Chicken bones and snail shells to date the destruction of an ancient city

The destruction of the Greek city of Tell Iẓṭabba, located in present-day Israel, occurred during a military campaign waged by the Hasmoneans, a ruling dynasty of Judea, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
17 August 2022 Wednesday 09:49
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Chicken bones and snail shells to date the destruction of an ancient city

The destruction of the Greek city of Tell Iẓṭabba, located in present-day Israel, occurred during a military campaign waged by the Hasmoneans, a ruling dynasty of Judea, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Until now, archaeologists pointed out that the exact date of the attack was between the years 111 and 107 BC.

But new research has extremely narrowed the data. The analysis of animal and plant remains, combined with documentary evidence, have led specialists not only to specify the year in which this event occurred, but also the season in which it took place.

"The spring of the year 107 was the time of destruction," says Professor Achim Lichtenberger of the University of Münster. The Hasmoneans, direct successors of the Maccabees, the Jewish liberation movement that achieved independence from the Seleucid dynasty at the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, took advantage of the decline of that Hellenistic empire to put its most important cities in check.

Studies based on the analysis of ancient coins and the contemporary siege of the city of Samaria had managed to limit the date of the attack on Tell Iẓṭabba between 108 and 107 BC. But the new approach has allowed archaeologists to be much more precise, they explain in an article published in the journal Antiquity.

“We found chicken leg bones in homes destroyed by the Hasmoneans. Their analysis revealed debris containing bone deposits in the marrow that were used to produce eggshells during the spring laying season. This indicates that the chickens were slaughtered between March and June,” says Lichtenberger.

The researchers also had an element that supported their discovery. "We found shells of field snails, which are eaten a lot at this time of year," adds the professor from the University of Münster. Botanical examinations of the remains of flowers on the floors of dwellings also reveal that these plants flowered in the spring.

The analysis of the objects was complemented by the study of the written evidence. "The contemporary Hebrew scroll of Megillat Ta'anit, also known as the Fasting Scroll, speaks about the Hasmonean conquest and reports that the expulsion of the inhabitants would have been in the Hebrew month of Sivan, which corresponds to our May/June", Add.

"Only the multiplicity of analytical methods makes precise statements possible," assumes Achim Lichtenberger, who has worked side by side with Oren Tal, a professor at Tel Aviv University. “From an archaeological point of view, all this allows us to affirm that spring was the season of destruction”, they say, supported by the belief that, in Hellenistic times, wars used to take place between spring and early summer.

"Individual data taken alone would not justify determining such a clear chronology," emphasizes Lichtenberger, who, together with Oren Tal and an interdisciplinary team, leads a research project on the archeology of the Hellenistic settlement of Tell Iẓṭabba, in ancient Nysa -Scythopolis, a Greek city in the Near East.

“Only by having an overview of the results of all the analytical methods can we provide more precise information about the moment of the destruction of Tell Iẓṭabba and, therefore, about the course of the Hasmonean campaign”, concludes the researcher.