07-08-2006, 10:46 AM
Quote:As far as I know, Yigal Yadin has done some research.I'm not sure if Yadin actually investigated the site.
Apparently, an Israeli scholar called Yeivin surveyed the remains in the early/mid 1940s -- if you can find his book, The War of Bar-Kochba (Jerusalem, 1952; in Hebrew), you might get some useable images.
I confess that my interest is limited to the Roman siege wall.
The well-known siegecraft expert Adolf Schulten visited Bettir in the 1930s when he was studying Masada, and made several useful observations along the "circumvallation". In particular, he noted that the building of a railway had already disturbed the area to the north.
Since then, there have been various "disturbances" across the entire site, beginning in 1948 (predictably) when the hill (Kh. el-Yahud) was used as a border look-out post, so any archaeology would have been extensively disturbed by the Jordanian army.
Then, following 1967, the modern village of Bettir sprang up, with associated forestry and olive cultivation across the entire site.
In addition, when the ancient association with Betar (or Beth-Ter) became widely known, the site apparently suffered badly from treasure hunting.
In the 1980s, Ussishkin did limited excavations {edit: in my previous post, I mistakenly said he had fieldwalked} on the hilltop, where he found evidence of a well-built fortification wall. (Plan and photos in Tel Aviv vol. 20, 1993.)
He was less interested in the Roman remains, so we are still reliant on the reports from the 1920s and 1930s for these.
