This is our Expert Blog page where you can find articles by the experts associated with the Tel Akko excavation project.
Community Archaeology, Outreach, and the Old City
Community Archaeology, Outreach, and the Old City By Elena Sesma (Anthropology, UMass Amherst) and Evan Taylor (Anthropology, UMass Amherst) Community archaeology is a spectrum of engagement and collaboration with local people who live at, in, and around a research site. Here at the Tel Akko project, the community archaeology and outreach program brings together local…
Branding in the ancient world
Branding in the Ancient World Professor Martha Risser of Tel Akko and Trinity College, talks about how ancient wine makers branded their wine amphoras to indicate, region and date of manufacture. Some even made fake brands, fooling consumers into thinking they were buying better, more well-known brands than they actually were.
One Thousand Days and Nights – Akko through the Ages
There is so much more to Tel Akko than this one season that I and others have been writing about on this blog. The tel has been excavated since the seventies, and many wonderful discoveries have been made over the years. If you’d like to read more, go to this page and have a look…
Crops of Tel Akko
In this post I am going to run through some of the most common domesticated plant species that we find in the archaeological record at Tel Akko. These taxa give us a good sense of the economic plants used at Tel Akko, particularly for food. The two most prolific crops at Tel Akko, from all…
What is Archaeobotany?
Archaeobotany is a sub-specialization within environmental archaeology that studies human interactions with plants in the past. There are several approaches to recovering plant remains in archaeological contexts, from the collection of microscopic fossil pollen, starches, and phytoliths (the silicate skeletons of plant cell structures), to the recovery of macroscopic charred seeds and wood charcoal. I…
Cows’ Ankles and Urchin Spines: A Day of Zooarchaeology at Tel Akko
My alarm went off at 4:15 am today. Work starts early at Tel Akko, and I like to run in the morning to wake myself up and collect my thoughts. When I open the lab at 5:30 am, I’m feeling alert and ready to meet the past. And it’s a good thing, too, because my…
μεζέδες
A lovely rolled-rim plate was found yesterday in the Garea (i.e., eastern part of our excavations, where Professor Gary Gilbert works). Made in Athens, Greece, in the early Hellenistic period and exported to Akko, this plate is covered with a shiny black glaze. The glaze is partly mottled to red on the underside, an effect…
The Ups and Downs of Area AB
The Ups and Downs of Area AB Those of you who have worked, or are working on the Area A excavations may possibly have wondered what happens at the western edge of the site, and why there is a big, overgrown hole there. This is Area AB, excavated by Moshe Dothan, and more specifically, supervised…
The Mysterious Claw of Akko
Strange claw found at Tel Akko by Justin Lev Tov our Archeozoology expert This season at Tell Akko, I, with the aid of colleague Liora Horwitz (National Natural History Collections, Hebrew University) resolved a mystery from the 2015 season. Near the end of last season, a gigantic claw (see pic) — the Akko Claw —…
Pondering Scapulomancy
Some days ago University of Chicago student Gwen Christy excavated a fine example of a notched scapula, that is, a (in this case) cow’s shoulder blade incised with many notches running along one side of it. What was its purpose? These are known objects in archaeological sites in the Levant and Cyprus (mainly) but no…