Plans to enlarge the Buchman neighborhood of modern Modi’in included a tract of pristine countryside directly south of the neighboring settlement of Re’ut. Most of the area is marked by large, barren outcrops of limestone bedrock, some bearing flint nodules. Visible on the surface of these outcrops are numerous concentrations of small, rock-cut hollows, so-called ‘cupmarks’ and basins, a number of largish, circular, vertical shafts, and lines of fieldstones placed along the edges of some bedrock outcrops. A large-scale exploratory and salvage project was undertaken on that tract (referred to here as Hills ‘A’-‘C’) on behalf of the Antiquities Authority.
Salvage excavations in 2003 and 2004 at hills ‘A’ and ‘B’ have revealed the presence of a remarkably well-preserved virtual tell (albeit one inverted into a depression rather than protruding from surrounding features), thus far evidencing a stratigraphic sequence (over 3 m in height) of seven superimposed strata (7-1), at least six of which contain remains of stone architecture. Radiocarbon determinations will, it is hoped, be able to accurately date three of them, while restorable pottery deriving from floors places them within their greater chrono-cultural context.
Strata 6-4 date from the Late Chalcolithic Ghassulian/Beer-Sheva cultural horizon while Strata 3-1 date from the initial phase(s) of Early Bronze Age IA. Thus, the site contains what appears to be a very tight sequence of occupation that covers much of the Late Chalcolithic and continues through EB IA transition, perhaps the only site known to do so yet unearthed.
The importance and potential of this site are further found in the relationship of the earliest, i.e. late Chalcolithic strata’s, links to the various activity areas surrounding the ‘tell’. This is especially true of the clusters of cupmarks mentioned above that likely date (as will be briefly argued) to the same time span.
The excavations offer new insights on subsistence patterns during the Late Chalcolithic as well as the only good, solid evidence for the morphing of Chalcolithic into EB IA culture, a process that until now has only been discernible through indirect evidence.