• Pl. 20A Roman Period
  Plate 20 A
  
  Roman Period burial inside northwest corner of city-wall, from west
  
  click on image to open in a new tab
  
  Cleveland (1954)
  burial inside northwest corner of city-wall from Cleveland (1954:84-87)

• Pl. 20A Roman Period
  Plate 20 A
  
  Roman Period burial inside northwest corner of city-wall, from west
  
  click on image to open in a new tab
  
  Cleveland (1954)
  burial inside northwest corner of city-wall from Cleveland (1954:84-87)

• from Cleveland (1954:84-87)

Inasmuch as the principal purpose of the expedition to Ader was to excavate the ruins of the temple discovered in 1924, it was a great disappointment for the staff to discover, when it arrived at the site, that the building boom in Ader had resulted in the almost complete destruction of the temple foundations. The stone had been carried off for new houses, and in fact a house now occupied at least part of the site of the temple. The section of wall excavated in the courtyard of this house was thought to belong to the temple, but this is not certain. Although the main objective of the expedition was thus frustrated, there was still much to learn about the occupational history of the site. Land claims were taken care of, mostly by Mr. Head, and it was possible to make soundings at almost any desirable point on the tell which was not occupied⁴.

Actual digging began on Monday, November 13, at the northwest corner of the wall which encompasses the main tell. Trenches were begun both inside and outside of the north wall at this point. The original labor force was limited to 22 men. Most of the pottery sherds found during the first day were from the Arab period, although a few sherds from Hellenistic-Roman and Byzantine times were also uncovered. The city wall was discovered to be 2.2 meters wide along the north side, in contrast to a width of 1.6 meters for the west wall.

Four days' work was expended on the corner of the city wall. During the second day's work, a fairly well preserved room, containing exclusively Roman pottery of about the third century, was disclosed just inside the northwest corner of the city. Two walls of this room were formed by the city walls themselves, which is conclusive evidence that the city wall was built before the Byzantine Period. A mass of stone had fallen from the south into the room. Among these stones—all above the pavement of the room—was a Hebrew inscription, probably from the Byzantine Period. Human bones, including a skull, were just below the inscribed stone. About two meters from these first bones were found more bones, which were discovered to be from a cist burial. This slipper-shaped cist burial contained the bones of a man 1.65 m. in height.

The following morning Mr. Head cleared out the tomb. He found that it had already been robbed, but potsherds provided sufficient evidence to date it. Among the potsherds were pieces of an almost complete Roman bowl of rouletted terra sigillata, three painted Nabataean potsherds, and half of a Roman lamp. The tomb was covered by the floor of the later room, which dated to the third century A. D., so the burial belongs to the second or early third century. A large slab remained in place over the east end of the burial. The tomb, the room, and the city walls were carefully planned and their levels taken (reproduced in Fig. 10).

Besides the area at the northwest corner of the city wall, the only significant sounding made elsewhere on the main tell was at a tower which stood outside the north wall of the city some distance east of the corner described above. Two days, November 20 and 21 (Monday and Tuesday) were spent clearing this tower, which was discovered to have two phases, a late Roman and a Byzantine. Both the late Roman and Byzantine Periods were represented by sherds found inside the tower. The Roman phase was apparently represented in the structural remains by one course of masonry on the north and west; the west part of this course meets the city wall at a right angle. The later phase is represented by a second course of stone, which coincides vertically with the first course on the eastern part of the north wall of the tower. Toward the west it diverges, so that at the northwest corner of the tower it has a set-back of some 15 cm. from the outside face of the lower course. On the west side of the tower the set-back is between 20 and 25 cm. The second course meets the city wall at an acute angle. At all points the line between the two courses is clear.

On the inside of the tower, a very crude rubble wall 75 cm. high was found resting on bedrock. Above on the north and south was a fine facing wall of dressed Roman masonry (the facing on the south can be seen in the photograph, Plate 20:D).

The height of the first course at the northeast corner of the tower was 50 cm. The height of the second course was not recorded. The north face of the tower in the middle was 1.6 m. above bedrock. The outer face of the main city wall in the center of the tower was preserved to 1.75 m. above the bottom casing.

The area investigated which proved to be of the greatest significance stratigraphically at Ader was a trench 4 m. by 10 m. (with the greatest length running east-west) excavated on the low mound to the north of the city. This trench was dug under the supervision of Dr. Gordon during the four days November 15 to 18. The archaeological records of the area were made by Dr. Albright. Because of land claims, Christian Arab peasants had to be employed as workmen within the city, and in the excavations outside the walls, it was necessary to use beclu (Bedouin) who were so totally unaccustomed to manual labor that in the time available it proved impossible to get them to work efficiently or to follow instructions. As a result, the records of the soundings on the Early Bronze mound suffered greatly.

During the first day's work in the 4 m. by 10 m. trench, fifteen nomad workmen dug down to an average depth of 80 cm. below the surface of the ground, finding a considerable amount of early Middle Bronze Age pottery and uncovering the corner of a house. The walls of the house ran at an angle of about 45° to the sides of the trench, with the inside of the house in the western part of the trench. The outer corner of the house was about 3.7 m. from the west end of the trench. The two walls were about cm. wide and had one course of rocks for foundations, above which there appeared to be traces of mud bricks. The top of the walls were approximately 70 cm. below the surface of the ground. A thick layer of burning covered the area inside the walls ; all the debris above this layer of ash was designated as Phase A. The burned layer was also found on the east of the walls, where it was between 95 cm. and 1.1 m. below the surface, except at the eastern end of the trench, where it dropped away with the talus.

The second day's work in the trench took the excavations below the walls of the house into an earlier level, designated Phase B. This level, which was a little less than 1.5 m. thick, was full of fallen adobe brick with interspersed layers of ash. No more of the rims exemplified by Fig. 13:4 were found in this level, nor were true ledge-handles found during the second day. Work was resumed the third day at an average depth of 1.6 m. below the surface. Older pottery styles were found, including wavy ledge-handles. During the morning a mud-brick wall with one course of bricks was uncovered. It had a thick coat of plaster and a foundation of small stones. A large quantity of ash was found at one point along the south side of the trench.

In the fourth and last day spent in this trench, undisturbed yellow clay was reached at an average depth of 2.7 m. The lowest level, Phase C, was very thin and contained solely Early Bronze Age sherds, including rims of the type represented by Fig. 14:12, as well as wavy ledge-handles. The total period represented in the trench was estimated at perhaps three centuries, running from about the 22nd to the 19th century B.C.

At least one day, Monday, November 20, was spent digging what was thought to be the south wall of the nearly destroyed temple or sanctuary on the northwest slope of the smaller tell. This operation had of necessity to be carried out in the courtyard of Mohammed `Odetallah's house. Nothing of much significance, unfortunately, was found to aid in the reconstruction of the temple plan—assuming this wall belonged to it—or to help in dating the structure.

The last three days of the archaeological work at Ader were mostly devoted to a shallow pit on the small tell. The director's attention had been called to this unlikely spot by the helpful Bedouin Mohammed `Odetallah, who asserted that he and others had seen a long flame of fire shoot from the pit like a flash of lightning on more than one occasion⁵. The pit proved to be a vertical shaft three meters square providing access to a cave which had been used as a group-tomb. Part of the rock forming the cave roof above the doorway had fallen in, but with its removal, entrance to the cave became possible. Considerable quantities of Early Bronze Age pottery, all belonging to Phase C of the large trench, were found in the bottom of the vertical shaft. A smaller quantity of sherds had seeped into the cave from the broken roof. The tomb was clearly used for burial in the Early Bronze Age. Several flint knives were also among the debris at the bottom of the tomb shaft.