The purpose of the present presentation is, on the one hand to acquaint the audience with the ongoing rescue and salvage excavations in the southwest part of the Buchman neighborhood that is presently under construction in Modi’in and, on the other hand to highlight some of the excavation results which have direction bearing on the transition from the Late Chalcolithic period around the end of the 5th until the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE, to the early Early Bronze Age I period around the 2nd quarter of the 4th millennium BCE. The processes leading up to this cultural transition are still imperfectly understood, and the time span during which it took place has been described in the recent past as a “lost horizon” (see Braun 1989, 2000). The present excavations at Modi’in appear to record this very transition from the latest Chalcolithic to the earliest EB IA period in a very fine-grained time scale, and eventually will provide archeologists with a better understanding of this still illusive period.

References
Braun, E. 1989 The Transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age in Northern
Israel and Transjordan: Is There a Missing Link? Pp. 7-28 in P. de Miroschedji (ed.), L’urbanisation de la Palestine à l’âge du bronze ancien: Bilan et perspectives des recherches actualles. BAR 527 (IS). Oxford.

Braun, E. 2000. Area G at Afridar, Palmahim Quarry 3 and the Earliest Pottery of the
Early Bronze Age I: Part of the ‘Missing Link”. Pp. 113-128 in G. Philip and D. Baird (eds.), Ceramics and Change in the Early Bronze Age of the Southern Levant. Sheffield Academic Press. Sheffield.