavation since 1997, the Pella Migdol temple is also the best preserved of its type, with over 250 artefacts recovered from the five major phases of occupation isolated during three field seasons of concentrated excavation (1997-2001). These include gold, lapis and ivory jewellery, bronze weapons, furniture inlays, scales, weights and cymbals, pottery cultic offering vessels (including offering stands, incense cups, a unique Cow Box and ring kernoi) and stone, glass and faience vessels.
The presence of five distinct phases of occupation and rebuilding, over an approximately 800 year long use life (ca 1600-800 BC), allows study of changing layout, cult practice and associated civic functions during the time of some of the most tumultuous events of Second Millennium in the southern Levant - the Canaanite Hyksos ascendancy (ca 1650-1550 BC), the Egyptian New Kingdom empire (ca 1450-1150 BC), the Philistine era (ca 1100-1000 BC) and the Age of the Local Kingdoms (ca 900-700 BC). All these events leave their mark on the cult practice and civic history at Pella.
Major architectural discoveries, a selection of the more significant finds and some archaeological and religious parallels will be presented. Finally, a short discussion of the importance of the Pella temple discoveries will conclude the presentation.
Dr Stephen J. Bourke graduated with a BA (Hons) degree from Sydney University in 1983, and completed a PhD in the University of London in 1991. He has held posts as Senior Tutor (1987-89) and Lecturer (1990-91) in archaeology at Sydney University, and has been an ARC Research Fellow in Archaeology from 1992 at the same institution. Dr Bourke has some twenty years (1981-2001) of field work experience involving a variety of field projects in Syria and Jordan (British, French, American and Australian), excavating all periods between the Lower Palaeolithic and the Late Medieval. He has worked at Pella in Jordan since 1981 and has been Director of Excavations at Pella since 1992. He has also assumed the role of Director of Excavations at Teleilat Ghassul (in southern Jordan) since 1994.
Dr Bourke has wide-ranging interests in archaeology, including areas of studies involving the rise of the first urban complex societies, ancient trade and foreign relations, ancient religion and cult practice, human physical evolution, the archeology of the old and new testaments and ancient fortifications and the crusades.
Report on the General Monthly Meeting
by Edmund Potter
On Wednesday evening 3 October 2001 at the Australian Museum Dr Stephen Bourke (School of Archaeology, University of Sydney) addressed Society members and friends at their 1100th General Meeting on "Excavating Pella's Bronze Age Migdol Temple: The Field Seasons 1997-2001". Dr Bourke, who has worked at Pella since 1981 and has been Director of Excavations since 1992, illustrated his team's ongoing excavations and discoveries in an unbroken display of superb slides supported by an intense and scholarly commentary of enviable clarity. To do justice to the evening's presentation in this verbal summary has been a daunting duty for your reporter, whose only claim to digging success for artefacts (on dry land 170 metres above Brisbane Water) yielded a flattened but recognizable non-ferrous table fork carrying the name of some long-forgotten ocean-going vessel.
As Dr. Bourke explained, Pella is an ancient site 5 km east of the Jordan River and some 60 km due NNW of present-day Jordan's capital Amman. The site is a similar distance NNE of Jericho, a city that has been occupying the Jordan's West Bank continuously for about 9000 years. Pella has been occupied, as the latest excavations have shown, for a comparable time, justifying Dr. Bourke's description of it as Jordan's Jericho. Both places are below sea level, but Pella looks as if it has already been enduring global warming for several millennia longer than we are faced with. In the surrounding area, however, is excellent watered arable land, the name "Pella" itself being associated with horse breeding and chariot parts.
Pella is today more notably associated with its 800-year succession of religious and cult practices centred on its largest-known Bronze-age Migdol temple(s), discovered only in 1994 and minutely described to us by D. Bourke following his three seasons of intensive excavation since 1997. The suggestion is that the oldest temple (around 1600 BC) was dedicated to El (God) judging partly by an uncovered Holy of Holies where hot coals were burned with incense in a ceramic brazier. However, these earliest signs so far of temple observances were destined for adjustment over the ensuing eight centuries if only because rebuilding was forced on the faithful through three devastating earthquakes (meaning that today's extensive stone walls include none of the original roofs and supporting columns).
It helps to recall that these 800 years also produced many tumultuous biblical events in the region. For example, Canaan nearby was the Promised Land of the Israelites, and many familiar names from the tribes of the Old Testament were at their business prophesying regularly or slaying sundry enemies including Philistines. Even flights to Egypt (and back) were in vogue, especially with the Red Sea prone to roll back and the Jordan River undergoing complete desiccation also. Dr Bourke suggested consulting the Book of Judges for background details, but your reporter only had an unauthorized version to hand and this may show in the narrative style he has adopted in this particular paragraph.
Dr Bourke projected numerous slides of artefacts found during the excavations, but only a few outstanding ones can be mentioned here. For example, there was a conical vase perhaps one metre high recovered in the 1997 season. It was decorated but not artistically, perhaps because it was routinely smashed and replaced annually. The decoration would show an altar garlanded by a sacred tree and people doing things such as tugging the beard in homage, and a priest would be depicted probably forming the first furrow at festival time.
In 1999 further items emerged, including a figurine perhaps of the thunder god and a basalt statuette alas minus the face, plus a rather ugly one with a face (Philistine influence maybe?). Part of a wall uncovered behind a cult statue was related to a destructive event dated to 1350 BC. Also found was a shoebox-sized "cow box" (so called to describe its elaborate bovine embellishment) and a broken chalice, all termed by Dr Bourke as part of a priest's tool kit.
In 2001 not only were Bronze Age items continuing to be unearthed, but there were also others from the ensuing Iron Age and a different religious tradition. Representations of fruit were in evidence with appropriate offering bowls. There was a vase on its own stepped plinth, and statuary fragments from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 1700 BC. From 1300 BC examples of the earliest glass were found, and a figurine had a pollos (a priest's hat). There were seals and metal weights, indicative of social regulation (because short- changing by merchants did occur).
The contrast in the mix of bones uncovered was evident, for 2000 years of stratification had been compressed into 5m of vertical depth. There were clay pipes for conducting water to storage and clay funnels for insertion into ancestors' tombs whenever sustenance was deemed to be required. The funnels were carefully disposed of for hygienic reasons presumably. But most remarkable of all to your metallurgically-aware reporter must be a ferrous bracelet made (so Dr. Bourke said) in 1300 BC from mild steel (a product originating for us from the mid-1800s AD). This statement needs confirmation, but at least you can say that such longevity for iron must be attributed to a dry environment free of salt for 3300 years, because a steel rod will become a hollow tube of rust in a less than 20 years in a damp salty atmosphere.
The vote of thanks was proposed by Professor Peter Williams (immediate past President) who admired the cogent connections Dr Bourke had made to our modern lives, including such issues as harvest festivals, gender in religion, and social aspects of the economy and politics.