Overview
- Excavators this season exposed the structure’s southern wall, allowing the team to reconstruct the full east–west footprint of a large Iron Age building and better assess its layout and size.
- Archaeologists recovered objects linked to worship near the building, including altar horns, ceramic pomegranates and murex shells, and they say the pattern of ritual finds supports a cultic interpretation.
- Earlier work at the site documented more than 100,000 animal bones with butchery patterns biased to the animals’ right side, a detail researchers note is consistent with priestly sacrificial prescriptions in Leviticus.
- The dig also uncovered northern fortification walls and a bent-axis gate complex with multiple rooms, and the team has suggested the gate may match the biblical description of the site where the priest Eli sat.
- Investigators found three large Canaanite storage jars with charred olives, wheat and lentils and plan radiocarbon dating and peer-reviewed analysis to fix the layers’ dates while stressing that no Ark has been found and the Tabernacle identification remains unproven.