A burial grave at Tell Keila, Palestine

Abstract

The recent excavation of the Tell Keila archaeological site in the Hebron Governorate (Palestine) has revealed new burial graves among the already known in the region of Judea (Yezerski, 2013), providing innovative guidelines for understanding the scope of the funeral typology which was characteristic of the Second Iron Age and Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantian periods and their subsequent occupations. 49 tombs have been inventoried in total, among which it is worth noting the largest, number 26, which is located in the immediate surroundings of the Tell. Its rich architecture has enabled a more comprehensive study and comparison, and when the excavation campaign ended in 2018 numerous elements characteristic of the funeral customs, local ways of life at the time, and state of conservation of the construction had been identified. The geometry and spaces were exactly identified with a complete metric and photo-rectified survey of the tomb which took into consideration the limitations imposed on the work by the local socio-cultural and socio-economic context.