Christmas in Israel: Apollonia & Tel Michal

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For many more photos, see BOT.

Photo 3 is exactly what you think it is.  I discovered the skull in a outcropping we'd known from years past as containing human bones.  In fact, in the early '90s, I brought my 5th grade class down from the international school to see them.  We have notified the several archaeologists responsible for the site.  Creepy cool, eh?!  Note video at skull.

Finding human bones on an archaeology site in Israel can be problematic if discovered by the religious community, who may close the site while the bones are exhumed and given a proper burial according to Jewish tradition.  For this reason, the discovery of human bones tends be treated discretely, meaning they are disregarded, quietly ignored, and not reported.  For recent examples of this, see Jerusalem Post, New York Times, B-NET, New Scientist, Haaretz.

When we moved to Israel in '90, there was a munition's factory adjacent to Apollonia, surrounded by barbed wired, the perimeter guarded by dogs and armed security patrolling in jeeps.  We used to hike up a ravine from the beach that led toward the factory complex where fragments of Roman-Byzantine glass kilns could be found.  Unfortunately, it was through this ravine that toxic chemicals flowed from the factory to the sea.  The effluent was bright green and smelled very heavily of chemicals.  The munition's factory blew up, literally so, in the mid-90s.  The incident even made the international press.  The good news is that the area where the factor stood is now available to excavation.  The bad news is that the ground is poisoned with chemical waste, and is undergoing is a long period of flushing, the runoff flowing, of course, through the same mentioned ravine into the sea.

Randi and I hiked up the canyon, now dry, though still carrying a strong chemical smell.  We again found fragments of the ancient glass kilns, along with many rusting metal barrels carrying who knows what.  Note photo 4.

In beach sand immediately to the south of the ravine you'll find rounded, shore break-tumbled blue glass beads from the glass kilns of Roman-Byzantine origin.  When we lived here, it was popular amongst locals and expats to collect the beads, referred to as Roman glass. The glass is still here, as shown in photo 5. 

Apollonia still has its mysteries.  Photo 6 was taken from the beach looking up toward the kurkar bluffs.  Look carefully and you'll see that the kurkar has been nicely cut, and since filled-in.  Another puzzle lies just to the south, where building stones form a floor and two walls.  What are they?  Why are they here?  What was their function?  To be determined, certainly by another generation of archaeologists.

A second archaeology site, Tel Michal, lies immediately to the south of Herzylia Pituach.  The occupation of Tel Michal predates Apollonia, being in its heyday during the Persian Period (538 - 323 BCE) and earlier in the Bronze Age (3300 - 1200 BCE).  Tel Michal is, for me, an old friend, an area where I spend dozens of hours wandering and diving in the early '90s.  The site remains undeveloped today, despite the construction of a massive marina project immediately to the west.  Note panoramas 1 (an overview of Tel Michal) and 2 (an overview of the marina), and photo 7 (a grave in a Persian Period cemetery) looking eastward toward the Herzylia Pituach Industrial Area.