Volume III of the Ramat Rahel Excavation Report
Dr. Oded Lipschits

This grant will be for publication of Volume III of the Ramat Rahel's Excavation report (after the volumes published by Y. Aharoni in 1962, 1964). The site was first excavated by Y. Aharoni in a small salvage excavation season in 1954. Between the years 1959 and 1962, Aharoni conducted four seasons, but the material from the excavations was published only in a preliminary manner without detailed plans, or section drawings. Most of the material was not published at all, and only small part of it was published, but in a way which does not permit further research.

Most of the finds and the data have been found in the past two years. The material includes:

1. 80 original field plans from 1954, 1959-1962 excavation seasons (found by Prof. Reich in the archive of the IAA, and given to us for research and publication).
2. 200 photographs from the 1954, 1959-1962 excavation seasons (some were found by Prof. Reich in the archive of the IAA, and some in the possession of Prof. Garbini of the University of Rome).
3. In recent months I found Aharoni's diary with all the loci numbers, and an album with 450 new pictures of each of the loci.
4. I also located an album with 500 detailed picture of each of the items found in Ramat Rachel: seal impressions, special architectural items, glass and stone vessels, etc., many of which were not yet published.
5. I found part of the pottery, stone and other finds excavated by Aharoni in Ramat Rahel, with the registration numbers (loci and basket numbers) in the IAA storages, and another part in some private storage holds and at the Hebrew University, Kibbutz Ramat Rahel and private people who assisted Aharoni in different stages of the excavation.

All the material is now available to me for publication (I being the holder of the license for excavating the site), and we can juxtapose the pottery with the loci numbers, pictures and field plans in order to study them again. Preliminary studies of the material shows that the publication of the data and a careful study of it, as proposed in this application, may shed new light on the history, stratigraphy and chronology of the site. We intend to publish a new research on the site, based on all this material.

This proposal also includes the publication of the final results of two of the excavations conducted at Ramat Rahel in the 1980s and 1990s:

1. The results of G. Barkay's excavations from 1984. Nothing has been published from this excavation, but I have obtained Barkay's agreement to cooperate and publish his results with the assistant of Andy Vaughn. The costs and plan of this work are attached.
   
   
2. The results of G. Suleimanny's salvage excavations, conducted at the site between 1997 and 2002. Nothing has yet been published from these excavations, and Suleimanny agreed to publish his summary report in this volume, without any further cost, since the work on the finds is at a good stage, as part of his work in the IAA.