Holy lanDfill40 January/February 2018date to the Roman period. The late archaeologist
Yigal Shiloh, who was the first to excavate these
layers, claimed that although the layers’ contents
dated to the Early Roman period, their formation
should be dated a few decades later to the era fol-
lowing the city’s destruction in 70 C.E. According to
this interpretation, Roman soldiers cleared the con-
tents of the destroyed and deserted Jewish housesdown the slope as they prepared the ground for the
rebuilding of the city.^5
The first to interpret the layers as a landfill—that
is, an intentional garbage disposal—were Ronny Reich
and Eli Shukron in their excavations by the Gihon
Spring and again later in their cooperation with Guy
Bar-Oz and Ram Buchnick during an in-depth study
of the landfill content, especially of the animal bones.
Their study led them not only to identify the layers
as garbage, but to go one step further and associate
the garbage with cultic activities performed at the
Temple Mount and in association with pilgrimage to
the Temple. Thus, this garbage provides a window
into worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.
In October 2013, we began a long-term excava-
tion project—conducted by the Institute of Archae-
ology at Tel Aviv University in cooperation with the
Israel Antiquities Authority—on the Southeastern
Hill. Our first year of the excavations was devoted
to researching the landfill and developing a rigorous
methodology so that the facts behind the garbage
would be reliable. Two main challenges had to beCAREFUL COLLECTING. To recover all finds that might be
associated with the garbage, buckets from each distinct
layer of the landfill underwent different methods of sift-
ing: wet sifting with a 0.5-mm mesh and water, dry sifting
with a 1-cm mesh (see below image), and flotation, using
water to remove dirt from objects, which allows them to
float and be separated (see left).COURTESY YUVAL GADOTCOURTESY YUVAL GADOT