Message #240760

[Tashiel]

Curiously, they found relatively few artifacts or other finds from the end of the First Temple period in 586 B.C.E. to the beginning of the Late Roman period (early second century C.E.). This, despite the fact that Jerusalem had been greatly expanded during the Hasmonean (167 - 37 B.C.E.) through the Herodian (37 B.C.E. - 70 C.E.) periods. The answer, they suggest, is found perhaps in the evidence that lay on top of the First Temple period house structure -- the remains of the colonnaded street known as the Roman eastern cardo (one of two 2nd century C.E. Jerusalem's main north-south streets). Here, according to the excavators, the Romans destroyed virtually all of the layers that would have contained material from the Second Temple period in order to properly lay the cardo. Constructing the level cardo, in fact, required cutting into Jerusalems's natural slope at that point, creating in effect a steep, vertical cliff on one side.

Features of this cardo uncovered by the excavations consisted of the street itself, which was 26 feet wide and paved with large, limestone slabs or paving stones in a diagonal pattern. The street was flanked by 5-feet-wide raised sidewalks composed of similar paving stones that were laid parallel to the direction of the street. Also on either side of the street and sidewalks was evidence for rows of columns, representing a pedestrian colonnade. Adjacent and parallel to this, on the western side, they uncovered the remains of a row of eight shops that had been hewn from the rocky cliff produced during the cardo construction. The date of the construction of the cardo (early 2nd century) was determined based on the finds discovered just beneath the paving stones, which included, among many other things, a coin dated to 117 - 138 C.E. and an assemblage of clay vessels dated to the late first/early second centuries (c. 70–130 C.E.) This cardo, however, continued to be used almost unchanged well into the Late Roman and Byzantine periods (second to sixth centuries C.E.), according to the archaeological report.

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