Teleilat el Ghassul
Coordinates: 31°48′00″N 35°36′00″E / 31.80000°N 35.60000°E
Teleilat el Ghassul (Tulaylât al-Ghassûl) is the site of several small hillocks containing the remains of a number of Neolithic and Chalcolithic villages. It is the type-site of the Ghassulian culture, which flourished in the Southern Levant during the Middle Chalcolithic period (c. 3800 – c. 3350 BC). It is located in the lower eastern Jordan Valley, opposite and a little to the south of Jericho and 5-6 kilometers northeast of the Dead Sea. Teleilat el Ghassul was occupied for a relatively long period of time during the Chalcolitic era - 8 successive Chalcolithic phases of occupation were identified there, most of them belonging to the Ghassulian culture.
The site was excavated between 1929 and 1938 by Alexis Mallon, S.J. and Robert Koeppel, S.J. of The Pontifical Biblical Institute (PBI). They identified 5 layers of settlement that belonged to the same culture. It was excavated again, between 1959 and 1960, by a PBI expedition led by Robert North, S.J. . In 1967, in an expedition of The University of Sidney directed by Basil Hennessy, 9 phases of occupation were identified on the site (phases A-I), with an additional phase, A*, that had been lost to erosion. Of these, phases A*-G the were dated to the Chalcolithic era and phases H and I - the basal layers - were dated to the Late Neolithic. He also discerned 5 episodes of campfloor occupation, interleaved with those of more substantial architecture. The topmost layer of the site had apparently been eroded by nature and by human activity, and might actually have represented several separate occupation phases. Hennessy conducted excavations on the site again from 1975 to 1977.
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