Gaza Research Project: 1998 Survey of the Old City of Gaza

This article presents results of the first season of fieldwork conducted by the Gaza Research Project in 1998. Fieldwork comprised small-scale topographic survey around the old city of Gaza and reconnaissance of other second millennium tell sites in the region, namely Tell Ali Muntar. The primary aims were to examine the chronological and topographical relationship of two proximate tell sites lying at the southern limits of the Levantine coastal plain, between the Wadi al-Hasi and the Wadi Gaza, and to assess the feasibility of excavation of ancient Gaza

The Byzantine Church of the Nutrition in Nazareth rediscovered

Although Nazareth has usually been seen by scholars as a relatively minor Byzantine pilgrimage centre, it contained perhaps the most important ‘lost’ Byzantine church in the Holy Land, the Church of the Nutrition ‐ according to De Locis Sanctis built over the house where it was believed that Jesus Christ had been a child. This article, part of a series of final interim reports of the PEF-funded ‘Nazareth Archaeological Project’, presents evidence that this church has been discovered at the present Sisters of Nazareth convent in central Nazareth. The scale of the church and its surrounding structures suggests that Nazareth was a much larger, and more important, centre for Byzantine-period pilgrimage than previously supposed. The church was used in the Crusader period, after a phase of desertion, prior to destruction by fire, probably in the 13th century