Mamluk Archaeology

The Mamluk siege of Montfort castle provides a rare opportunity to examine one of the most celebrated but also misrepresented technologies of the Middle Ages: mechanical artillery. The castle was inhabited for only about forty-five years before it was taken and then destroyed by the Mamluks, creating a time capsule for archaeologists to peer into life in a mid-thirteenth-century stronghold and carefully examine evidence of the siege that ultimately led to its abandonment. Among the finds are a number of artillery projectiles that date to the final siege of the castle. An investigation of the surrounding topography has revealed that there are only a couple of places from which these stones could have been thrown. This rare combination of clearly datable projectiles and a topographical environment that provides a good indication of range allows for a unique quantitative assessment of the development of trebuchet technology.

The salvage excavation conducted in the al-Waṭṭa quarter in Safed (see Dalali-Amos and Getzov, this volume) yielded a large and rich glass assemblage dated to the Mamluk period. The significance of this group lies in its being the first well-documented assemblage unearthed in a dwelling area that was dated by coins and pottery to a short, specific period. Until the last decade, the publication of Mamluk-period glass was limited. Fragments of such vessels were found in salvage excavations, usually in small numbers, and only part of the material was published. The al-Waṭṭa corpus is one of the largest Mamluk-period glass
assemblages ever studied in Israel, together with three other glass assemblages from Safed: one from a previous excavation in the al-Waṭṭa quarter (Katsnelson 2014a), and two, from the medieval castle. The two excavations within the medieval castle yielded Crusader glass (Gorin-Rosen 2015) in one, and Mamluk glass, mostly dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE, in the other (Katsnelson 2017).

The Mamluk inscription on the Facade of the Main Entrance to the St. James Monastery of Jerusalem is one of the most significant ones given by the Sultan the nicknamed Chaqmaq in 1450 C.E. The inscription is one of the rare inscriptions given to the Armenians that the monastery and the Armenian monks are tax exempted and cursed be the one who renews or inflicts injustice upon the same.

During the 1982 excavations at Quseir al-Qadim on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, a corpus of well-preserved textiles was discovered in an area called “the Sheikh’s House.” The archaeological nature of this corpus presents two assets over
a museum collection: the possibility of close dating and contextual association with other artifacts. This article discusses the collection of textiles in the Sheikh’s House from these perspectives. The archaeological contexts allow an association
with other artifacts within architectural settings. A more important feature of these contexts is the presence of hundreds of fragments of letters written in Arabic on paper; this textual documentation allows a reconstruction of the individuals
who used the textiles and, more broadly, an extremely detailed examination of their trading community. On a larger scale, the archaeological narrative may present this community in relationship to the people of the Cairo Geniza, to the archaeology of Fustat (Cairo), and its mercantile role in the larger picture of Indian Ocean History.

"In September 2005 the IAA Reports series introduced a new book, POTTERY OF THE CRUSADER, AYYUBID, AND MAMLUK PERIODS IN ISRAEL. This book, designed as an easy-to-use catalogue, is a first attempt to collect and distinguish pottery of these periods.In the modern state of Israel a considerable number of sites with strata from the Crusader, Ayyubid, and Mamluk periods have been excavated throughout the last years. These sites yielded a wealth of ceramic mate­rial that is thus far not well known. POTTERY OF THE CRUSADER, AYYUBID, AND MAMLUK PERIODS IN ISRAEL was written in order to fill this lacuna. It presents an up-to-date survey of pottery from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries excavated in Israel through 2004. It is organized as a wide-ranging typology that includes the necessary scientific apparatus, 53 pottery figures illustrating the various types, and 34 color plates that vividly demonstrate the colors of the clay, glazes and decorations.
The catalogue is divided into three part: Part I presents the glazed table wares, comprised largely of glazed bowls, and less of closed glazed vessels. There is a wide range of locally produced wares, as well as wares imported from Egypt, Syria, Byzantium, Italy, Spain, and North Africa, and China. Part II deals with simple, mostly unglazed, domestic and industrial wares, as well as glazed cooking wares. Part III discusses the common oil lamps. The initial aim of the book is to assist the field archae­ologist in pottery sorting, as well as to help the interested ceramic specialists, students and readers in identifying and dating the various types.
The book is dedicated to the memory of Amir Drori (1937-2005), who was the founder and first director of the Israel Antiquities Authority (1989-2000)."

At Khirbat Din‘ila, pottery from the Crusader, Mamluk and perhaps, early Ottoman periods was uncovered. The majority of the assemblage dates to the Mamluk period (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE). This is the first Mamluk pottery assemblage in the southwestern Levant in general and Galilee in particular to be comprehensively studied, utilizing quantitative analysis and petrographic analyses. Unglazed wares are very common, comprising vessels used mainly for storing, transferring, preparing and serving food, and include handmade, wheel-made and mold-made wares. A large range of wheel-made glazed types were also found, consisting of cooking wares, table wares and oil lamps. A few imported glazed wares include Soft Paste wares from Syria and some glazed wares from Italy.

A study of the ceramic assemblage dating from the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, which was found in Stratum II of the excavation on Ha-Eẓel Street, Ramla.

In this article the fabrics and forms of local and imported wares were explored to determine the geological source of the raw materials, in an attempt to pinpoint the production locales according to the geological source of the fabrics. It is hoped that this study will serve as a first step toward a reconstruction of the Ramla pottery industry in the Mamluk period. For the imports, the tracing of the fabric composition was based on previously published production centers.
The research methods used in this study are not the traditional typological ones for classifying pottery from historical periods, but rather, a study of the fabric composition, a method similar to those used in studying protohistoric assemblages. Due to budget constraints, we could not perform petrographic thin-section analyses; rather, we employed an intermediate solution to distinguish between fabrics. All the selected vessels were examined by the naked eye and the fabric color was described according to the Munsell Soil Chart (2000). Fresh breaks of the sherds were examined under a binocular microscope at magnifications of ×20–×40. The findings were subsequently compared with former results of previous petrographic and petrological investigations for contemporary periods and fabrics. Although the highest possible degree of precision was used in this study, association of pottery types with particular fabric groups should be taken with caution considering the limitations of visual observation with a binocular microscope; nonetheless, this study offers a good starting point for further research.
The study of the fabric composition of the Mamluk and early Ottoman-period ceramics from
Ha-Ezel Street in Ramla indicates that at least three different local workshops produced
pottery in Ramla and its vicinity during this time span. Among the imported wares, five
inter-regional fabrics from Greater Syria and Egypt, five Mediterranean fabrics from Cyprus
and Italy, and another four fabrics from distant, and thus far unrecognized regions, were
identified.

Jaffa was a port of call for merchant ships from across the Mediterranean
throughout most of its long history. This port also witnessed armies, explorers
and pilgrims passing through on their way to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. These activities are well attested in the historical record, as well as
by numerous archaeological excavations. However, during the mid-Mamluk and Early
Ottoman periods (mid-14th to 17th centuries CE) maritime movement at the
Jaffa port diminished considerably and the city appears to have been gradually
abandoned. Consequently, only few written sources refer to Jaffa and hardly
any archaeological finds dating from this period have been unearthed. This paper will examine ceramic evidence from the vicinity of Jaffa, in
particular from Ramla, and will show that this evidence indicates the activity of
Venetian and perhaps other European merchants in Jaffa during the mid-14th
to 17th centuries and illuminates relationships and networks unattested in the
written record.

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In the long-running history of conflicting western and local interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, an under-explored episode is the aftermath of the Mamluk conquest of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the subsequent maritime connections with Cyprus. Material remains can illuminate these relationships and networks that are poorly attested in the written record. The papal ban on trade with the Mamluks after the conquest of Acre in 1291, restricted direct trade from Europe. The Cypriots, however, had papal exemption from the ban, and Cyprus under the Lusignan and later Venetian rule, became a reshipment point for merchandise to the Levantine coast and Egypt. Notwithstanding, despite the papal embargo, Venetian merchants were granted permission in 1304 by the Amir of Safed to moor in the bay of Acre, later they were also allowed to settle and trade in Acre and to bring pilgrims to the port of Jaffa. Archaeological evidence to the activity of Venetian and Cypriot merchants in the southern Levant is scarce and it includes mainly glazed tableware. Ceramic evidence was found in excavations at the urban centres of Jerusalem, Ramla and Safed wherein the higher-rank Mamluk population and the foreign merchants resided. In the past decade I have identified small sherds of imported vessels in contemporary rural contexts, that were apparently consistently overlooked or misidentified as local product. These ceramics arrived by sea in small quantities, with the merchants and the pilgrims that frequented the coastal ports and anchorages and clearly reflect their activities. In this lecture I will present the Cypriot glazed bowls and a local production that may have been inspired from contemporary Cypriot ceramics, within the context of the maritime connections with Cyprus and the Venetian involvement during the 14th to 16th centuries.

In 2011 and 2012, three seasons of excavations were conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the Austrian Hospice in the Old City of Jerusalem, under the direction of S.
Kisilevitz (License Nos. A-6100 and A-6433). During the first season, work focused around a large arch and vaulted room. Underneath the arch was a deep fill layer (Phase I), which yielded imported ceramics dating from the 13th to the late-16th/early-17th centuries CE. To the west of the arch, a plaster floor and another surface were uncovered (Phases IIa-b), and these contained pottery from the Late Mamluk/Early Ottoman periods (15th-16th c.). The second and third seasons of excavation provided evidence for two earlier occupational phases with associated floors and architecture, located both inside and outside the arch. The first (Phase IIIb), included a ceramic assemblage dating from the Mamluk period (14th-15th c.), and the second one (Phase IIIc) yielded pottery of the Crusader/Ayyubid period (mid-12th to mid-13th c.). The pottery presented here includes locally-produced and imported bowls, basins, cooking wares, chamber pots, amphorae, jars, jugs, juglets, sphero-conical vessels and lamps. Taken together, the results of the Austrian Hospice excavations have provided important insights into the material culture and socio-economic history of Jerusalem during the Mamluk and Early Ottoman periods. The large variety and vast amounts of imported pottery dating
from the 15th and 16th centuries is previously either unknown or unpublished from excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounding hinterland. It attests to thriving trade in ceramics during that period, as demonstrated by the presence of ceramic finewares from Egypt, Syria, Iran, China, Turkey, Italy and the Byzantine Aegean. In addition, Phases 2 and 3 supply valuable stratified information regarding the typo-chronology of locally-produced Jerusalem vessel forms of the 13th to 16th centuries, including many previously unknown or unpublished types, which can now be dated externally by the presence of the imported pottery with which they were found.

During the excavations of the Mamluk occupation layers of Tell Abu Sarbut in the Jordan valley, Jordan, more than 400 fragments of glass bangles and one complete glass bracelet were excavated. To my knowledge this is one of the largest collection ever recovered from one site, at least in Palestine. Until recently not much attention has been paid to these humbly objects. Therefore a study of form and function of these bracelets was performed as well as an analysis of their technological aspects.

Probably in 1317 a charitable road-inn, a khàn, was erected at Sukkariyya, a site that catered to the Cairo-Damascus road at least since the early Islamic period. In this article we examine a rich repertoire of literary, epigraphic, and documentary evidence that sheds some light on this village and its inn. We learn this was a khân al-sabîl, a charitable public inn, which gave accommodation to all faiths and all types of travelers. The Western pilgrims who passed this inn would have either come from or were heading to Gaza, St. Katherine's Monastery, and Cairo. We also suggest that the amir ÁI Malik (d. 1346) might be its patron, and note the possibility that the "fair mosque" seen by Felix Fabri and his companions in 1483 adjoining the inn is the one mentioned in an inscription recovered at the site in the 20th century, dating the mosque's erection to 1336. Later the village of al-Sukkariyya and its lands may have been part of an endowment of amir Fakhr al-Din 'Abd al-Ghant bin Abi 'l-Faraj, ustâdâr of sultan al-Mu'ayyad Shaykh, and surely part of sultan Qäytbäy's wa.qf lands. We see use of the khân waning around 1500, and by the middle of the 16th century, even the village was abandoned and returned to agriculture. describe how the khän may have appeared. These are our goals. In one case-namely, the trip in 1384 of three Italians, Leonardo Frescobaldi, Simone Sigoli, and Giorgio Gucci-the description is unique and sufficiently at odds with our other sources that these accounts are relegated to a discussion in an excursus.

An excavation conducted in 2009 at Khirbat Yamma (Yaḥam), in the northeastern Sharon plain, yielded a small but important pottery assemblage (see Massarwa 2017).  Aside from a few sherds dated to the late Ottoman period and associated with Stratum I at the site, the pottery uncovered in the excavation dates from the Mamluk and the early Ottoman periods (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries CE); it seems to represent a rural village. The limited area excavated, the relatively poor state of preservation of the living surfaces and the small number of sealed loci determined the methodology employed for the study of the pottery. Accordingly, the assemblage is presented typologically, and its dating is based on parallels from well-dated sites. Nevertheless, the assemblage provides new insights into the pottery, including imported vessels, used by the inhabitants of rural sites in the Sharon plain during the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods.

Gaza emerged from the Crusading and Ayyubid periods as a small town of minor importance, particularly run down by incessant military activity in the area in the middle decades of the thirteenth century. Under the Mamluk Sultans from 1260 CE onward, the city regained much of its former importance, and perhaps, in some ways, reached new heights. It is described in Arabic and other sources as a prosperous center, not least due to it becoming the capital of a newly organized province around 1300. Other reasons behind these auspicious economic and demographic trends were the massive patronage of the Mamluk elite, a burgeoning agricultural hinterland and ongoing interregional trade. Probably the most important cause for the overall positive developments in the city and its surrounding countryside was the general sense of security provided by the Mamluk regime, including arrangements to keep local nomads (not only Bedouins, but also Kurds and Turkmans who immigrated to the area) under control and to integrate them into the local economy and administrative scheme. Gaza and its region also underwent a process of Islamization, encouraged by the Mamluk authorities. The city and its environs certainly took on a more Islamic appearance, due to construction of large and small buildings. There were increased Muslim religious activities of various kinds in mosques, madrasas, zawiyas and maqams. This may well indicate an increased Muslim population in the region, both in absolute and relative terms. Gaza can be seen an as example of such trends of Islamization in Palestine (and beyond) in the period between the end of Frankish rule and the coming of the Ottomans in 1516.

A unique monumental building dating to the early part of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900–1700 BCE) was uncovered at the southern Lebanese coast by the joint Lebanese-German excavation project at Tell el-Burak. The impressive architecture of the building was exposed in eight excavation seasons during the years 2001–2011. Inside the largest room of the Monumental Building at Tell el-Burak the excavations brought to light the sensational discovery of Middle Bronze Age mural paintings in situ on lime plaster covering the inner faces of its completely preserved mud-brick walls.
This volume edited by Jens Kamlah and Hélène Sader consists of the final publications of all excavation results concerning the Middle Bronze Age at Tell el- Burak. It furthermore includes an introduction into the joint Lebanese-German excavation project, chapters related to the site and the final publication of the excavated remains of the Late Medieval Period.

One of the most remarkable symbols of Ramla is the thirty meters high Mamluk minaret of 1318, standing at the northern wall of the White Mosque. It is one of three sultanic minarets that were once part of the city's skyline - it joined another minaret by al-Nasir Muhammad dated 1314, and an earlier one by Baybars from 1268.

This chapter provides an overview of the methods, objectives, and preliminary results of analysis on the Middile Islamic ceramics from the northwest quarter of Jerash, excavated as part of the Danish-German Northwest Quarter Project. By using a contextual approach to the ceramic repertoire, both the settlement history and the urban lifestyle of a newly discovered Middle Islamic settlement can be better understood. Research of the pottery, structures, and other material finds from the Middile Islamic hamlet in the northwest quarter has demonstrated that a substancial building complex, with international connections and higher socioeconomic conditions, existed over at least several generations. As such, Jerash now represents an important new and previously unkown node of Middile Islamic activity in northern Jordan.

Pre-publication proofs of article on medieval towers in the medieval Levant published as , in M.Sinibaldi, B Major, K.Lewis and J.Thompson eds. Studies on Crusader Archaeology, Architecture and History in Honour of Denys Pringle University of Wales Press, Cardiff. 2016

Probably in 1317 a charitable road-inn, a khān, was erected at Sukkariyya, a site that catered
to the Cairo–Damascus road at least since the early Islamic period. In this article we examine a
rich repertoire of literary, epigraphic, and documentary evidence that sheds some light on this
village and its inn. We learn this was a khān al-sabīl, a charitable public inn, which gave accommodation
to all faiths and all types of travelers. The Western pilgrims who passed this inn would
have either come from or were heading to Gaza, St. Katherine’s Monastery, and Cairo. We also
suggest that the amīr Āl Malik (d. 1346) might be its patron, and note the possibility that the “fair
mosque” seen by Felix Fabri and his companions in 1483 adjoining the inn is the one mentioned
in an inscription recovered at the site in the 20th century, dating the mosque’s erection to 1336.
Later the village of al-Sukkariyya and its lands may have been part of an endowment of amīr
Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ghanī bin Abī ʾl-Faraj, ustādār of sultan al-Muʾayyad Shaykh, and surely
part of sultan Qāytbāy’s waqf lands. We see use of the khān waning around 1500, and by the
middle of the 16th century, even the village was abandoned and returned to agriculture.

Six excavation squares and three test trenches were opened. In Square A, a building was unearthed, probably first constructed in the Byzantine period and reused, probably as a stable, in the Crusader period (twelfth century); the last phase of the building (also a stable?) dates to the Mamluk period (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries). The earliest architectural stratum in Squares B and D dates to the late Byzantine or Early Islamic period, followed by an architectural phase from the Crusader period (the twelfth century); the last phase, including a water system, dates to the Mamluk period. Square C contained a large quantity of pottery, mostly from the Crusader period, but also from the Byzantine and Late Roman periods. Square E yielded fragmentary remains, and Square F yielded massive walls, closely aligned with the Crusader walls in Square A. The finds included pottery dating to the Persian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Umayyad and Abbasid periods, as well as from the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods. Most of the pottery dates to the main Crusader-period phase (twelfth–early thirteenth centuries) and is domestic in character, including mostly local ware and a few imported wares from Greece and the Aegean region. The glass finds, including dismantled glass furnaces (studied by Yael Gorin-Rosen), date primarily to the late Byzantine and early Umayyad periods.

This chapter of the book on Area I of Tell el Burak deals with the Mamluk-Ottoman remains (dating from the 13th to the 18th cent. C.E.). They have provided a modest contribution to our understanding of rural settlements from the Mamluk- Ottoman Periods. As their poor state of preservation has allowed for tentative dating only, the Tell el-Burak remains have contributed limited new information on the vernacular architecture (Houses I and II) and material culture (pottery, lamps and clay pipes) of the  period. The chapter also includes a short report on a Child Burial found in this excavation area.

Excavations and surveys at five sites in the ‘Akko Plain revealed evidence of sugar production from the 11th to the 17th centuries. The finds show the typochronological development of the sugar moulds, whose manufacture moved from the coastal region under Crusader rule, to further inland during the Mamluk period. This change is consistent with the transfer of government from ‘Akko to Safed, and is a clear archaeological indication of the active involvement of the central government in sugar production.

Excavations at Mezad Zohar, a heavily eroded medieval fort west of the Dead Sea, have revealed that it was constructed in the later decades of the 12th century and occupied until the 14th century CE. During the Mamluk period, the fort was part of the ‘barid’ network between
Cisjordan and southern Transjordan.

In Jumada II 661/April 1263 the Mamluk sultan al-Zahir Baybars visited Jerusalem and undertook various pious works, including the erection of a public khan for lodging those visiting the Holy City. Unfortunately Baybars’s khan has not survived and much speculation has been made regarding its location. The Arabic sources relating to Baybars’s deeds provide a good deal of information relating to his khan, which, once combined with western sources and archaeological evidence, allows us to suggest its probable site, its architectural type, and even range of services.

Excavations at Khirbat Burin uncovered three strata: two (I, II) of the Mamluk period and one (III), of the Byzantine–Early Islamic periods. Sporadic remains of the Persian, Byzantine, Early Islamic and Ottoman periods were found, corroborating the evidence from earlier excavations at the site. The large, well-planned buildings uncovered in Mamluk-period Stratum II (late thirteenth–fourteenth centuries) survived to considerable height. The pottery related to the Mamluk strata represents the types that were in use during that period, including unglazed wares consisting of decorated and undecorated handmade wares, wheel-made wares and mold-made wares, as well as a large variety of wheel-made glazed types, including imported wares. The site was probably a Mamluk-period village that was abandoned in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, conforming to our knowledge of a process of decline, depopulation and nomadization in the region during the fifteenth century.

Sixteen small sherds of imported pottery vessels dating to the late Mamluk and Ottoman periods (c. fifteenth–eighteenth centuries) were recovered from the residential quarter of Hâret al-Wata in Mamluk Safed,. These sherds belong to ceramic types that are rarely found in Israel, comprising types originating mainly in Italy, as well as Spain and Turkey. Only few such imports are known from the archaeological record. It seems that the presence of imported wares at Safed is related to the fact that it was the capital and main administrative center of Galilee during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. This supports the economic importance of Safed as attested in the historical sources.

As the devastating earthquake of 749 C.E. shook large parts of the Middle East, Gerasa, modern G ˇ eraš in Jordan, had for about four centuries undergone dynamic and penetrating transformations of its civic life between Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period. Also when today the Roman period ruins stand as the most impressive remains, the actual flowering periods with a peak in population were those of Late Antiquity and the early Islamic periods. Furthermore it has through a new archaeological project in G ˇ eraš over the last years become clear that the Ayyubid-Mamluk periods are much better represented than earlier thought. This article discusses the nature of this new evidence and relates it to the literary sources which mention G ˇ eraš in the early as well as later Islamic periods.

The site of Nahal Haggit is an ancient farming community situated in the Ramot Menashe region, south of the Carmel Range. Its stratigraphic sequence consists of three levels, dating from the Early Roman (Stratum I), Middle Roman (Stratum II; the main level at the site) and Mamluk (Stratum III) periods.

The remains of the Early Roman period are extremely limited It dates on the basis on the finds (pottery, glass and coins) from the first century BCE to the first century CE. From the little we could assess, there seems to have been at least a rectangular building, measuring 17 × 23 m, located at the center of the site. The miqva’ot provide a clear ethnic and chronological indicator that was confirmed by the finds, suggesting that the site was occupied by a Jewish or Samaritan family. A building of that size and location would most likely have functioned as a farm. 

- The major period of occupation at the site belongs to Stratum II of the Roman Period this stratum, dated by abundant ceramics and coin finds to  date this stratum from the late 2nd. century till the end of the 3rd. century / beginning of the 4th. century C.E.  It consists of a huge well planned structure displaying clear functional division of the space. The complex is surrounded by a square enclosure wall (89 X 89 metres and 1 metre wide), entered through a single gate.  Inside the external walls are two rows of rooms that abut the inside face around much of the complex.  These rooms interconnect and form individual functional spaces made up of a number of rooms.  Within the rooms were milling installations, baths and large quantities of finds, especially pottery.

Within the central courtyard were buildings built in at least four groups, but sub-divided into individual houses and an olive oil press consisting of a single crushing basin and two pressing units using different technologies. 
Despite the architectural similarity to the plans of castella of the limes of Provincia Arabia, Nahal Haggit  was agricultural in nature.  We reached the conclusion that the Roman period site was a rural farm settlement with meticulously ordered architecture displaying centralised planning or control.  The lines are straight and indicate planned construction rather than organic growth.  Parallels to farm buildings of this plan were absent from the Palestinian archaeological record, with greater similarity with military architecture and we know that veterans were settled in areas evacuated by the Jews following the defeat of Bar Kochba. Would is be to bold to suggest that Nahal Haggit was given to a veteran in the 2nd. century as a farm in the hinterland of Caesarea.  The farm built by the veteran was in an architectural plan with which he was familiar – the castellum. Such fortified villas, that are the direct legacy of the castrum, are known from various sites in the Roman empire.

The final period of settlement, after a long period of abandonment, is dated to the Mamluke period, from the 13th. to 14th. centuries C.E.  The resettlement of the site in the Mamluke period lacked the spatial organisation that characterised the earlier occupations.  A series of rooms of no particular plan were built clustered together in the south-east quarter of the site.  The cemetery was cut into the levels of the earlier period elsewhere on the site.

This paper presents results of an interdisciplinary study of thirty-five bead artifacts found at Quseir port sites and
presently stored in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. Many of the glass beads were
ascribed to chronologically mixed contexts of the Early Roman Myos Hormos (1st–3rd c. A.D.) and Late
Ayyubid-Mamluk Quseir el-Qadim (13th–14th c. A.D) periods. For both periods textual sources mentioned the
overseas trade contacts of the Red Sea ports, and Carol Meyer (1992) and Peter Francis Jr. (2002) suggested
the possible Indo-Pacific origin of some of these beads.While monochrome and decorated drawn and segmented,
beads should point to the Mediterranean or Middle Eastern glass workshops, monochrome drawn and more or less
rounded objects were considered by Peter Francis, Jr. as Indo-Pacific. By combining both macroscopic and compositional
analyses, in particular, using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS),
we present a bead typology and chronology of maritime bead trade subject within two main periods of Quseir
occupation.

This research constitutes a first attempt to discuss a Muslim pilgrimage site from a holistic, in-depth archaeological perspective. Our case study is Nabi Rubin, on the southern coastal plain of Israel, which was active from at least the early 15th century until the late British Mandate period and was one of the major foci of Muslim pilgrimage in historical Palestine. Pilgrimage to Nabi Rubin was characterized by a one-month-long organized celebration that took place every summer and attracted masses of pilgrims from Jaffa in the north to Gaza in the south. The research uses the site's architectural and other humancreated and natural landscape features-including historical trees and the rich material culture remnants left behind by pilgrims and other visitors, in addition to the written and photographic historical evidence related to Nabi Rubin-in order to draw additional information that can assist in interpreting the mute physical elements. The study provides a synthesis and interpretation of the site's chronology, material culture, the activities and behaviors that took place there during festival periods, and methodological aspects of the interpretation of historical trees. The results highlight the uniqueness of Nabi Rubin compared to other Muslim pilgrimage sites in Palestine, and its significant potential for an archaeological research of Muslim pilgrimage in the region.

Archaeological and geophysical prospection of the site of Khirbat al-Sar/Sara in Jordan, carried out by a team from the Polish Centre of the Mediterranean Archaeology (PCMA), University of Warsaw, has resulted in a comprehensive plan mapping all visible architectural remains. A Roman-period sacred compound appears to be a central feature of this site. Pottery collected from the surface has given a time range for the settlement from the late Iron Age through the Mamluk period. The electrical resistivity method using probe arrays that allowed ground penetration to a maximum depth of approximately 1.50 m revealed meaningful information on the spatial organization of the site. Numerous high-resistance anomalies were interpreted as a reflection of building remains.

Final report on large-scale excavations that took place at Ganey Tal, southern Israel. Discoveries include the extensive remains of what may have been a Byzantine farm specializing in wine production, Roman-period tombs and mausolea and a Mamluk fortified station.

Excavation and survey reports from Egypt make regular reference to sabakhīn digging and its disruption of the archaeological site's stratigraphy. This search for agricultural ertiliier, and the resulting destruction oo stratiied conteets, was commonplace throughout Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries. The appreciation, however, of the alue oo saltt and nitrogennrich sediments ooten ound in ancient ruins is speciically attested in medieval manuals that address issues of agricultural soil quality in Egypt. The exploitation of ruins has likely been a long, ongoing process in Egypt's history, much to the detriment of studying the medieval period from an archaeological perspective. Particularly disturbed, in many cases, are the most readily available layers at or near the surface, which contain evidence of Egypt's more recent past. In light of this history of disruption and the interpretation of sibākh in archaeological contexts, our view of late antique and medieval occupation in Egypt should be reconsidered, or perhaps, reimagined.