Alpha Building

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Season closes

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After four weeks of work, the archaeology team from Concordia University has successfully completed its work in two excavation zones.

In the Northeast Zone, the team uncovered a dramatic entrance to the garden of the House of Tyche graced by an inscription.

From this entry, the ancient visitor would turn south and pass through a doorway into the Entrance Hall of the house, where another inscription would hail the visitor, “Enter for good.”

In the Southwest Zone, the team excavated the Building Alpha complex by digging through 2.5 m of heavy fill. In its final stage, the structure had four rooms: two the the east separated by a window wall,

and two on the west, divided by a central wall.

Interestingly, no doorway to the exterior exists from this level and no evidence of a staircase survives.

Watch for more detail and an interim report in the weeks ahead.

Thanks to students and volunteers for their hard work, and to our readers and followers for their support.

Floors

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After a couple of weeks of digging through layer upon layer of soil and destruction fill, it is so very rewarding to reach a surface. In the case of the Alpha Building complex at Hippos of the Decapolis, floors of three rooms can now be seen.

In G10, the team revealed a small room with a bench and a watering vessel in the corner. In its last phase this room may have served as a pen for animals.

To the east is the main room of a house.  It too has a bench on the south wall, and only today started to show its floor.

A window wall separates the main room of the house from a storage area likely under a sleeping loft. That storage area to the east in E10 has a rather crude stone floor.

In its final phase the alpha building complex was a typical home of the Byzantine/Umayyad period.  However, the lower courses of the walls are built of large basalt ashlars, too large to be original to the house. So the next question arises, “What was the building previously?” It was great to reach these floors, but we must now look under them.