#aravah

1,300-Year-Old Fabrics — Still Vividly Colored — Unearthed in Israel

Filled with food waste, junk mail and wrappers, our trash speaks volumes about how we live day-to-day. While the items people discard have changed over the centuries, the revealing nature of human trash has not.

That’s why a team of archaeologists hoping to understand the lives of ancient traders decided to find, excavate and analyze trash deposits along Silk Road routes in Israel. Digging into the desert ground at Aravah, the researchers uncovered a “treasure trove” of trash, according to a Jan. 17 news release from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The “trash mounds” contained cotton and silk fabrics likely imported from China and India about 1,300 years ago, researchers said. Based on the location, features and age of the fabrics, archaeologists concluded the Aravah site was along a branch of the Silk Road’s network of trade routes.

The Silk Road refers to a network of trade routes stretching from China across the Middle East and into North Africa and Europe, according to National Geographic. Goods, such as silk, spices, tea and porcelain, were traded along the network from around 130 B.C. until 1453 A.D. The trade network also facilitated the spread of ideas, cultures and religions.

The “garbage” in Aravah included silks from China, decorated fabrics from India and cotton textiles from India and Nubia, a region in Sudan, the release said. These fabrics are still vividly colored, photos show.

One fabric fragment had a section of red, blue and gold stripes running through the center. Archaeologists attributed some of the weaving techniques to Iran and some of the designs to central India.

Another faded blue fabric boasted a gold design with checkerboard stripes and spheres. The “variety and richness” of the fabrics indicated a high demand for imported luxury goods in the region, researchers noted.

Archaeologists also found leather, clothing and hygienic items buried in the trash heap. Photos show one fabric piece with thick red and blue stripes. The finds illuminated the material culture and day-to-day lives of the region’s ancient residents and traders.

Exploring the Israeli Silk Road is an ongoing project for Guy Bar-Oz, Roi Galili, Orit Shamir, Berit Hildebrandt and Nofar Shamir, according to the team’s project website. Their research aims to “better understand the movements of textile goods, traders, and consumers” by focusing on “often-neglected smaller settlements.”

Aravah, also known as Arabah or Araba, is a region about 145 miles southeast of Jerusalem and along the Israel-Jordan border.

The Jewish holiday of Succot starts this Friday night! One of the important rituals we do on this holiday is we take four specific plants and we put them in and we put them out and we put them in and we shake them all about!

These plants are collectively known as the Arba Minim (often translated to English as the Four Species) and you are in luck because I HAVE MADE A QUIZ TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE YOU ARE

In this photo, the “Four Species” of plants utilized on Sukkot:  an Etrog, Lulav, Hadass, and Aravah.  x

The four species are  the four different plants which form an obligatory part of the rite of Sukkot according to the biblical commandment "And ye shall take you on the first day [of Sukkot] the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days" (Lev. 23:40). "Ye shall dwell in booths for seven days" (Lev. 23:42) is also enjoined.

Four Nights in the Desert Not of Forty Years

How truly symbolic. The idea of wandering around in the desert in search of something new, something free from the things that enslave our creativity and hold us down. As artists we have so many obstacles that keep us from attaining everything that we are aiming for. There are so many responsibilities pulling on us in every direction; sometimes it is even difficult to find time to paint, let…

Upon first glance the desert appears to be devoid of color and everything else that would be interesting subject for a painting. Not all deserts are the same, but there are some American artists that have given us the most amazing visions of what happens in the desert. Georgia O’keeffe, Maynard Dixon, and Edgar Alwin Payne to name a few.

(Maynard Dixon)

The ArtisTTable is going to be in a most…

Samar (Hebrew: סָמָר) is a kibbutz founded in 1976 in the Aravah valley in the far south of Israel located near Eilat. Samar is one of the few kibbutzim that continues to maintain a lifestyle consistent with the original socialist ideals of the kibbutz movement. Kibbutz Samar is primarily engaged in growing and exporting organic dates. Most of Samar’s electricity is set to be provided by a 30 m solar power tower that provided 100 kilowatts of energy, as well as the kibbutz’s heating needs.

Save Samar sand dunes

  Desert Kites

Desert kites were first identified in the 1920s by Royal Air Force pilots flying over the eastern desert of Jordan; the pilots named them “kites” because their outlines as seen from the air reminded them of the children’s toy kites. Extant remnants of kites number in the thousands, and are distributed throughout the Arabian and Sinai peninsulas and as far northward as southeastern Turkey. Over a thousand have been documented in Jordan alone.

The earliest desert kites are dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period of 9th-11th millennia BP, but the technology was used as recently as the 1940s to hunt the Persian goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa). Ethnographic and historic reports of these activities state that typically 40-60 gazelles could be trapped and killed in a single event; on occasion, up to 500-600 animals could be killed at once.

All 11 Negev kites are located in carefully chosen, advantageous and strategic settings. The kites can be divided into two major groups according to their environmental locations. Some were built at the opening of rich pasture areas while others were constructed along ancient local migration routes of ungulates. The latter kites are isolated and located at topographic ‘bottlenecks’ or cliff edges in hilly environments . Among the kites near large pasture areas three are adjacent (e.g. the Samar Kites).

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