Archaeologists have published the contents of a small burial cave discovered on the northern slope of Mount Nebi Samwil, about 700 m south of biblical Gibeon and eight kilometres northwest of Jerusalem. The investigation, led by Dalit Regev, Yevgeny Aharonovitch, David Ben-Shlomo and Yossi Nagar, centred on “Cave 3,” a natural cavity enlarged for funerary use in the Late Bronze Age. Among several vessels and fragmentary human remains, the team recorded a Base Ring–style “bilbil” jug whose fabric tests point to Levantine clay. The vessel carries parallel painted bands rendered as rows of white dots; the study notes that no equivalent decoration is known from Cyprus or the southern Levant, making the jug the most unexpected object in the assemblage.
Setting of the find
The cave lies on the south bank of Wadi ʿAmir, inside a cluster of six hewn units first exposed in 2007 during salvage work along the security barrier. Though archaeological layers from several periods occur on the slope, no Late Bronze Age settlement layer is recorded at Gibeon or at Nebi Samwil itself; Late Bronze burials in the Judean hills are scarce and usually isolated. Cave 3 therefore adds a rare point of evidence for life in the highlands during the fifteenth–thirteenth centuries BCE.
Description of the cave and interments
Cave 3 measures roughly triangular in plan, with a six-metre entrance width and interior height varying between 0.8 m and 1.55 m. Late Bronze deposits were found 0.55 m above the floor under eroded fill. One skeleton remained articulated, orientated head-west; scattered bones of at least three more adults lay nearby. Osteological markers identify the articulated individual as male, aged twenty to thirty years, while the additional bones represent adults between roughly twenty and over thirty years at death.
Pottery assemblage
Eleven vessels and sherds were sampled for thin-section petrography. Group 1 (eight items: bowls, jugs and lamps) consists of Moẓa-marl clay typical of local hill-country production. Group 2 comprises three Cypriot-type pieces, including the bilbil, made of a fired alluvial marl with kurkar and calcareous inclusions that differs from established Cypriot fabrics and resembles deposits in the Shephelah. Petrographers therefore classify the jug as a locally produced imitation rather than an import, although chemical testing may refine provenance.
Details of the bilbil jug
Recovered in three joining fragments, the jug preserves a long neck with a ridge at its base, a handle from mid-neck to shoulder, and a flaring ring base—all standard elements of Cypriot Base Ring form. Its painted treatment differs: short white dots form continuous lines around the neck and body. The authors state that such ornament has “no parallel” in published Cypriot or Levantine corpora and suggest manufacture in a specialised inland workshop.
Implications for production and trade
Base Ring pottery is common at coastal sites, where low-fidelity copies also appear. The Nebi Samwil jug diverges by replicating Cypriot proportions in fine fabric at an upland locality. Petrographic data indicate that the clay is not from the central hills but still Levantine, perhaps the Lakhish area in the Shephelah; if so, potters in the lowlands may have supplied inland consumers along regional tracks that linked the coast with Jerusalem and Shechem. The find supplies the first material sign of such interaction for the Judean hill country.
Context of Late Bronze burials
Middle Bronze cemeteries are frequent in the central hills, yet Late Bronze tombs number only a handful. Apart from three graves previously documented at Gibeon and several examples near Shechem, most known burial caves of this horizon lie on the coast or in the Jezreel Valley. Researchers regard Cave 3 as fitting the LB I model of multi-individual interments located outside habitation zones, a pattern also seen in Naḥal ʿIron and east Samaria caves.
The Cave 3 assemblage demonstrates that inland communities participated in the wider exchange of Cypriot-style ceramics during the Late Bronze Age. Petrography of the white-dot bilbil confirms local production, and its previously undocumented decoration underscores experimental output by Levantine potters. Combined with the scarcity of contemporary hill-country burials, the material enriches discussions of population, craft and commerce in the Judean uplands without extending beyond the data presented by the excavators.
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