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‘Atiqot 86 (2016)
ISBN 2948-040X
A Mamluk-Period Settlement and Cemetery at Ge’alya, near Yavne
(pp. 69–110)
Amir Gorzalczany
Keywords: Mamluk period, Ottoman period, cemetery, burial, primary burial, anthropology, Turcoman, ethnic groups, ghawarna, numismatics
Excavations east of Moshav Ge’alya uncovered a cemetery and a habitation site dating to the Mamluk period. Within the cemetery, four types of burial tombs, oriented in a general west–east axis with the deceased facing Mecca, were found. These were individual cist burials, which were covered with ceramic vessels that were used in place of covering slabs. The covering vessels belong to three well-known, Mamluk-period ceramic types (mid-thirteenth–early sixteenth centuries CE): bag-shaped jars, water lifting devices (
antiliya
) and beehive containers. Other finds include meager glass finds, coins, iron horseshoes, square-sectioned iron nails, a bronze arrowhead, jewelry, spatulas, a buckle and a fragment of a two-sided bone comb. The remains excavated at Ge’alya were most probably part of a small village or farm in the agricultural hinterland of Yavne, and add important data to the ethnological picture of the region.