Tel Qasile Excavations

Tel Qasile is an archaeological mound in the grounds of the Eretz Israel Museum, at 2 Haim Levanon Street in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. It preserves the remains of a Philistine port town founded in the twelfth century BCE on the north bank of the Yarkon River, part of the Philistine settlement of the coastal plain at the beginning of the Iron Age. The site was discovered in 1948 during construction work, and systematic excavations began in 1949 under the archaeologist Benjamin Mazar, continuing into the following decades. The excavations revealed a succession of layers from about 1200 to 1000 BCE and later, including houses, workshops, storage buildings and an important sequence of temples built one over another. The temple of about 1100 BCE is the best known, with a hall, an inner room and pillars, and finds included pottery in Philistine style, cult vessels, an ink-inscribed pottery fragment mentioning a place name, and evidence of metalworking and trade. The town is thought to have been a port on the river and a link between the sea and the interior. Architecturally, the remains consist of low stone and mudbrick walls, paved floors and the restored outline of the temple, which is displayed under protective shelter. The presentation is an open-air archaeological garden with a marked path, signs in Hebrew and English and a viewing platform, and the museum displays finds from the site inside its halls. The curatorial approach is therefore chronological, following the layers from the lowest to the highest. Conservation includes reconstruction of some walls and covering of exposed mudbrick to prevent erosion, so the state of preservation is fair, with some areas more eroded than others. Visitors enter through the Eretz Israel Museum, so the site fits naturally into a visit to the pavilions on archaeology, ceramics and copper.