High Place Ritual Circle in Israel (1100 BCE)

(July 9, 2022) These small ritual circles seem to have been common serving clusters of small villages but now very few remain. The Hebrew Scriptures describe high places (bamot) and sacred stones (masaboth) as being located "upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree" (Deut 12:2-3; 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4, 17:10-11; Isa 65:7; Jer 2:20, 17:2; Ezek 6:13, 20:28; Hos 4:13).

This well preserved one was found accidentally in Northern Israel. The site is surrounded by villages established during the Iron Age 1 period (1180 to 1000 BCE).

The only ritual objects found were a folded bronze mirror, a bronze bull, and a flint sickle indicating the rituals involved the sun (Hu), rain (Ba'al) and grain harvesting. These were found beside the outer wall. A mirror would have been used in some sort of sun ritual for reflecting its rays. That it was folded and hidden suggests it was deliberately destroyed when the ritual circle was closed prior to abandonment.

Inside the enclosure were found a few cooking pots indicating meals were prepared within it. Flint tools were also found. Of the 96 flints recovered, 24 are tools, 12 are cores, and 60 fall into various categories. These tools included three perforators, 5 scrapers, 1 sickle, 9 notches and denticulates, 2 multipurpose tools (a nosed scraper and a notched borer), 2 miscellaneous retouched pieces, 1 truncated piece, and 1 small scraper resembling a thumbnail scraper. These other tools indicate leathers were assembled into objects.

The high number of flake cores implies that these tools (except the sickle) were produced on the site. As is common in Bronze and Iron Age sites, no blade cores were recovered, implying that the sickle, manufactured on a blade segment, was imported.

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