Tell Fadaʿūs – Kfar ʿAbīdā: 2010 Excavation Season

Funding of the 2010 Excavation Season

Hermann Genz (Beirut)

Tell Fadaʿūs – Kfar ʿAbīdā is located 2 km south of the modern city of el-Batrūn directly on the Lebanese coast. Mechanical leveling works destroyed the western third of the settlement hill, but it was only through these construction works that the find spot was discovered in 2004.

A team of the American University of Beirut (AUB) conducted excavations between 2004 and 2011, sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the AUB and for the 2010 season by the DPV. In 2014 excavations were resumed on the site. Tell Fadaʿūs – Kfar ʿAbīdā was settled between the fourth and the beginning of the second millennium BCE. Although the small size of the site (1,5 ha) suggests that it was not a major political center, the results are eminently significant for the research of the Bronze Age in the Levant. The excellent preservation especially of the architecture and the finds inside the rooms of phases III and IV allows detailed analysis regarding the function and use of individual rooms and for the complete complex of buildings. The extraordinary preservation of botanical and zoological finds enables the establishment of a chronology based on radiocarbon dating. In addition, it allows detailed analysis regarding economical and environmental conditions of the site.

Further Information

• H. Genz et al., Excavations at Tell Fadous-Kfarabida: Preliminary Report on the 2010 Season of Excavations, in: Bulletin d’Archéologie et d’Architecture Libanaises 14 (2010), 241 – 273.
• F. Höflmayer / M. Dee / H. Genz / S. Riehl, Radiocarbon Evidence for the Late Early Bronze Age: the Site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (Lebanon), in: Radiocarbon 56/2 (2014), 529 – 542.