Ashlar Quarries of the Iron Age in the Hill Country of Israel

The complexes of monumental buildings, planned and built partly in ashlar masonry, found at most of the royal centers of Judah and Israel, are among the most significant features of the material culture of Eretz-Israel in the 10th-9th centuries B.C. This widespread building activity required, first of all, enormous quantities of ashlar stones. Thus, the stone quarries were a primary factor in ashlar masonry, for it is at the quarry that the process of preparing the stone for construction begins. How can we locate and identify these quarries, and ascribe them with a reasonable degree of certainty to the Iron Age? What type of stone was utilized in Israelite ashlar masonry? What were the methods of quarrying? The present article is intended to answer several of these queries. The nature of the problem necessitates a cooperative effort by an archeologist and a geologist. The conclusions arrived at are thus based on data from both fields.