Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is today one of the most widespread domesticated species and is a main source of protein in the human diet. However, for thousands of years exploitation of chickens was confined to symbolic and social domains such as cockfighting. The question of when and where chickens were first used for economic purposes remains unresolved. The results of our faunal analysis demonstrate that the Hellenistic (fourth-second centuries B.C.E.) site of Maresha, Israel, is the earliest site known today where economic exploitation of chickens was widely practiced. We base our claim on the exceptionally high frequency of chicken bones at that site, the majority of which belong to adult individuals, and on the observed 2:1 ratio of female to male bones. These results are supported further by an extensive survey of faunal remains from 234 sites in the Southern Levant, spanning more than three millennia, which shows a sharp increase in the frequency of chicken during the Hellenistic period. We further argue that the earliest secure evidence for economic exploitation of chickens in Europe dates to the first century B.C.E. and therefore is predated by the finds in the Southern Levant by at least a century. We suggest that the gradual acclimatization of chickens in the Southern Levant and its gradual integration into the local economy, the latter fully accomplished in the Hellenistic period, was a crucial step in the adoption of this species in European husbandry some 100 y later.chicken | Gallus gallus | zooarchaeology | Hellenistic | Levant

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Beth She‘arim was a Jewish town in the Galilee during the Roman period. Besides ritual baths, stone vessels, and synagogues, all present at Beth She‘arim, a key property of Roman-period Jewish settlements is underground complexes. The precise time and duration of these hiding complexes in the Galilee are controversial since there is only little reliable evidence upon which to establish a date. Recent excavations at Beth She‘arim have discovered three new hiding complexes that join another previously discovered complex. Two of the three complexes were excavated and documented, and the results shed light on the historical circumstances in which these complexes were hewn. It seems that the Beth She‘arim hiding complexes should be dated to the 2nd century CE and thus are probably related to the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Therefore, the Beth She‘arim hiding complexes constitute an important contribution to the study of the Galilee during the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

The site of Shavei Zion is an enigmatic deposit of hundreds of figurines and ceramic vessels found on the sunken kurkar ridge off the coast of the western Galilee. Despite its importance to the understanding of both maritime activities and cultic practices, the site has never been fully published. Only a part of the figurine assemblage has been analysed in the past, and the associated ceramic evidence has only been presented in limited preliminary reports. This article presents for the first time the evaluation of the entire ceramic assemblage extracted from the Shavei Zion underwater site, as part of a comprehensive publication project.