Khirbet Qana Project

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History of Cana of Galilee

Cana of Galilee has a long history. Worked stone littering the site indicates occupation as far back as the Neolithic period (7000-8000 years ago). Iron Age (1200-586 B.C.E.) pottery is also evident. The Assyrian King Tiglath Pileser mentioned a city of Kanna in annals detailing his military campaign across northern Israel. And the town probably had important links to the Greek-speaking Seleucid empire, which controlled much of the area to the north and east (present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq) after the death of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.E.

By mid-second century B.C.E., a major power shift had occurred in the region when a revolt led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers (called the Maccabean revolt) established Jewish rule in Jerusalem. As their rule extended to the north to include Galilee, much of Cana probably became Jewish.

When the Romans took over the region in 63 B.C.E., major changes began to alter the landscape. The city of Sepphoris was built (and rebuilt) on the other side of the Bet Netofah Valley from Cana, and bustling trade began taking place between Cana and such nearby pottery villages as Shikhin and Kefar Hananya in upper Galilee.

With the Roman conquest, people of the town also witnessed increasing turmoil. A Galilean Jewish peasant named Jesus, who lived in nearby Nazareth, stirred up the population so much that the Romans crucified him as a criminal. The New Testament tradition has Cana housing a king’s man (John 4:46-54) and places Jesus there during a wedding feast (John 2:1-11). A major Jewish revolt took place against the Romans beginning in C.E. 66. Josephus, a Jewish historian, mentions Cana as a small town he visited during the first century Jewish Wars (Vita 16.41). People in Cana in July 67 would have seen a large Roman army march along the Wadi (valley) Yodefat at the western base of their hill to fight and win their first major battle against the Jews at Yodefat (Jotapata), only 3 kilometers away.

After the revolt, Cana grew, possibly from refugees fleeing battles around Jerusalem. But changes in the larger world were again to transform the town. Constantine gradually converted the Roman Empire to Christianity, and by the fifth of sixth century some unknown Christian group came to Cana and built what appears to be a large monastery directly over the earlier Jewish town. Numerous coins and very high-quality imported ceramic wares indicate that this group was quite well-to-do (perhaps due to profits from an increasing pilgrim trade of subsidies from the Christian emperor). Arabs then brought Islam to the region and Christianity began to fade. It was re-established when Crusaders took control of the region for about two centuries starting around C.E. 1000. On July 4, 1187, the balance of power changed again. People from Cana, with their great view of the valley, no doubt saw a large Crusader army marching to battle at the horns of Hattin (near the Sea of Galilee) against Islamic forces led by the great military general Saladin. The battle resulted in a resounding defeat of the Crusaders from which they never fully recovered. Cana passes out of history shortly thereafter and appears to become a small agricultural village until its abandonment and demise around 1837.

(Source: Edwards, Douglas R. "Sifting Through the Past: the Geospatial Future of Archaeology." Geo Info Systems 10 (2000): p.26.)

Khirbet Qana Articles

Below you will find links to general interest and specialist articles relevant to the Khirbet Qana Project. From either a PDF document or a Flash publication, click the "back" button in your browser to return here. If you are aware of any other material that you would like to see listed here, please send an email to the website administrator on the Contact Puget Sound page.

Khirbet Qana Bibliography

Below you will find links relevant to the Khirbet Qana Archaeological Project. For archaeological and technical resources, please see the general bibliography here. If you are aware of any other material that you would like to see listed here, please send an email to the website administrator on the Contact Puget Sound page.

D. Adan-Bayewitz, Common Pottery in Roman Galilee: A Study of Local Trade (Bar-Ilan Press, 1993)

D. Adan-Bayewitz and M. Aviam, “Iotapata, Josephus, and the siege of 67: preliminary report on the 1992-1994 seasons, ” JRA 10 (1997):131-165

S. Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

M. Aviam, “”First Century Jewish Galilee: An Archaeological Perspective,” in D. Edwards (ed), Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches (London and New York, 2004), pp. 7-27.

M. Aviam and E. Stern, “Burial in Clay Sarcophagi in Galilee During the Roman Period,”&�Բ��;΄��پ��ǳ� 33 (summaries of the Hebrew section) (1997):19

B. Bagatti, The Church from the Gentiles in Palestine: History and Archaeology (Jerusalem, 1971).

Dan Bahat, "A Roof Tile of the Legio VI Ferrata from Horbat Hazon," Israel Exploration Journal 24 (1974): 160-69

D. Barag, “Brick Stamp-Impression of the Legio X Fretensis,” Bonner Jahrbucher 167 (1967): 244-267

H. Ben-Nahum, ESI 14: 20, 20-21*; 28-29).

J. Bintliff, "Regional Survey, Demography, and the Rise of Complex Societies in the Ancient Aegean: Core-Periphery, Neo-Malthusian, and Other Interpretive Models," Journal of Field Archaeology 24 (1997), 1-38/

G. Bodribb, Roman Brick and Tile (Wolfeboro: Alan Sutton, 1989).

K. E. Boulding, Three Faces of Power (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990).

Chapman and Shiel, "Settlement, Soils and Society in Dalmatia," in G. W. Barker and J. A. Lloyd (eds), Roman Landscapes: Archaeological Survey in the Mediterranean Region. Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome 2 (London, 1991), pp. 62-75.

M. Cosmopoulos, The Rural History of Ancient Greek City-States: The Oropos Survey Project British Archaeological Reports-International Series (Oxford, 2001)

J. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (San Francisco: Harper, 1993).

J. Dominic Crossan and J. Reed, Excavating Jesus (Harper Collins, 2001).

D. Edwards, “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim site”. In J. H. Humphrey (ed.) The Roman and Byzantine East, volume 3, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 49 (Portsmouth, RI, 2002), pp. 101-132.

D. Edwards, “Identity and Social Location in Roman Galilean villages.” In Jürgen Zangenberg, H. W. Attridge and D. B. Martin (eds.) Religion, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).

D. Edwards, "The Socio-Economic and Cultural Ethos of the Lower Galilee in the First Century: Implications for the Nascent Jesus Movement," in The Galilee in Late Antiquity ed. by L. Levine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 53-73.

R. Frankel, “The Olynthus Mill, Its Origin, and Diffusion: Typology and Distribution,” American Journal of Archaeology 107 (2003); 1-21.

R. Frankel, N. Getzov, M. Aviam, and A. Degani Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee: Archaeological Survey of Upper Galilee IAA Reports 14. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2001

S. Freyne, “Herodian Economics in Galilee. Searching for a Suitable Model,” in Galilee and Gospel: Collected Essays (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 86-113

M. Foucault, Power and Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).

Z. Gal, “ A Stone Vessel Manufacturing Site in the Lower Galilee,” Atiqot 20 (1991); 25*-26* (Hebrew) , 179-180 (English summary)

K. Galor, “The Stepped Water Installations of the Sepphoris Acropolis,” in D. Edwards and C. McCollough, The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the “Other” in Antiquity. Studies in honor of Eric M. Meyers Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 60-61 (Boston, MA: ASOR, 2007).

P. Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

S. Gutmann and D. Wagner, “Gamla_1984/1985/1986,” ESI 5 (1986), pp. 38-41

Y. Hirschfeld, Ramat Hanadiv Excavations Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society, 2000)

P. Hordon, and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

M. Hørning Jensen, Herod Antipas in Galilee: The Literary and Archaeological Sources on the Reign of Herod Antipas and Its Socio-economic Impact on Galilee Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/215 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).

R. Horsley, Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee: the Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity University Press, 1996).

R. Horsley and J. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985).

U. Leibner, History of Settlement in Eastern Galilee during the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Periods in Light of an Archaeological Survey PhD thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2004

Y. Magen, The Stone Vessel Industry During the Second Temple Period: Excavations at Himza and the Jerusalem Temple Mount (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2002)

J. Magness, “In the footsteps of the Tenth Roman Legion in Judea,” in A. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman (eds) The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology (London and New York, 2002), pp. 189-212.

E. M. Meyers, "Jesus and His Galilean Context," in D. Edwards and T. McCollough (eds), Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods USF Studies in the History of Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 57-66.

F. Millar, "Empire and City, Augustus to Julian: Obligations, Excuses and Status," Journal of Roman Studies 73 (1983), pp. 76-96.

S. Miller, “Stepped Pools and the Non-Existent Monolithic ‘Miqveh’,” in D. Edwards and C. McCollough, The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the “Other” in Antiquity. Studies in honor of Eric M. Meyers Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 60-61 (Boston, MA: ASOR, 2007)

M. Moreland, “The Galilean Response to Earliest Christianity: A Cross-cultural Study of the subsistence ethic,” in D. Edwards (ed), Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches (London and New York, 2004), pp. 37-48.

H. Moxnes, “The construction of Galilee as a place for the historical Jesus - Part II,” Biblical Theological Bulletin (summer, 2001).

D. Parks and H. Neff, “A Geochemical Vector for Trade: Cyprus, Asia Minor, and the Roman East,” in M. D. Glasscock (ed) Geochemical Evidence for Long Distance Exchange (Westport, CT, 2002), pp. 205-214

J. Rech, A. Fischer, D. Edwards, and A. J. Jull, “Direct dating of plaster and mortar using AMS radiocarbon: a pilot project from Khirbet Qana, Israel” Antiquity 77 (295): 155-164

J. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000)

E. P. Sanders, "Jesus in Historical Context," Theology Today 50 (1993), pp. 429-448.

M. Sawicki, "Spatial Management of Gender and Labor in Greco-Roman Galilee," in D. Edwards and T. McCollough (eds.), Archaeology and the Galilee, pp. 7-28.

I. Shaked and D. Avshalom-Gorni, “Jewish settlement in the southeastern Hula Valley in the first century CE,” in D. Edwards (ed), Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches (London and New York, 2004), pp. 28-36

A. Shapiro, “Petrographic Analysis of Roman Clay Sarcophagi from Northwestern Israel and Cyprus,” ΄��پ��ǳ� 33 (1997): 1-5

D. Syon and S. Nemlich, Gamla (Tel Aviv: Golan Archaeological Museum, 2001)

M.K. and R.L. Thornton, Julio-Claudian Building Programs: A Quantitative Study in Political Management (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1989)

T. Tsuk, “The Aqueducts to Sepphoris,” in E. M. Meyers,(ed.), Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999), pp. 161-175.

T. Tsuk, “The Aqueducts to Sepphoris,” in D. Amit, J. Patrich, and Y. Hirschfeld (eds), The Aqueducts of Israel JRA Supplementary Series 46 (Portsmouth , RI: JRA, 2002), pp. 278-294.

P. Wells, The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped the Roman Europe (Princeton U.P., 1999).

O. Williams-Thorpe and R. S. Thorpe, “Geochemistry and Trade of Eastern Mediterranean Millstones from the Neolithic to Roman Periods,” Journal of Archaeological Science 20 (1993): 263-320.

O. Williams-Thorpe and R. S. Thorpe, “The Provenance of Donkey Mills from Roman Britain,” Archaeometry 30.2 (1988): 275-289.

C. Xenophontos, C. Elliott, and J. G. Malpas, “Major and Trace-Element Geochemistry used in tracing the Provenance of Late Bronze Age and Roman Basalt Artefacts from Cyprus,” Levant 20 (1988): 169-183.

Khirbet Qana Reports

Below you will find links to general interest and specialist reports relevant to the Khirbet Qana Project. From either a PDF document or a Flash publication, click the "back" button in your browser to return here.

If you are aware of any other material that you would like to see listed here, please send an email to the website administrator on the Contact Puget Sound��貹��.

PLEASE NOTE that the links below have been removed temporarily for access control reasons. However, the descriptions below indicate what material is contained in the various directories, and if you would like access to the data, please feel free to contact the website administrator at archaeology@pugetsound.edu and arrangements can be made.

Khirbet Qana, A Galilean Village in Regional Perspective: Survey and Excavation, 1997 - 2004

Khirbet Qana Annual Excavation Reports

These links provide access to the following Annual Excavation Reports:

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

Khirbet Qana Specialist Reports

Khirbet Qana Architecture
Khirbet Qana Botanical Remains
Khirbet Qana Carbon-14 Analysis
Khirbet Qana Ceramics
Khirbet Qana Ceramic Roof Tiles
Khirbet Qana Coins
Khirbet Qana Cylinder Seal
Khirbet Qana Faunal Remains
Khirbet Qana Geology
Khirbet Qana Glass
Khirbet Qana Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)
Khirbet Qana Lithics
Khirbet Qana Metals
Khirbet Qana Pilgrimage Caves

Khirbet Qana Pilgrimage Caves

Archaeological evidence from excavations conducted in the cave located at Khirbet Cana suggests that it was utilized as early as the 5th century AD as an early Christian pilgrimage shrine.

The shrine was utilized through the 12th& century and underwent numerous modifications which included the remodeling of floors, re-plastering of walls, and installation of features.

Textual references from the medieval period describe a pilgrimage cave near Nazareth that commemorates Jesus' first miracle of turning water into wine.

The correspondence of the archaeological data to the textual descriptions supports our conclusion that we have located this historic site.

Additionally, the use of the cave as a pilgrimage site is consistent with extant examples of other sacred sites in the region also associated with caves.

Although to date they have not been widely studied, caves are a salient feature of sacred geography in early Christianity.

This belief may reflect local traditions or be a product of Byzantine influences.

- Holley Moyes

(from the Flash publications below, click the "back" button in your browser to return here)

Pilgrimage Caves Photographic Gallery

Writing and inscriptions

Khirbet Qana Mapping

Below you will find links to relevant general maps as well as specialized geospatial data relevant to the Khirbet Qana Project. From the Flash and Linked Resource Mapping, click the "back" button in your browser to return here; from the Google Earth Mapping, exit Google Earth to return here.

The geospatial data is presented in Google Earth KML / KMZ format which is easily imported into any number of Geographical Information System (GIS) programs. While best viewed in the user-friendly and widely-distributed Google Earth software, other GIS packages will also display this data. If you require the datasets in another GIS, graphic or mapping format (such as shapefiles, vector or raster overlays), please contact the website administrator at Contact Puget Sound.

PLEASE NOTE that some of the links below have been removed temporarily for access control reasons. However, the descriptions below indicate what material is contained in the various directories, and if you would like access to the data, please feel free to contact the website administrator at archaeology@pugetsound.edu and arrangements can be made.

Resource Mapping

1999 IAA report imaging (slideshow)

Khirbet Qana Geospatial Data

The following links provide access to geospatial / GIS datasets in KML / KMZ format:

Overall site GIS:

Field I:

Field II:

Overall phasing
Squares

Field III:

Field IV:

Field V:

Khirbet Qana Database

The Nabonidus online database is a web application designed for archaeological excavation data storage, sharing, manipulation and analysis.

It aims to revolutionize the way we as archaeologists collect, analyze and interpret excavation data.

For more information on this integrated database system, please see the Nabonidus project webpage on this site.

For a sample of some of the capabilities of the Nabonidus online database, please see the screenshots here (when you're finished with the Flash publication, click the "back" button in your browser to return here).

For secure access to the Khirbet Qana Archaeological Project database stored on the Nabonidus online system, please send your name, email address, academic affiliation and reason for requesting access to the database to the website administrator at Contact Puget Sound.

Khirbet Qana Data Archive

If you are aware of any other material that you would like to see listed here, please send an email to the website administrator on the Contact Puget Sound page.

Khirbet Qana Field II by Locus

This link provides Field II data by locus within squares 1 through 33.

Khirbet Qana Field II by Wall Locus

This link provides Field II data by wall locus within squares 1 through 33.

Khirbet Qana Field II by Square

This link provides Field II data by squares 1 through 33.

Khirbet Qana Field II Baulk Drawings

This link provides Field II baulk drawings for squares 1 through 33.

Khirbet Qana Field II Top Plans

This link provides Field II top plans for squares 1 through 33.

Khirbet Qana Field II Stratigraphic Diagrams

This link provides Field II stratigraphic diagrams for squares 1 through 33.

Khirbet Qana Galleries

Below you will find links to general project resources, such as photographs, video clips and drawings, relevant to the Khirbet Qana Project. From the Flash publications, click the "back" button in your browser to return here.

If you have any questions or comments about the content found here, please contact the website administrator at Contact Puget Sound.