Gath (city) - Archaeological Site

Archaeological Site

The 19th century scholar Edward Robinson proposed that Gath be identified with Tell es-Safi, and this identification was generally accepted until the early 20th century. In the 1920s, famed archaeologist W. F. Albright disputed this identification, writing that "The archaeological exploration of Tell el-Safi did not yield a shred of evidence for the identification with Gath". Albright suggested another site, Tell 'Areini (now close to the city of Kiryat Gat) which, despite some opposition, was accepted to the point that the Israel Government Names Committee renamed it as Tel Gat in 1953. However, excavations at Tell 'Areini starting in 1959 found no Middle Bronze Age traces and the excavators proposed instead that Gath be identified with a third site Tell en-Nejileh (Tel Nagila), a possibility that itself was abandoned after excavations in the 1980s. Attention then returned to Tell es-Safi, and it is now again the most favored site as the location of Gath.

Gath, Tell es-Safi and Tel Zafit (Arabic: تل الصافي‎, Tall aṣ-Ṣāfī; Hebrew: תל צפית, Tel Tzafit) are Arabic and Hebrew names for the ancient mound now identified as Gath, one of the five cities in the ancient Canaanite and Philistine Pentapolis (along with Gaza, Ekron, Ashkelon, and Ashdod). It is a large multi-period site that is located in central Israel, approximately half way between Jerusalem and Ashkelon, on the border between the southern Coastal Plain of Israel and the Judean foothills.

Although first noted by explorers in the mid-19th century AD, and subsequently briefly excavated in 1899 by the British archaeologists F.J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister, extensive exploration of the site was not conducted until 1996, when a long-term project was commenced at the site, directed by Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Since 1996, excavations, surveys and other studies have been conducted at the site, focusing on various cultures, periods and aspects relating to the site, its culture and history, and its surroundings.

The site was inhabited from Proto-Historic through Modern times. The earliest evidence for settlement is from the Chalcolithic Period (ca. 5th mill. BC), after which there is continuous occupation until the modern Palestinian village of Tell es-Safi, abandoned during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.