Between June 19 and July 5, Kinneret Regional Project held its Study Season 2009, again with strong support by members from Leiden University, analyzing and processing material excavated at Tel Kinrot during recent excavations until 2008 and at Horvat Kur during the pilot excavation in 2008. The aim was to make substantial progress towards “Kinneret II”, the final publication of Kinneret Field I, and to prepare a preliminary report on the excavations and surveys at Horvat Kur.

During the entire two weeks, both the Kinrot and Kur teams worked through different kinds of material, checked the documentation and supplemented the vast electronic database.  For the Horvat Kur team, the campaign started with taking part in a symposium on “Greco-Roman Galilee”, organized by Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee and Tel Hai Academic College between June 21-23, during which co-director Jürgen Zangenberg (Leiden University Institute of Religious Studies) presented a paper on “Exploring Galilean Village Culture. The Kinneret Regional Project Trial Excavations on Horvat Kur 2008”, co-authored by Lucas Petit, Mark van der Enden and himself (all Leiden University, Faculty of Archaeology). The paper will be published in the proceedings of the symposium. Co-director Stefan Münger (University of Berne) and Architect Bärbel Schöneweiss-Mehring analyzed the architecture of “Field I” on Tel Kinrot, a massive and exceptionally well preserved Iron Age-I living complex at the foot of Tel Kinrot, and produced a detailed reconstruction of the original building, including reflections about construction methods and a spatial analysis. The results of their work will be integrated into the final report. Several area reports written by staff members during previous seasons were checked and edited by Münger and Zangenberg, they too will form important parts of the final report.

Daniella Vos (Research Master Student from Leiden University Faculty of Archaeology ) fine-tuned the database and at the same time collected data for her research master project. Irina Gutman continued restoring pottery from Field I, this time with the help of volunteer and MA student Ellen van der Heide (Leiden University Institute of Religious Studies). Our experienced draftsperson Christa Lennert drew pottery and small finds, thereby adding important supplements to the database. Lukas Butscher (University of Berne) photographed many small finds and did an especially great job with the 82 coins found at Horvat Kur last year. The coins had been cleaned by the laboratories of the Hebrew University before the campaign and were now identified and catalogued by Zangenberg with the help of Leiden University volunteer Petra van den Berg. Assisted by volunteers Tine Rassalle (MA student Leiden University Institute for Area Studies) and Juho Sankamo (University of Turku/FIN), Petit and Van der Enden carried out ceramic and small finds analysis that will help putting Horvat Kur and surroundings on the archaeological map of Roman and Byzantine Galilee. Raimo Hakola represented Helsinki University and will explore possibilities to open the Kinneret Regional Project excavation and field school programme to especially train students of the New Testament.

We thank the fantastic staff of Kare Deshe Guest House who again made life very pleasant for us. We are grateful to our generous sponsors that made the 2009 campaign possible: University of Helsinki, University of Berne, Leiden University, Schröter Stiftung (Neustadt/Germany).