The Gates of the Aruna Pass

The site of Tell Assawir (“Mound of the Bracelets”) is situated in perhaps one of the most strategically important areas in all of Israel. Located in the northern Sharon Plain at the approach to the northern foothills, Assawir controlled access to the narrow and rugged Aruna pass, the most direct route between the age-old coastal road and the inland Jezreel corridor. Assawir has thus seen its fair share of history, most notably in 1482 B.C. when Thutmosis III of Egypt used the Aruna pass to gain a decisive victory over a large coalition of Canaanite chiefs that had fortified themselves at Megiddo. The victory would ultimately help the Egyptian New Kingdom pharaohs establish hegemony over southern Canaan for the next three hundred years.

Although scholars still debate the site’s ancient name and the specific role it played in the military strike of Thutmosis III, there is little question that it was a major fortified site of the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Recent excavations have shown that the large mounded site of Assawir (measuring some 15 acres) was established in the early second millennium B.C. and was protected by a steep-sided earthen rampart and glacis, a typical feature of Bronze Age Canaanite towns. The site continued to be occupied in the Iron Age I after the Egyptian empire had collapsed and, by the Iron II, Assawir was a major town of the northern kingdom of Israel.

This summer, you can help archaeologists from the University of Haifa dig deeper into this fascinating but still poorly understood site. The goals for this season will be to locate and excavate the Middle Bronze Age palace, further explore the city’s Bronze Age fortification system and penetrate the mound’s Iron Age I strata.

Volunteers will be housed three to four to a room in the nearby and well-equipped Kibbutz Barkai.